The enormous value of lies as propaganda
The other day I was speaking to an old friend who is what I would call a political moderate for the most part. But her hatred for Trump and his supporters – a crowd she lumps together as a large amorphous mass of stupid, selfish, crass, dangerous people (present company excluded?) – means that she hasn’t voted for Republicans in quite a while.
We hadn’t spoken of politics in a long time, and it’s a topic I generally avoid. But during our friendly discussion it came up, and I asked her what is one of the things she dislikes most about Trump. She cited his white supremacism. I asked her on what she based the belief that he’s a white supremacist, and she cited the Charlottesville “good people on both sides” incident.
That’s both fascinating and depressing. This person isn’t ill-informed and she’s quite intelligent, but somehow that original lie, repeated over and over again, has become unassailable truth in her mind. That lie not only got halfway around the world before the truth had a chance to get its boots on, but it burrowed deep into many many minds and then was driven deeper by all the repetition. Correcting it requires a rather lengthy explanatory conversation, supporting documents and videos, and the will on the part of the listener to entertain the idea that such a deeply-entrenched, long-held, and multiply-sourced belief is incorrect. Not only that, but the belief fits in with so many other beliefs about Trump that have been repeated over the years, plus beliefs about Republicans and especially MAGA voters, that the task of getting the revised story across is nearly insurmountable.
This is just another musing of mine on the theme that got me started on blogging: how do minds change? It’s like the lightbulb joke: they have to want to change. Or, they have to have an experience or come across some knowledge that just happens to strike a deep chord that is the start of a mental (and sometimes emotional) journey from which there is usually no turning back.
Neon,
I think you hit upon a key point with the use of her “hatred” of Trump. Once that is in place nothing will shake these people’s view. If someone is not happy with Trump but doesn’t express the burning hatred of TDS, then it may be possible to have a conversation. With TDS (and now MDS), in my growing experience, it just seems to get worse. Hence we see the start of violence like what is happening at Tesla dealerships and now this morning with the doxxing of all Tesla owners.
People like your Trump hating friend are already predisposed to hate Trump, so they are amenable to any comment or commentary, truthful or otherwise, that affirms their belief system.
Any comment or evidence contrary to their belief system is ignored; no need to mobilize their brain and actually think.
These types are the true believers and the most easy to manipulate. They are the ideal targets for the propagandists.
We all know people like your friend.
“Trapped priors”. What’s linked is very long, so the most relevant part:
Perhaps Dr. Gad Saad has hit closest to the mark when he speaks of mind parasites. It’s a concept akin to the “mind viruses” spoken of by Elon, but in greater detail. He describes its effect by analogizing to a species of cricket that normally avoids water but, when infected by a certain parasite that requires water to complete its growth cycle, eventually succumbs and drowns, thereby allowing the parasite to attain maturity. When we observe people supporting causes or groups that are, in reality, their mortal enemies (“Gays for Hamas” anyone?) or conversely, opposing causes or groups that are their natural allies, it is a clear sign that they have been parasitized and will eventually meet their demise, all the while oblivious to the mortal danger they face. In fact, seemingly welcoming it. Once parasitized, the person almost never recovers.
While the Charlottesville lie has been debunked by legacy talking heads, suppose he did say there were good people on both sides. People join political groups for all sorts of reasons, many not having to do with the specific politics of the group. They may feel alienated from society so they choose a group of people who also feel alienated. Bobby Fisher, a Jew, was an anti-Semite perhaps for those reasons.
Why is it assumed that saying good people are on both sides meant he was a supporter of one particular side? Maybe he was saying there were good people on the rioting, pulling down statutes, assaulting white supremacists side.
Maybe, Neo, you might sometimes say to people like your friend, “I say on my blog there there are good people who are Democrats.”
jvermeer:
He was talking about people tearing down statues, not white supremacists.
no he meant those on the question of removing statues, we saw how false that premise became in 2000, when everyone from Washington to Frederick Douglass was targeted, Joel Pollak who grew up in South Africa, then moved to Chicago, noticed this habit to erase all aspects of previous culture,
which we sae in the nomenclature surrounding military bases, od course has
South African culture really gotten better in the interval that ANC took charge,
Mind Arson is a term I didn’t coin, but it shows the process that proceeds from it,
so much of the wave of seemingly random violence comes from this trans gender
anti nomian cell that springs from so called Antifa, which is the dowstream product of the SDS and the so called Black Liberation forces, effendi khalil is both the product and the agent, of islamist elements, that seem to have some influence not only in the US but in the UK foreign office, this seems to have manifested itself in not only the run up to the stock port incident, but how it was handled subsequently,
Changing your mind requires an ability to see that your ideas may be wrong. Very few people who go into therapy make changes unless they recognize that they need help and are looking for answers.
Talk therapy can bring one to a recognition of why you are miserable and what you can do to be happier. But you have to want to change. Or at least be open to the idea.
Most people don’t want to change their minds because it involves an amount of work and open-mindedness’ that they’re not willing to engage in. It’s also difficult to accept that you were wrong.
That said, how does someone who is rational hate a strong border, reducing government waste/fraud, and bringing two astronauts back to Earth? It’s a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” as to why people despise those things because they’re associated with Trump.
The polls show that many people have changed their minds about Trump policies, but the foghorns of media, academia, lefty blogs don’t reflect that.
@miguel cervantes:on the question of removing statues, we saw how false that premise became in 2000, when everyone from Washington to Frederick Douglass was targeted
Here’s an editorial from 2021, saying
a) the Confederate statue thing is a slippery slope fallacy
b) no one wants to remove George Washington
c) okay, some people might want to remove George Washington but it would be for totally different reasons
d) and those might be very good reasons so we should listen when they come out
Has to be read to be believed.
And in 2020, a year before that, he’s on record opposing Columbus Day, proposing to replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Immigrants’ Day. In 2022 he’s on record opposing Lori Lightfoot’s restoration of the Columbus statue.
This guy says there’s no slippery slope and all the while is applying Teflon and Crisco and ball bearings to it, and then after we’re at the bottom he acknowledges the slope and says it’s too hard to go back up it now. (Remember that at first he said Confederates, and George Washington, were TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS and now he says they are all part of the same “thorny issue of how best to remember our past”.)