Parasitic ant tricks workers into killing their queen, then takes the throne

Published in Current Biology on November 17

I applied this to the rise of Trump, asking an AI to draw the parallels. Here's what I got

The ant study becomes an almost eerie biological mirror of Trump’s rise and the sociopolitical conditions that enabled it. The parasitic queen’s strategy—mimicking a colony’s identity, inciting the destruction of its legitimate authority, and then enthroning herself through deception—maps neatly onto the political mechanics of Trumpism.

Parallels between the ant colony and the political ecosystem Olfactory mimicry as cultural signaling

The parasite gains entry by mimicking the host colony’s scent, passing as “one of them.” Trump’s political ascent relied on a similar mimicry of cultural and linguistic cues—speaking in the idiom of populist grievance, nationalist pride, and anti-elitist authenticity. His rhetoric resonated because it smelled familiar to a segment of America that felt displaced by institutional power.

Weaponized instinct and confusion of loyalty

The ants’ defensive instinct is turned inward; they attack their own queen after being convinced she’s the threat. Trump’s movement likewise redirected grassroots anger that might have checked oligarchic interests into attacking the “enemy within”: experts, journalists, bureaucrats, and even long-standing conservative figures. This internally directed hostility dissolved previous loyalty structures, clearing the way for his control.

Chemical coup and narrative control

The parasite produces a chemical fog that obscures identity. Trump used a fog of narrative distortion—disinformation, emotional spectacle, and the constant reframing of reality—to override traditional cues of truth and legitimacy. By the time institutions reacted, their own “workers” (voters, media, party functionaries) were already primed to see those institutions as corrupt invaders.

Withdrawal and return after chaos

After killing the queen, the parasite briefly retreats to avoid backlash before re-emerging as ruler. Trump did something comparable after each crisis—retreating amid scandal, then reappearing to reassert dominance once outrage fatigue set in. Post–January 6th, his continued influence over the Republican base demonstrates how the colony stabilized around his new “chemical signature.”

Manipulated matricide as democratic self-destruction

The ants’ tragedy is that their social cohesion—the very instinct that once protected them—becomes the mechanism of their undoing. Similarly, Trump’s rise exploited democracy’s emotional strengths: free expression, group identification, and trust in the common voice. Those ideals, inverted and weaponized, caused the political body to wound itself from within.

In that light, “manipulated matricide” becomes a precise ecological metaphor for a populist coup achieved not by force but by corrosive imitation—where a leader convinces followers that the institutions sustaining their society are their enemies, and then steps into the resulting vacuum as the new matriarch of a hollowed hive.