In the article “The demon-deity Maga: geographical variations and chronological transformation in ancient Egyptian demonology,” John Rogers noted that, in these archaeological texts, the reciter uses grammar to “embody” the enemy so as to control it:
In this text, there are two points of interest: firstly, the identification of the reciter, not with a protective divinity, but with the enemy himself, the son of Seth, the companion of Sebek, but not with Maga, is highly unusual. . . . . However, the context and structure do not allow another interpretation to be made easily. Weill [...] interprets this identification with the dangerous enemy as an attempt to confuse the entity, who is therefore paralyzed and controlled by the words of the reciter.1
That type of confusion leading to paralyzation and control of the listener sounds very much like hypnotism or some similar phenomenon or process.
Rogers continues:
Such an identification supports the view that in these ‘I am X’ texts, identification does not mean merely becoming a mouthpiece through which a deity or being speaks, but that reciter becomes the being itself; here the reciter does not speak on behalf of or channel the strength of these crocodile beings whose will is outside the speaker, but becomes them in order to control their actions.1
This can be considered a sort of ventriloquism of a subject by way of a negative (command). When I say ‘subject’, I mean that which is embedded in the sentence, a semantic / grammatical subject. By “exchanging” places with the listener, the speaker can then describe what the being is to do, as though the speaker is that being.
This negative (command) would utilize the performative, a type of verb by which one does what one simultaneously says. J. L. Austin, in How to Do Things with Words (1955) defined and described performatives and how they work:
These have on the face of them the look—or at least the grammatical make-up—of ‘statements’; but nevertheless they are seen, when more closely inspected, to be, quite plainly, not utterances which could be ‘true’ or ‘false’. … Here we should say that in saying these words we are doing something—namely, marrying, rather than reporting something, namely that we are marrying.2
What this indicates to me is that the speaker self-identifies with the being which she or he means to control. This brings directly to mind the verbal strategy of totalitarian speakers when they directly identify themselves with their followers or the members of the audience.
When Trump tells his audience “I am your retribution,” that is a version of him becoming the entity that he wishes to possess. He does this with the transitive property as well (“They’re going after me because I won’t let them go after you”; “They’re trying to silence me because I will never let them silence you,” etc.)
This has, it would appear, an immediate effect of being preternaturally persuasive to the listener; but the accumulative effect must also loom large. A repeated internal identification must leave psychological marks or traces; and in fact that verbal jiu jitsu may be the induction into a psychologically paralyzed state—hypnosis.
That this is being spoken to multiple people at once (a unifying procedure or technique) would induce mass hypnosis just as Joost Meerloo described in his trenchant article on the same.
The phenomenon of mass-hypnosis exists in every group where mutual participation and mutual mental contagion are active—and that includes practically every human group. It becomes real hypnosis when a “ leader” makes use of this group vulnerability to imprint his persuasions onto the other members systematically. The word mass-hypnosis often is a euphemism for mutual mental contagion.3
It is a well known clinical fact that the larger the group with which a hypnotist is working, the greater the effect of his suggestions will be. This is because everybody’s ego surrenders more easily within a group, where unwittingly a psychic leveling and merging is taking place. Simultaneously, the existence of a mutual mental infection helps to increase the persuasive impact of what is spoken and suggested. “Togetherness” and a relative anonymity within the crowd increase the feeling of mutual participation and the walls of the ego and individual responsibility are gradually leveled down —“The other fellow is just like me.” Control of the superego is taken over more and more by those who lead or direct or inspire the group. The unconscious tendencies that the individual becomes more aware of are now ascribed to mass influence. This justifies at the [s]ame time the less controlled actions of the group. The mass becomes, as it were, responsible for the unleashed, unconscious drives of its component individual parts.3
This effect is only amplified with the tools of mass media, particularly broadcast media (but even lower-tech methods, such as electrified loudspeakers, etc.). Whatever increases the reach of the live audience to be in touch with this incantation is a tool in the verbal artist’s arsenal. “A great gathering of people subjects to collective mutual mental contagion very readily,” Meerloo remarked.4
Trump himself has taken to social media as both a refuge as well as an amphitheater: it collects his voice and rings it out concentrically. His followers are dazed.
(I would wager that Hitler had to have done this same thing, this direct identification with the audience in a bid to force the audience to be in alliance with him. His use of radio can be seen in this light; and indeed others have noted the electrifying and entrancing effect of Hitler’s oratory.)
Now, why is this important? Austin, again remarking upon performatives, details when such a verbal formula is to be taken as imperative:
[I]t is a necessary part of [the suggestion] that, say, the person to be the object of the verb ‘I order to ...’ must, by some previous procedure, tacit or verbal, have first constituted the person who is to do the ordering an authority, e.g. by saying ‘I promise to do what you order me to do.’5
We know from previous reports that Trump has extracted loyalty oaths not only explicitly from those around him in his inner circle but from his followers as well, both verbally and in written form. Indeed, he maintains the fiction that he retains the power of the office of the Presidency and construes President Biden as a usurper, thus constituting within himself all of the authority necessary to accomplish this effect, this ability to order.