Collective narcissism of populism

This chapter discusses how national collective narcissism is implicated in ultraconservative populism. It reviews findings linking national narcissism to voters’ support for populist politicians, parties, and policies as well as some aspects of populism such as science skepticism, climate change denial, and medical populism that affected reactions to COVID19 pandemic. As a belief about national identity, collective narcissism offers an attractive, though biased interpretation of cultural, societal (secularization, liberalization, and increasing emancipation of historically disadvantaged groups) and economic (increasing inequality) changes that threatened the traditional group-based hierarchies and challenged people&s;s established expectations regarding self-importance. Those changes are interpreted as unjust harm to the ingroup that justifies distrust toward the “establishment” and the “elites” and the need to protect the ingroup, vageuly defined by righteous "the people". The definition of the national ingroup becomes narrow and exclusive justifying discrimination.

Narcissism · Political science · Politics · Populism · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia