Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump in 2019. Things have deteriorated since then.
Narcissism is an age-old tale. In scripture, the devil is a fallen angel attempting to corrupt Adam and Eve into eating the apple. Notwithstanding, the genesis of human life is the problematic of sin; ensuring the banishment of Adam and Eve from heaven (the garden). What we should be questioning is why is eating the apple the original sin when apples are made for eating? This line of questioning exposes the illogicality in the punishment. The punishment does not match the crime.
In the same way, power is an aphrodisiac for narcissists because it means that as fallen angels, narcissists devalue and punish to maintain dominance over the other. We see this devaluation in the ways in which Making America Great Again is the personification of narcissistic censure to maintain dominance. This explains the need from a small group of mainly white men, trying to protect their hold on power at the expense of a rapidly approaching doomsday scenario. The devil or narcissist is prepared to sacrifice the Garden of Eden (Earth) for transient dominance over the other.
According to Frantz Fanon, colonialism is pathologised as narcissism. For Fanon, colonials have stunted ego development, meaning that the narcissist is incapable of ubuntu (mutual recognition between the self and other) because recognition was skewed for the narcissist. (Examples of this can be found in Black Skins, White Masks with the formation of the identity of the pied noir). Hence, the narcissist remains traumatised by the initial wound of skewed recognition.
This recognition failure embedded in the logic of colonialism perpetuates a public mental health crisis of social narcissism. In this scenario, the narcissist uses skewed recognition to maintain power through violence. But this also hinders the pleasure of seeing the other. Thus, colonialism is determined by a lack of ubuntu. Think back to the Zelenskyy/Trump conversation in the oval office where Zelensky fails to acknowledge Trump’s authority. Trump infantilises and devalues Zelensky, highlighting the ways in which narcissistic injury displays its power through shame and humiliation.
If narcissistic logic is applied in the context of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, what we see is how the coloniality of gender becomes a vehicle for enslaved female bodies bearing the double burden of sexual and reproductive labour to ensure narcissistic supply (more bodies for the narcissist to maintain power over). This form of control over the enslaved (female) body has come to define global politics.
From the geno/ecocides of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Palestine, we see the deliberate devaluation of bodies in the Global South to maintain Western Imperialism. Furthermore, the displays of brutality on our screens (an indictment of our extractive consumerism leading to the conflict in the DRC), has emblazoned us in pushing back against our own fungibility by taking to the streets worldwide to oppose our subjugation. But this also means more blunt force with the rise of fascism. What we will see is more images of brutality while the narcissist’s power wanes because history has taught us that empires fall leaving a bloody mess.
But, for us to understand the narcissist as the fallen angel, we need to understand the vicious cycle of harm that is perpetuated when a necessary hiatus for reflection is lost. With careful analysis, we see that discard is the secondary wound of the fallen angel. Therefore, narcissistic injury remains unhealed. Thus, the Garden of Eden becomes purgatory for the devil with the fungible human becoming a victim of narcissistic injury. A healing praxis is offered as a remedy that transmutes the wound into a meaning-making moment through recognition, reflection and repair. Necessary processes that can lead to love and forgiveness.
How does this connect to the narcissists of current geopolitics? There are two things that are happening simultaneously: 1. Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu is absconding court and ethnically cleansing Palestine and, 2. “Money. Money. Money. Is so funny in a rich man’s world”; these ABBA lyrics allude to the games that the rich play with the lives of the vulnerable.
They make the rules by moving capital around and maintaining power over others. It is the master/slave dialectic of a capitalist business model as demonstrated by the Caribbean scholar Anton de Kom. In times like these, the only people power we have is to opt out of giving our money to these rich men who serve the war economy, thereby making us fungible while adding to their power and abuse.
What we should be doing is focusing our resources on building solidarity, safety and connection to each other by bringing more love into this world. Especially, when we are faced with hate crimes, geno/ecocides and more state repression. Now is the time to set aside our petty political squabbles and find joy in community while resisting the narcissists.
If the war economy is driving bloated defence budgets, then trumping the last socialists out of politics with Bernie Sander and Jeremy Corbyn should make us all feel very restless and ready to push back and resist this new unfolding world order that will lead to more death and destruction. Imam Muhsin Hendricks’ life should be our guiding light in this moment with the importance of remembering the value of freedom.
Nadira Omarjee is a decolonial feminist scholar affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and to the University of the Witwatersrand. She has published two books: We Belong to the Earth: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Pedagogy Rooted in Uhuru and Ubuntu and Reimagining the Dream: Decolonising Academia by Putting the Last First.
