“A relation with any archetype involves the danger of possession, usually marked by inflation” – James Hillman (1967) . These words have been ringing in my ears since the failed coup on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
In June, amidst the Black Lives Matter protests, I wrote an article called “Swan Song of the White Ego”. I never meant to imply that the end of whiteness would happen any time soon. Rather, I intended to draw attention to Trump’s presidency and the increasing presence of vocal white supremacists in our midst as the increase in symptoms that often occurs before an underlying root illness improves. Obviously, the pinnacle of this dynamic was the attempted seizure of the Capitol building by the pro-Trump white supremacist militia contingent. I want to return to this idea in the context of that incident – in order to hopefully offer a little more insight.
Depth psychologist Carl Jung observed in the 1920s that the “Germanic people” had a “problematic and dangerously close relation to the barbarian,” a barbarian which was let loose less than a decade later as the “‘blond beast’ of National Socialism” (cited in David Tacey’s Edge of the Sacred). German society at the time can be characterized by its emphasis on culture and civilization. Freud may have described this as a sublimation of the “id”, our animal instincts – sex drives and aggression. In classical Freudian parlance, the German superego had suppressed, rather than integrated, the id. Jung noticed the barbarian lurking in the collective shadow.
Regardless of psychological abstractions, the Germans had privileged their Christian heritage over their pagan roots, and the warrior god Wotan would return with a vengeance. Within a decade or two after Jung’s writing, the Germans annihilated six million Jews, as well as a motley crew of Roma, political and religious dissidents, homosexuals, “impure” ethnicities, and people with disabilities.
We might understand the German campaign to exterminate these populations as scapegoating. Silvia Brinton Perera wrote about the “scapegoat complex,” explaining that a particular group is “identified with evil or wrong-doing, blamed for it, and cast out from the community in order to leave the remaining members with a feeling of guiltlessness, atoned (at-one) with the collective standards of behavior”. Rather than change the systems and structures that cause injustice – in Germany’s case, the devastating impact of their loss in World War I – scapegoating rejects individuals or groups of people, sustaining the imbalance of one’s own group.
For centuries, of course, the white imagination in the United States (and across the globe) identified itself with being civilized – while scapegoating people of color as slaves and savages. While it may be easy to assume that this has changed in full due to a relative increase in access by some people of color, the year 2020 has dashed many of our post-racial (and naive) hopes: the overaggressive response of law enforcement to the nonviolent civil disobedience of the Black Lives Matter protests compared to the relative docility officers showed Trump supporters as they smashed windows and assaulted others in the Capitol building.
It is, in fact, this image that piqued my interest in writing about this topic – the way in which the myth of the civilized white was tarnished in one day. One might think of the now infamous Jake Angeli, dubbed QAnon Shaman, with his fur and face paint. While it’s certainly troubling that this man appears to be appropriating indigenous imagery, it points to the possession by the barbarian archetype. While we may consider the value of individuals of European descent getting connected to their own indigenous traditions, it is clear that Angeli’s relationship to Wotan is a pathological one. It is worth noting, by the way, that the etymology of the Norse name Wotan/Odin is “leader of the possessed”.
Although Angeli’s photo has become ubiquitous, I chose the photo above because it is one of my fellow Jews, Aaron Mostofsky, referred to in New York Magazine as the Capitol Riot ‘Caveman’ From Brooklyn. It is simultaneously striking, confusing, and disappointing that an Orthodox Jew would join together with white supremacists – and yet this (mis)alignment has not been uncommon in the Trump era. I believe it speaks to both the allure of complicity with the collective white ego, as well as the vast disturbance we are faced with when we project the barbarian. We might even trace this dynamic (in part) to the Judeo-Christian tradition of defaming the rugged hunter Esau while privileging the supposedly civilized Jacob – despite the fact that it was the latter who was most guilty of savagery. This splitting off of Esau arguably echoes until today. As Rabbi Rami Shapiro wrote in his gem of a book on a Jewish reclaiming of the “Deep Masculine,” we must embrace Esau. To not do so is to fall prey to the unconscious barbarian within us.
We might consider that a relatively healthy association with the barbarian, perhaps a more conscious relationship to that archetype, can occur through spending time in the wilderness – or even the face paint worn by fans at a sporting event. An unconscious relationship, as the Hillman quote above refers, involves the danger of possession. Inflation might be thought of as the belief that we are godlike: “we can take over the Capitol!” An unhealthy and unconscious relationship to this archetype becomes an attack on what society holds sacred; not only waving your flag, but using it to beat your enemy. It is self-destructive.
As with the Germans who projected their inner barbarian onto those they slaughtered (calling them vermin and subhumans), chickens come home to roost. The American myth of the rebel is tearing apart this nation. As a teenage anarchist and activist, I always saw myself as a rebel. But I’ve very obediently been following the public health mandate to wear a mask for the past 10 months – along with many others who identify as politically progressive. Meanwhile, blind allegiance to “independence” (and to the charlatan who occupied the White House for four years) has so many (white) Americans clinging to their guns and eschewing the one thing that would keep them safe. This ethos is perhaps best characterized by South Park’s Cartman, in his very American insistence: “I do what I want”.
With the storming of the Capitol by “American rebels,” the white ego was aflame – the very same day that we saw a black man and a Jewish man elected to the Georgia senate. Events at two extreme poles: one, the success of multiracial democracy in the South; simultaneously, white supremacists raging against their fear that their way of life is slipping away. Perhaps they are right; post-election, this country is moving in a new direction. It’s clear from the decidedly multicultural events from last week’s inaugural proceedings – including a phenomenal interfaith Presidential Prayer Service. In the light of this possibility, for the first time in four years, I can say that I am proud to be an American. But, still, there is shadow…
My claim about the white ego’s swan song is less descriptive than prescriptive. We are not free and clear yet. We must continue to forge multicultural democracy – investing in initiatives around race, class, and the other -isms at the root of both historical oppression and the white ego’s self-justifications. But we must also take into consideration our relationship with the barbarian. We cannot continue to be possessed by its lure: suppressing, projecting, and annihilating the other. Instead, we must adopt a conscious relationship to the barbarian, as part of the wholesale reconciliation that must occur in response to centuries of domination by the collective white ego.
Community Alchemist 