Morning, everyone!
You might have gotten the beta version of this email yesterday afternoon, when I mistakenly sent it out instead of saving it as a draft.
Check back tomorrow to see if the United States is still a democracy. And if there are any casualties.
Jonathan Rauch, at Persuasion, explains how Trump and his cultists have spread conspiracy theories about the election:
Some congressional Republicans may actually believe that Biden somehow stole the election, with the help of a sprawling and secretive conspiracy involving many Republican and Democratic officials in multiple states, plus state courts and federal courts and the Supreme Court and voting machines and possibly a dead Venezuelan dictator. More likely, Republican politicians are pandering to pressure from their base and conservative media.
Above all, the Republicans’ challenge is part of an information-warfare campaign. They are using a classic propaganda tactic that might be called “conspiracy bootstrapping.” First, you introduce a false idea, spreading it by every available means. Then, once people are talking about it, and some believe it, you cite its prevalence as evidence that it might be true—an epistemic sleight-of-hand by which propaganda validates itself.
This tactic is evident in a statement that 11 Republican senators issued Saturday, explaining why they intended to reject the electoral college counts of several states that Biden won, and to demand an “Electoral Commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit.” The senators did not, and could not, point to any allegations of fraud that were credible, were large enough to affect the election outcome, and had not already been aired, examined and rejected by the proper authorities. In other words, the senators could not justify their actions by saying that the allegations were true. Instead they relied on the claim that the allegations were widespread.
Nicholas Grossman of ArcDigital, in the ambiguously titled piece “F**k You, Ted Cruz,” makes a similar point:
Cruz’s official statement, which 10 other GOP Senators signed on to, shows he’s aware that it’s bullshit.
The joint statement does not level accusations of voter fraud. It does not present a lick of evidence (because there isn’t any). It’s entire rationale is the existence of allegations. Seriously. Here’s the text (emphasis mine):
The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.
“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.
“And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’
It’s false, but some people believe it, and they’ve leveled allegations based on those falsehoods, so Congress needs to join Trump’s effort to steal the election because the allegations exist. It’s a weak, post-truth, belief-not-reality argument, one that reveals, yet again, that the operative word in popular right-wing slogans like “facts don’t care about your feelings” and “fuck your feelings” was always “your,” not “feelings.”
It’s not like those beliefs came out of nowhere. A bunch of Republican voters believe “the election was rigged” because political and media leaders told them so. Trumpist leaders lie about the election, Trump supporters believe those lies, and Trumpist politicians claim that voters believing their lies means those lies have to be treated as not-lies. This despite the fact that the allegations are such obvious lies that Trump’s lawyers aren’t even alleging them in court.
Meanwhile, Rauch links to a Rand Corporation article (speaking of conspiracy theories!) about the “firehose of falsehood” strategy, in which a certain government - for which Trump is absolutely not laundering money why are you suggesting such a thing heh heh heh - floods the zone with so much nonsense that people are left not knowing what to believe:
We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency.
Even I’ve had moments, since Election Day, where I’ve found myself thinking, “okay, maybe there was some weird stuff going on with the vote counting, but that’s not enough to overturn the election.” And I’m a firm, unwavering Never-Trumper. Imagine what the people who actually support him believe.
If you asked me to post one video that perfectly encapsulates America during the Trump era, this one - from an insane Twitter thread showing anti-mask lunatics storming a mall in Los Angeles - would be it:
The guy’s “All Lives Matter” mask is [chef’s kiss]. Why an anti-masker is wearing a mask (albeit around his neck) is unexplained. Maybe his “all lives matter” shirt was being washed, and he needed some way to let everyone know he’s a douchebag.
This one succinctly sums up the anti-mask (and sovereign citizen) worldview, too:
They have “rights.” But absolutely no obligations.
Lest you think I’m dumping on the United States (which I am required to do every now and then, to keep my Canadian citizenship in good standing) we have people like this up here, too. In fact, this charming citizen of Halifax, who believes doctors when they say he has a heart condition, but not when they say there’s a pandemic, made the front page of Reddit a few days ago.
The police officer in that video actually handles the case perfectly. He doesn’t get heated, but stands firm and calmly explains the facts and the law to a person who cannot be reasoned with. There’s been a lot of that going around, lately.
I’m not sure if people are storming shopping malls in France because wearing a piece of cloth over their mouths is an unconscionable infringement upon Liberté, but they are taking to the streets in protest. (Of course, you are required to protest in the streets every now and then, to keep your French citizenship in good standing.) Meanwhile, the French vaccination effort lags far behind that of other developed countries:
This may be the land of Louis Pasteur, the scientist renowned for discovering the principles of vaccination. But it is also one of the most reluctant nations in the world to get the COVID-19 shot, leading to the lowest uptake so far of any developed country to start inoculating its citizens.
In the first six days after the vaccine was rolled out Dec. 27 across Europe in a coordinated European Union effort, just 516 people received shots in France — such a low number out of a population of 67 million that it is statistically indistinguishable from zero. By contrast, Germany vaccinated more than 200,000 of its residents in the first week and Italy more than 100,000. [In the United States, 4.6 million people have received a vaccine dose so far. The U.S. vaccination effort, though plagued with problems, has been comparable with most other rich nations so far. - DJP]
[…]
…In a poll conducted last month by Ipsos Global Advisor, in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, only 40% of French residents said they intended to get vaccinated. That put France dead last out of the 15 nations surveyed, in stark contrast to countries such as Britain and the U.S., where 77% and 69% of respondents, respectively, are eager to be inoculated.
The Gallic hesitancy springs from various factors. Many here cite concern over potential side effects and the speed with which the vaccines were developed. Distrust of the government has risen following missteps in its handling of the pandemic and from memories of previous health and vaccine scandals in France.
A cumbersome consent process has bogged down the vaccination campaign in some instances. And prominent healthcare professionals have complained of the lack of a clear official strategy for rolling out the vaccines and for convincing people of their value and efficacy.
Flashback to 2002, when a 9/11 conspiracy book topped French best-seller lists. Fast-foward to 2020, when 9/11 conspiracy theories turn up in French textbooks. The Trump/QAnon cultists in America get all the attention, but conspiracy culture is very much a worldwide phenomenon.
That goes for Britain, too. And, when you strip almost every conspiracy theory down to its essentials, you know who’s really pulling the strings:
In February 2019, two Jewish students reported to CST what they considered to be anti-Semitic content taught in a lecture in the course “Harms of the Powerful” by David Miller, Professor of Political Sociology at the [University of Bristol]. Prof Miller was said to have shown a PowerPoint slide with a diagram featuring a web of Jewish organisations, placed under or subservient to the “Israeli government”.
The topic was ‘Islamophobia’, and the slide was part of Professor Miller’s explanation of his theory that the “Zionist movement (parts of)” is part of a global network that promotes and encourages hatred of Muslims and of Islam. The PowerPoint presentation used by Miller during the lecture included CST and other mainstream UK Jewish organisations and leaders in this diagram, implying that they are part of this alleged Islamophobic network.
[…]
In a Zoom meeting this August, Prof Miller described CST — a charity which exists solely to examine anti-Semitism and protect the Jewish community from it — as “people who must only be faced and defeated”. He elaborated in a newspaper interview, saying CST “is an organisation that exists to run point for a hostile foreign government in the UK…this is a straightforward story of influence-peddling by a foreign state”.
The University of Bristol authorities responded by seeming to closing ranks, describing CST as an “external third party”, saying that it would therefore not enter into a discussion with it over Miller.
It is quite rightly said that what happens on campus is a prelude to what happens in real life a generation later, as fashionable academic ideas seep out of the academy and as the students influenced by those ideas move into positions of influence in wider society. These are the academics who set the tone and agenda for much of campus life — and for those students who, over the next decades, will be setting the tone for national life.
The Jews are always the final target. Always.
The question I’d like to get to the bottom of is: why are conspiracy theories so effective? Simply repeating a lie often enough seems to make it credible, to the point where one finds oneself starting to question one’s fact-based beliefs. It’s exactly the same method employed by, say, a gaslighting former spouse or parent to maintain control over an ex or adult child. The only effective counter is to repeat the facts over and over again, too. That’s an exhausting process which consumes an incredible amount of energy that could be spent in better ways...so even if the truth prevails in the end, gaslighting (whether at an individual or national level) exacts a high price.
The gaslighter has the advantage here because this does not matter to them. They gain, even if it’s just by drawing their target’s attention away from other things they should be doing.