Lacan and Psychedelic Trumpism

Lacan’s Method

Let us try to apply Lacan’s topology to the American elections.

Let us recall Lacan’s basic model. It can be represented as three Borromean rings or three orders:

1. The Real
2. The Symbolic
3. The Imaginary

The Real is the domain where every object is strictly identical to itself. This absolute identity (A=A) excludes the very possibility of becoming, i.e., of being in a state of transformation. Thus, the Real is the zone of pure death and nothingness. There are no changes, movements, or relations. The Real is true, like the truth of nothingness that has no alternatives.

The Symbolic is the domain where nothing equals itself, where one thing always refers to another. It is an escape from the Real, motivated by the desire to avoid death and falling into nothingness. It is here that content, relationships, movements, and transformations are born, but always in a dreamlike state. The Symbolic is the unconscious. The essence of a symbol is that it points to something other than itself (it does not matter what specifically, as long as it is not itself).

The Imaginary is the domain where the dynamic of the Symbolic stops, but without the object dying and collapsing into the Real. The Imaginary is what we mistakenly take for Being, the world, ourselves — nature, society, culture, and politics. It is everything, yet it is also a lie. Every element of the Imaginary is actually a frozen moment of the Symbolic. Wakefulness is a form of sleep that does not realize itself. Everything in the Imaginary refers to the Symbolic but presents itself as supposedly “Real.”

In the Real, A=A is true. In the Imaginary, A=A is false. In the Imaginary, no object is identical to itself, but unlike in the Symbolic, it doesn’t want to admit this — neither to itself nor to others.

The Real is nothing. The Symbolic is ever-changing becoming. The Imaginary consists of false nodes of the frozen Symbolic.

Lacan and Politics

Lacan was well aware that the model of the three orders casts doubt on the basic strategies of reformism, progressivism, and revolution. It is no coincidence that in his youth, he was right-wing and a monarchist, close to Charles Maurras. And in the 1960s, contrary to the “New Left,” he supported the status quo and de Gaulle’s rule. This was no accident but stems directly from the Borromean rings model.

The “New Left” revolutionaries (in Lacan’s interpretation) wanted to replace the Imaginary (old social-political structures, order as such) with the Symbolic (surreal, schizophrenic, transgressive). They used Lacan’s ideas in a utilitarian way — ironic Freudianism helped undermine the claims of the Imaginary (Order) to foundational logic (A=A), revealing it as merely a frozen moment of delirium. However, they overlooked the fact that once the old Imaginary collapses or melts under the pressure of critique (whether political, aesthetic, social, or epistemological), the Symbolic cannot take its place. It will instantly become the new Imaginary — equally totalitarian, dictatorial, and absurd.

Examples of this, Lacan saw everywhere, especially in Soviet Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks began with a call for freedom and equality but quickly transformed into a rigid party hierarchy with a totalitarian apparatus of violence. The same happened with Cromwell or the French Revolution. The Symbolic retains its properties only while remaining in the unconscious, in the realm of dreams. The moment it surfaces, it turns into the Imaginary, essentially the same thing, though now dressed in new forms. All Imaginary systems were once Symbolic, alive, and changing before freezing into permanence.

Thus, today’s revolutionary is tomorrow’s totalitarian, cruel official and enforcer of violence. Reforms (in the context of the Borromean rings) are impossible, as they will lead to the same result. The Symbolic can never replace the Imaginary under any conditions.

Lacan believed this, and this conclusion flows directly from his system.

Kamala Harris and the Symbolic

Now to the US elections. Here we see a fierce clash between “progressives” (Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party) and “conservatives” (Trump and the Republicans). In Lacanian analysis, the roles seem obvious: Kamala Harris embodies an invitation to transgression, the legalization of perversions, and liberation from all prohibitions and norms, i.e., the expansion of the Symbolic realm. The Democrats’ platform is a structure of well-tempered delirium: more LGBT, more cancel culture, more illegal immigrants, more drugs and gender reassignment surgeries, more deconstruction of old orders, more BLM and critical race theory.

Of course, the main Imaginary being mocked and attacked from all sides is Donald Trump — the generalized archetype of “unfreedom,” “hierarchies,” and “male rationality.”

Kamala Harris represents the Symbolic, as seen in her strange speeches, endless cold and meaningless laughter, her incoherence, and her expressive gestures that point to something intuitively understandable but indefinable. Harris is a figure of active dreaming. The voter sees in her that the impossible becomes possible, and one thing seamlessly flows into another. But everything remains unfocused and blurry. This is “progress”: Whites become Blacks, capitalists become something else (“Loot the stores — that’s the whole law!”), men and women become vague objects of desire (Lacan’s “little a”), always evading fixation.

In other words, despite Lacan’s own warnings about the unchanging structure of the Borromean rings, the Democrats are actively trying to destroy the American Imaginary, fervently wanting to replace it with the Symbolic.

Psychedelic Trumpism and Right-Wing Dreaming

Where can we find a counterattack on the frozen liberal Imaginary, which has turned into overt totalitarianism? The answer is obvious: in the opposite pole, which we can call “Trumpist Symbolic.” We saw the signs of this strategy during Trump’s first presidential campaign in the Alt-Right, on 4chan, in the figure of the meme Pepe the Frog, in reptilian conspiracy theories, chaos magic, and the delirious theories of QAnon. We might call this “esoteric Trumpism” or, more precisely, “psychedelic Trumpism.” If the Democrats and their transgressive practices have become the Imaginary — frozen in totalitarian prescriptive power structures — then psychoanalytic critique from the Symbolic has naturally focused on the Republicans. Of course, not all Republicans, but the most liberated, “unhinged,” and delirious factions.

Here we encounter an interesting picture. The power held by the Democrats and the neoconservative wing of the Republicans places them as carriers of the Imaginary, that is, the globalist order. However, progressivism as a synonym for the Symbolic clashes with the totalitarianism entrenched in the Democrats, who fiercely cling to power. Even though the Democrats’ narrative depicts the Imaginary as Trump — the tough, feminine Melania, the Republicans, and old liberal America — in the larger system, it is the Democrats who now embody the Imaginary, desperately holding onto power. Kamala Harris is an agent of a rigid, organized system — what is called the Deep State. She is not an organism but a mechanism, a link in the vertical chain of authority. This is how the Imaginary order manifests itself. Appeals to the Symbolic only slightly obscure its true nature.

The only critique capable of identifying and destabilizing this frozen order comes from “psychedelic Trumpism,” which increasingly assumes the function of the Symbolic.

This analysis helps explain the selection of J. D. Vance as a potential vice president or even Trump’s successor in his ideological battle against the liberal establishment. Vance no longer represents the Imaginary but the purely Symbolic. He openly aligns himself with the extravagant, psychedelic field of post-liberal right-wing thought, especially the chaotic Alt-Right universe. Figures like Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug), and the brilliant French philosopher René Girard (who wrote on sacred violence) are atypical for classic right-wing Republicans. They cannot be used to illustrate the Imaginary (which the progressives supposedly aim to dismantle in the name of the Symbolic). In Vance, the Democrats’ psychoanalytic strategy fails, as Vance himself embodies the atypical right-wing Symbolic pole. It is even possible that he understands this and is familiar with Lacan. Thus, choosing Vance as vice president is a key move in Trump’s campaign. Once again, the magic of chaos — represented by the Borromean rings and their connection to dreamlike psychedelia — comes into play, but this time more systematically.

Strictly following Lacan, the Trump-Vance alliance seems harmonious and full of promise. Trump himself offers the Imaginary that appeals to the right-wing electorate. But this is complemented by right-wing postmodernism, social critique, and the liberating delirium embodied in “psychedelic Trumpism” and, by extension, Vance. The rational, daytime mode of governance, inevitable in any administration and transparent in Trump’s case, is balanced by the nighttime mode of liberated (right-wing) dreaming.

Transgression from the Right

From this application of Lacan’s model to the upcoming American elections, we can draw several more conclusions.

First, it brilliantly explains the totalitarian nature of modern globalist liberalism, which has become impossible to ignore. The attempt to replace the Imaginary with the Symbolic is doomed to failure but will only generate a new Imaginary — one that is more alienated, aggressive, intolerant, and violent. Hence, we see the phenomenon of “liberal fascism.”

On the other hand, the emergence of “psychedelic Trumpism” makes sense, representing not a marginal anomaly but a perfectly reasonable and even pragmatic strategy. If every kind of deviation and pathology is permitted, but Tradition is forbidden, then the will to life and the dynamic of the Symbolic will fuel tremendous energy into normal gender and species-based orientations. Tradition, then, acquires a revolutionary character. When Tradition is outlawed, this alone makes it an object of passionate desire. Progressives freeze socio-political and cultural life, alienating it. Thus, the new counterculture becomes non-conformism from the right.

Who Will Win the Election?

It is difficult to say, but the aggressive, totalitarian elite, betting on minority groups, might fail. By removing the forbidden status from deviations, they automatically make legally suppressed normalcy the center of attraction. If, in the order of the Imaginary, normalcy resides in the “past” — what existed before the progressives and liberals — then in the order of the Symbolic, normalcy resides in the “future.” Normalcy is the suppressed and outlawed today that, like a forbidden fruit, longs to triumph tomorrow. Usually, conservatives struggle with envisioning the future. But “psychedelic Trumpism” offers a unique response, shifting the unconscious and even transgressive practices to the right, thereby capturing the future’s territory.

Be Cautious of Nothingness

Lastly, we have not yet touched on the subject of the Real — one of the Borromean rings.

Here, progressives attempt a complex maneuver: by normalizing the Symbolic, they aim to remove the tension between it and the Real. They hope to bring nothingness (death) under their control rather than excluding it. Likely, this is the goal of AI, migration to cyberspace, and the Singularity, where the identity of the machine with itself will no longer create traumatic flows that awaken the unconscious (the Symbolic). If the Symbolic (as progressives naively believe) has already replaced the Imaginary, then the problem of confrontation with the Real has been solved. To conquer death and the terror it brings, life itself must be eliminated. Hence the focus on transhumanism and mechanical immortality, a theme explored in speculative realism.

The Democratic Party’s ontological project inevitably leads to the elimination of humanity.

These elections in the United States will determine the fate of humanity — whether it will be or not. A Trump victory will maintain the balance between the three Borromean rings. A Harris victory may mean their irreversible collapse.

And here, finally, it must be said that for Lacan, the Borromean rings and their three orders are what constitute the human being.

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Translated from the Russian by Constantin von Hoffmeister