{"id":39222,"date":"2025-04-17T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39222"},"modified":"2025-04-19T15:09:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T15:09:33","slug":"a-need-for-chaos-powers-some-americans-support-for-elon-musk-taking-a-chainsaw-to-the-us-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/a-need-for-chaos-powers-some-americans-support-for-elon-musk-taking-a-chainsaw-to-the-us-government\/","title":{"rendered":"A need for chaos powers some Americans\u2019 support for Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the US government"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dannagal G. Young<\/a>, University of Delaware<\/a><\/em> and Kevin Arceneaux<\/a>, Sciences Po<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A video of a Las Vegas Tesla dealership that had been set on fire<\/a> by anti-Elon Musk protesters was posted on March 18, 2025, by an account on X called EndWokeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day Musk replied to the post, \u201cSome people just want to watch the world burn,\u201d an iconic line from the 2008 Batman film \u201cThe Dark Knight.\u201d Alfred, the Wayne family\u2019s faithful butler, says the line to Bruce Wayne \u2013 Batman \u2013 to describe the motivations behind the Joker\u2019s chaotic acts of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk \u2013 and Alfred \u2013 was right. Some people do, in fact, say they think that society should be burned to the ground. It\u2019s part of a psychological measure political psychologists created called \u201cneed for chaos<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New data from the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware<\/a> suggests that those people \u2013 the ones who want society to burn \u2013 are the ones with more, not less, trust in Musk. They also report more trust in the Department of Government Efficiency, the government entity Musk advises, which the Trump administration claims it created<\/a> to cut government waste and fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, critics point out that Musk and DOGE\u2019s seemingly indiscriminate approach to spending cuts risks damaging the infrastructure<\/a> necessary for American innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This desire to watch the world burn doesn\u2019t come out of nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fear of losing status<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Somewhat like the Joker, whose perpetual sense of victimhood \u2013 \u201cYou wanna know how I got these scars?<\/a>\u201d \u2013 drove his need for chaos and destruction, people can develop a need for chaos in response to a sense that they are losing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When political psychologists introduced this concept of \u201cneed for chaos\u201d in 2021<\/a>, they described it not as a psychological trait, but as a character adaptation that occurs when some people experience a cultural and political situation that makes them feel like they are losing status and power. For some people, this feeling triggers a desire to \u201cburn it all down\u201d \u2013 \u201cit\u201d being society, institutions, the world \u2013 maybe to rebuild it all anew, or maybe just to see it all destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a small percentage of the U.S. population \u2013 less than 15% \u2013 tends to score high in need for chaos. But even so, understanding this minority is important to gaining insight into this political moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, people who score high in need for chaos exhibit greater support for political violence<\/a> and a willingness to knowingly share hostile and false information online<\/a>. And in our data, those higher in need for chaos report holding more trust in Musk, DOGE and Trump than people who score lower in the need for chaos measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who wants to burn it down<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We are<\/a> political psychologists<\/a> who study the link between psychological traits and political beliefs. Last month, the University of Delaware\u2019s Center for Political Communication<\/a> ran a national survey that we designed to understand where the public stands on various political issues and how those beliefs relate to psychological traits, including need for chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our national study of 1,600 Americans conducted between Feb. 27-March 5, 2025, by YouGov, we asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u201cI fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u201cI think society should be burned to the ground\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u201cWe cannot fix the problems in our social institutions; we need to tear them down and start over\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u201cI need chaos around me \u2013 it is too boring if nothing is going on\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar to prior work by author Kevin Arceneaux and his colleagues<\/a>, our data shows that a very small number \u2013 fewer than 20% of the sample \u2013 agrees strongly or agrees somewhat with each item.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, looking at need for chaos among groups of varying ages, education levels and media habits, we find the highest need for chaos scores among people under age 40, those with less education, and those who pay the least attention to politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burning it down through government policy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our new data also shows that while people highest in need for chaos report having more trust in Musk, DOGE, and President Trump, these chaos-seeking folks report having less trust in \u201cpeople in general,\u201d journalists or the federal government. These findings hold even when statistically accounting for other factors, among them party, race, gender, education and ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk\u2019s penchant for wielding chainsaws<\/a> as a symbol of DOGE\u2019s work provides some insight into why chaos seekers may like what they see in Musk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not clear exactly what Musk\u2019s aim is with his work at DOGE, as he eliminates the jobs of hundreds of thousands<\/a> of government workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is clear, however, is that by many accounts, the mass firings and the gutting of agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Institute for Peace, are sowing chaos<\/a>. And a significant portion of Americans want just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dannagal G. Young<\/a>, Professor of Communication and Political Science, University of Delaware<\/a><\/em> and Kevin Arceneaux<\/a>, Director of the Center for Political Research and Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dannagal G. Young, University of Delaware and Kevin Arceneaux, Sciences Po A video of a Las Vegas Tesla dealership that had been set on fire by anti-Elon Musk protesters was posted on March 18, 2025, by an account on X called EndWokeness. The next day Musk replied to the post, \u201cSome people just want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":39223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,8025,1862,291,46,295,25,296,4,8],"tags":[12320,16015,479,6674,16247,885,891,886,860,8929,5175],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39222"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39224,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39222\/revisions\/39224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}