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The enormous value of lies as propaganda — 33 Comments

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. “Trapped priors”. What’s linked is very long, so the most relevant part:

   Normal Bayesian reasoning slides gradually into confirmation bias. Suppose you are a zealous Democrat. Your friend makes a plausible-sounding argument for a Democratic position. You believe it; your raw experience (an argument that sounds convincing) and your context (the Democrats are great) add up to more-likely-than-not true. But suppose your friend makes a plausible-sounding argument for a Republican position. Now you’re doubtful; the raw experience (a friend making an argument with certain inherent plausibility) is the same, but the context (ie your very low prior on the Republicans being right about something) makes it unlikely.

   Still, this ought to work eventually. Your friend just has to give you a good enough argument. Each argument will do a little damage to your prior against Republican beliefs. If she can come up with enough good evidence, you have to eventually accept reality, right?

   But in fact many political zealots never accept reality. It’s not just that they’re inherently skeptical of what the other party says. It’s that even when something is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, they still won’t believe it. This is where we need to bring in the idea of trapped priors….

   If I’m a Republican, I might have a prior that Democrats are often wrong or lying or otherwise untrustworthy. In itself, that’s fine and normal. It’s a model shaped by my past experiences, the same as my prior against someone’s claim to have seen a polar bear. But if enough evidence showed up – bear tracks, clumps of fur, photographs – I should eventually overcome my prior and admit that the bear people had a point. Somehow in politics that rarely seems to happen.

   For example, more scientifically literate people are more likely to have partisan positions on science (eg agree with their own party’s position on scientifically contentious issues, even when outsiders view it as science-denialist). If they were merely biased, they should start out wrong, but each new fact they learn about science should make them update a little toward the correct position. That’s not what we see. Rather, they start out wrong, and each new fact they learn, each unit of effort they put into becoming more scientifically educated, just makes them wronger. That’s not what you see in normal Bayesian updating. It’s a sign of a trapped prior.

4. 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.

5. 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.”

6. jvermeer:

   He was talking about people tearing down statues, not white supremacists.

7. 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,

8. 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.

9. @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.

   Slowly, this country is relegating its most problematic statues and honors to museums and private spaces as we wrestle with the thorny issue of how best to remember our past. Putting those statues back on public land in Chicago will be a step backwards, an invitation for more anger, more protests, even more violence at a time when police have more important things to do than guard monuments.

   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”.)

10. I tried telling a California leftist relative about the “fine people” hoax (Trump was talking about whether or not to remove statues from parks, and clearly condemned Neo-nazis and white nationalists). I gave her evidence. It had no effect.

11. I have a nearly foolproof way to break through a liberal’s mental shields on such matters. I carry a $100 bill in my wallet, which I put on the table/desk and say “Want to bet?” They are always shocked, then wary, suspecting they may be in trouble if they take that bet. If you have the necessary links to reality, they will often actually read or listen. You just need to get their attention in the way which they feel. BTW, I have never lost that bill.

12. jvermeer
    While the Charlottesville lie has been debunked by legacy talking heads, suppose he did say there were good people on both sides.

    Actually he DID say there were good people on both sides. Snopes: No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People’ (published June 20,2024, nearly seven years after the event. With video.)

    The Donald dixit:

    But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides….

    I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and the baseball bats, you got a lot of bad people in the other group too.

    At the time of the 2017 Charlottesville/good people incident, I didn’t pay much attention to it, because by then my default opinion about MSM media was that it was lying about Trump—among other things. Why waste my time investigating that? I didn’t read the Snopes refutation until several months ago.

    (Similarly, while I paid a lot of attention to Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012 and the 2014 “Gentle Giant” death of Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb, by 2020 and George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis I just rolled my eyes–more of the same.)

    When I visit old friends—all yellow dog Democrats– in my New England hometown this year, I am going to keep political discussion to a minimum. I am not going to convince them, nor are they going to convince me. But a short perusal of this Snopes article, video included, might open their eyes. Might….

    Chester Peake–great idea. I may try it.

13. I always wonder how short the line is between hating Trump supporters and wishing them in reeducation camps and wishing them dead. I’ve heard some really horrific things from seemingly normal people.

14. a crowd she lumps together as a large amorphous mass of stupid, selfish, crass, dangerous people
    ==
    She’s telling you what she fancies about people outside the sort of social circles in which she moves. Which tells you what she fancies about herself.

15. The constant lying then moving on after being busted has always bothered me. Here’s the latest VDH on the subject. (With a little help from Chat for readability. It’s easier to read VDH’s catalogs with bullet points.
    ________________________________

    …I just want to finish with the Border.

    We were told there was nothing that could be done with the Border.
    12 million people flowing across was inevitable.
    We needed comprehensive immigration reform.

    That was all a lie.

    They deliberately destroyed the Border.
    They wanted 12 million people to come.
    It was all a plan—-

    * to change the demography
    * to change the constituency
    * to grow government
    * to increase social services

    It was part of the liberal project.

    What do all these lies have in common?

    * Nobody’s ever apologized for them.
    * Nobody’s even tried to defend them.
    * Nobody’s tried to deny them.
    * Nobody’s tried to sustain them.

    Yet they all did terrible damage to the United States.

    It’ll take years to find 12 million illegal aliens.
    We don’t believe any of our agencies anymore—

    * Our health agencies
    * Our investigatory agencies
    * Our intelligence agencies
    * And finally, it destroyed the media.

    They prolonged and advanced all of these five ruses—and they never apologized.

    They mocked anyone who questioned them.
    And now, we’re just supposed to shrug and say:
    “You were right. They were all lies. We forgive you.”

    No. We don’t.

    We don’t forgive you.

    These lies did terrible damage to the United States.
    And the people responsible for them have never apologized.

    –Victor Davis Hanson, “The Left Lied. Now, America Pays.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Qt4fuj6OY
    ________________________________

    I don’t forgive them either.

16. So much truth in the comments here on this topic, one of the reasons I follow this blog.

    I have a retired ortho surgeon friend, die hard liberal Jew, intelligent, funny, kind, but a raving lunatic when it comes to Trump and anything conservative. Hates Netanyahu and believes it’s Israel’s fault that there has not been a two-state solution. Believes Trump is a “despicable human being”. Would have literally sat in a closet with a bucket to poop in if Fauci had said to do that for a year. Was fanatic about masking and 6-footing, frothed at the mouth if you didn’t do it, drove his car alone with his mask on for months. Believes passionately that we will not be using fossil fuel at all by 2030.

    There is nothing under the sun you can tell or show my friend and people like him that will budge them an iota. In my experience the only thing that will change them is if they are jolted out of it by some personal experience that hits them hard at the center of their beliefs. Like maybe having their house burn down in front of them in LA because the firemen had no water to put the fire out. Something personal and dramatic that upends their world.

    Just ordinary logic and facts have no chance of denting their belief system.

17. “Richard F Cook on March 19, 2025 at 7:43 pm said:
    I always wonder how short the line is between hating Trump supporters and wishing them in reeducation camps and wishing them dead. I’ve heard some really horrific things from seemingly normal people.”

    One only need to reach back to Covid. In Australia we did literally put people in camps over that. To the sound of thunderous applause from the plebs.

18. Niketas Choniates on March 19, 2025 at 1:36 pm; from the extracted quote:
    ” If they were merely biased, they should start out wrong, but each new fact they learn about science should make them update a little toward the correct position.”

    As a scientist and engineer, I would like to think that at least in that domain if new evidence comes along, I will open my belief aperture enough to move a reasonably firmly held viewpoint back into question/hold in abeyance mode. For example, if someone now has evidence to alter or doubt plate tectonics, I could probably adopt a “now wait for more and better evidence posture”. And the same for the Webb telescope reports on the Big Bang, etc.

    While in politics and related “soft areas” I would probably have to have a really big drop of evidence to change. For example, while highly unlikely, perhaps something new will pop out of the recent JFK data releases!? On the other hand the NBC News tonight once again cited expansion and extension and increased severity of WINTER storms as a result of climate change/ global warming!! Unless WUWT changes their mind, I don’t see a reason to change my views there.

    I suppose we all have areas of greater or lesser susceptibility to accepting change.

19. Hates Netanyahu and believes it’s Israel’s fault that there has not been a two-state solution.
    ==
    The Arab bosses have been offered a state on three occasions and spurned the offer each time. On the first occasion, they were dealing with David Ben-Gurion; on the second, with Ehud Barak. On the third, with Ehud Olmert. Your friend is adept at lying to himself.

20. huxley on March 19, 2025 at 8:05 pm
    Thanks for the VDH item. Sometimes he is so “everywhere” that he seems repetitious, but here he makes a fresh and strong assertion once again, as only he can.

    @ Bill: “I have a retired ortho surgeon friend, die hard liberal Jew, intelligent, funny, kind, but a raving lunatic…” Disturbing that as an MD educated person, he would accept Fauci et al. that uncritically. And yet you suggest you are friends, which strikes me as a part of the mystery as to what triggers attraction and affection between people, as friends on up to lovers.

    Some of us are introverts and it takes a while to break through or into our reserve, although I have also met people that I liked almost immediately, whether it deepened into a closer relationship or not. I suppose many different factors can contribute to that initial and/or growing affection over time.

21. Personally, I don’t think propaganda has much value except in introducing new products. The people you are describing were already susceptible to the message. The question is why.

22. Disturbing that as an MD educated person, he would accept Fauci et al. that uncritically.
    ==
    Our friend Mike K was a surgeon. His remark about Fauci was that the man had not treated a patient in 40 years.

23. Neo is entirely correct in that minds have to want to change. If an individual isn’t even open to the possibility they might be wrong (even on basic facts), there is no point in engaging them in any way. Sadly, most left of center folks (even moderate liberals) are not open to that possibility; certainly not regarding Trump or anyone associated with him

    Charlottesville and ‘very fine people’ is an excellent example. It’s clear Trump was referring to the peaceful demonstrators there before Antifa and a bunch of random Neo-Nazis arrived. That’s always been clear from context. It took seven years, but ultimately even the left-wing Snopes site acknowledged it. But for a mind unwilling to change…none of that matters.

    The same goes for Michael Brown (‘gentle giant’), the Steele Dossier, George Floyd, Covid’s origins, Biden’s cognitive decline, etc. ad nauseum. Facts and argument, no matter how compelling, will have little impact on those convinced they already know the truth, full stop, QED.

    This can happen on the right too, but it’s far more infrequent because most of the civil institutions in America (the entertainment industry, academia, the media, most mainline churches, most big corporations, etc) lean left. Thus, it’s much easier for most lefties to shut out opposing viewpoints if they choose; far more difficult for anyone on the right.

24. Hates Netanyahu and believes it’s Israel’s fault that there has not been a two-state solution.

    The Palestinian lack of support for a two-state solution might have something to do with no two-state solution being agreed upon. See Art Deco’s above comment about Arab bosses repeatedly turning down a two-state solution. In addition, consider this poll from the fall of 2023, where Palestinians overwhelmingly turn down a two-state solution. AWRAD: Public Opinion Poll – Gaza War 2023 – Tables of Results. November 14,2023

    Table 33: Do you support the solution of establishing one state or two states in the following formats:
    Two-state solution for two peoples 17%
    A Palestinian state from the river to the sea 75%
    One state solution for two peoples 5%

    As two peoples solutions are rejected, it is patently obvious that the 75% of Palestinians who support “A Palestinian state from the river to the sea” envisage that Palestinian state as being Judenrein.

    Blame Netanyahu. Yeah, right. 🙂

25. R2L said of my post earlier:
    “ disturbing that as an MD trained person he would accept Fauci et al. that uncritically. And yet you suggest you are friends, which strikes me as a part of the mystery as to what triggers attraction and affection between people, as friends on up to lovers.”
    He is my friend, a neighbor. That works so long as we don’t touch any third rails. Food and sports are good.
    He once asked me out of the blue why people from red states are so dumb (we live in Arizona, which wasn’t in his mind red) and I pointed out that I moved here from Texas. His retort: “but you’re different.”

26. Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
    A: Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change.

27. Lord Azrael

    Why totalitarian movements flourish….. The “normal” are capable of supporting enthusiastically barbaric actions. Normal is such a useless word

28. Propaganda by omission

    https://x.com/bonchieredstate/status/1902704792062816664

29. Neo wrote: “. . .hatred for Trump and his supporters – a crowd she lumps together as a large amorphous mass of stupid, selfish, crass, dangerous people. . .”

    My wife has two long-term friends with whom she cannot talk politics. Each has known her since elementary school, in the early fifties. Both are middle class and live in CA. My wife and I married in the sixties and moved away from CA.

    They know my wife is conservative and voted for Trump three times. They remain friends, but the relationship is strained by the political distance. They cannot believe how deluded she is; she cannot understand them. They don’t want to talk about it, she does, but the discussion always breaks down into derision of “Trumpistas” and “good people.”

    I don’t care for these women but I don’t shun them or speak ill of them. For their part, I suppose they consider me a malign influence on their old friend.

    My wife occasionally thinks she needs to convince them how wrong they are but I tell her that is probably a hopeless cause.

    I tell all this because these three women were once very close, now there is a part of life for all three which can barely be mentioned, and then only briefly.

    This surprised me as it developed, but I’ve come to accept it. It saddens me a little, but it’s their loss, not hers. I think they consider “stupid, selfish and crass,” as Neo puts it. Hopefully not “dangerous”, though.

30. @ Neo > “I asked her what is one of the things she dislikes most about Trump. She cited his white supremacism.”

    In general, if people have a particular character trait, good or bad, it shows in numerous actions: they help people on many occasions; they lie about lots of things; they are always polite; they kick everybody’s cat.

    As best I can tell, being a White Supremacist is a full-time 24/7 position.

    Most of the discussions I’ve seen about this alleged character trait of Trump’s cite the “Good people” canard. But I don’t remember anyone being asked if they can give another example, and have never heard of anyone coming up with one.

    Have I missed something in the 8 years this has been a major topic of political discussions?

    I also haven’t heard of anyone rethinking their position just because President Trump has appointed black people to his cabinet (Ben Carson, most notably) — although I suppose true believers have now adjusted to him appointing White Indians who used to be POC; and praised prominent Blacks during February — they were mostly conservatives, so (like Larry Elder) they no longer count as Black.

31. @ Miguel > “Propaganda by omission”

    A standard feature of the Regime Media (and other media on all sides* is no stranger to the ploy).

    It’s why I sometimes say of a post that every word IN it is true, and the whole thing is a lie.

    *I like the term alt-right-media because it can be contrasted with ctrl-left-media.

32. Having been involved in various discussion groups over the last few years, and some much earlier, I find our hostess’ view of such issues to illuminate what I saw.
    That is, a liberal/left person’s lib/left beliefs are props to his self-image as a Very Good Person. Thus, attacks, logical or factual, on one or another belief or argument is an attack on his self-image, on him. It hurts. It must be rejected because he cannot afford to believe it or even hear it.

    For conservatives, such beliefs or arguments are…”out there”…not part of the person. Thus, they can be discussed with a certain degree of detachment not possible for a lib/left person.

    If a lib/left position causes harm, it cannot be the fault of the position/argument, since that would attack the lib/left person’s self-image. It must always be somebody else’s fault.
    A friend, who I may have mentioned earlier, is several time zones away from California’s fast food workers supported increasing their minimum wage despite the obviously obvious result that huge numbers would lose their jobs. When that happened, all logic and history of such things was invalid. It was the “greedy businessmen”.
    This had the effect of a second hit of righteous dopamine to the brain’s self-image center.
    That a whole bunch of people were screwed was of no importance. The two righteous and just beliefs were what mattered. Results can be blown off.

    So why do lib/lefts take in or need to have their beliefs as part of their self-image instead of the arguments being “out there” as with conservatives?

33. @ Richard Aubrey > “So why do lib/lefts take in or need to have their beliefs as part of their self-image instead of the arguments being “out there” as with conservatives?”

    Because their ideology is their religion.

    If you raise questions about a conservative’s religious dogmas, I anticipate that you would get similar results, because THOSE beliefs are not “out there” but are part of their self-image. I would hope that the respondent, if Christian, would react in keeping with Christ’s tenets, but that’s not always the case.

    IMO there is some truth in the studies that claim that the psychological profile of the hard-left and the hard-right is the same, they just have different substantive instantiations.

    I try hard to keep true to my Christian faith, which is integral to my self, without treating serious, honest questions as attacks.
    We LDS get plenty of genuine, sometimes vicious, attacks, and I try to react to those without animus. So far they have been “long distance” rather than personal, which makes it easier.

    FWIW, I’ve seen people in person and on various blogs treat negative criticism of their favorite (art, book, movie, song, musicians, theater production, circus act, pet animal, pizza topping, chili recipe … ) as personal attacks, whereas others examine any questions fairly whether the discussion changes their own opinions or not.

    Maybe the world really is divided into two kinds of people.

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