23.11.2025
The Walking Chaos I
The Malignant King
Klaudia Grote

In political psychology, a recurring leadership archetype emerges in moments of crisis: a personality structure marked by grandiose narcissism, a propensity for aggression, profound reality distortion, and an instrumental coldness toward others. In clinical discourse, this configuration resembles what Erich Fromm called malignant narcissism, in leadership studies it corresponds to destructive leadership, and in the psychology of power it aligns with the hubris syndrome.

Trump is according to different scholars such a Malignant King. His sense of self, his hunger for power, and his grasp of reality are no longer aligned. Grandiosity is not an ornament, it is the skeleton of his political identity. What drives him is not economic insight, but a psychological attempt to compensate for internal inadequacy through imagined historical greatness.

Trump develops messianic fantasies, such as the belief that he can make America great again and “wealthy” by inventing a new monetary and financial system with the USD1 and his WLF. These visions do not arise from macroeconomic competence; they arise from a defensive mechanism in which personal fragility is masked by a narrative of omnipotence. Trump experiences himself as uniquely chosen, as someone entitled to override institutions, expertise, and historical knowledge.

Grandiosity alone need not destabilize a system. It becomes dangerous when fused with malignant traits: exploitation rather than cooperation, manipulation instead of analysis, aggression rather than reflection, and devaluation of others instead of self-correction. These patterns are extensively documented in research and are associated with increased risks of violence, boundary-breaking, and institutional decay.

Erich Fromm described this process as mass psychosis, a collective psychological state in which the pathology of one dominant figure spreads across an entire population. In such conditions, it is no longer the healthy environment that restrains the impaired leader; rather, the leader’s distorted inner world becomes the template for social reality. Trump fears, his enemies, his grandiosity, and his contempt for truth begin to function as shared cognitive and emotional structures. Segments of the population internalize his rhetoric and mirror his distortions, until the abnormal appears normal, and the irrational becomes a collective compass. Hope, especially the hope that “he will not go that far”, turns into a mechanism of mass self-deception, one of the classic symptoms Fromm identified in societies sliding into collective delusion.

Anyone who allows themselves to be soothed by the charismatic veneer of Trump, or who trusts that he will respect boundaries he has already shown contempt for, has already entered his psychological reality. The first step in resisting the Malignant King is to relinquish the fantasy that he will moderate himself. Such personalities do not self-limit; they escalate until they collide with a boundary they can no longer manipulate or bend.

A malignant narcissistic leader like Trump must be seen for what this fictional archetype represents: a destructive and profoundly dangerous force that must be contained. Any hope that he will “calm down” or that “things will not get that bad” is part of the psychological dynamic that empowers such figures. This very illusion has led societies in history to catastrophes. In Germany, many believed that the nightmare would simply pass, and yes, eventually it ended, but only after unleashing devastation whose scars remain visible to this day. Such a stain does not disappear; it shapes generations. Vigilance, therefore, is not panic, it is historical necessity.