The problem now is how to successfully, albeit perhaps slowly, de-program those afflicted by the Big Lie are filtering down to local officials and races.
Dubious of large percentage of converts from this cult, the miasma of MAGA morons is nearly as strong as Trumps filthy diaper! Excellent piece, thanks Ruth!!
The solution probably is a devastating, humiliating loss by the Republican Party. Following such a loss, the Party may be able to reconstitute itself and become a Party of integrity, and honor, soundly based in a level-headed ideology. If the Republicans are unable to reconstitute themselves as a "loyal opposition" Party, I see no meaningful future for them.
My real disgust is for the 45% of my fellow Americans who eagerly swallow the lies not because they really believe them, but because deep down in their bigoted and misogynistic hearts they desperately want the lies to be true.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Your writing is at the very top of my daily reading, especially your beautiful writing about the times of il Duce, where the deep-rooted beauty that is Italian culture showed through even in the worst of times, of oppression.
I can think of no worse propaganda job, that condemns Fox News, than the exposé of truth you set out here:
"A memo that formed part of the lawsuit's documentation showed that Rupert Murdoch floated the idea that Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other top hosts trusted by the Fox audience should appear together on television in Nov. 2020 and state clearly that Biden had won the election. Murdoch wrote that presenting a united front "would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen."
"Instead, Murdoch & Company went in the opposite direction to preserve audience size and profit margins."
That exposé shows a stark contrast between a responsible, promising draft-plan, and a cynical, jaded, naye, naked greed for money, money, money.
A form of political, obscene prostitution.
Deliberate manipulation of good-faith viewers.
The irony is: The Murdochs hurt their own followers.
Most of us are NOT followers of Murdoch, and are unaffected by his disinformation.
It is totally wacky for a "news" agency to formulate a broadcast strategy that intentionally hurts its own paying audience and nobody else.
Strange, strange!
Obscene and greedy.
This obscene and intentional STRATEGY of disinformation constitutes at least two, maybe three of the seven deadly sins: Pride (Hybris), Greed, and maybe Lust (for Power?!).
In a real sense, fascist, authoritarian movements go beyond lies and laws. For them there simply is no such thing as truth, laws, or values - only power and its applications. This is an old pattern outlined many centuries ago in the Melian Dialogues of Thucydides in the late 5th century B.C.E: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must..." Might makes "right..."
Thank you for another insightful article .. it is not only about the orange man and his cronies .. your insights can also help the rest of us understand when we are faced with an individual in our lives that exhibits similar traits. All based on insecurities ..
Ruth, I think you've accomplished a miracle: you've made trump make sense to me. Thank you for that. I think in a way what you've said are things I've known, but never have been really able to put together. It still floors me, though, that so many people believe him. I'm guessing they must also be very weak people.
Psycholo-social propaganda by those in power has been at work on this country’s population most overtly since the Reagan era. What you sow you reap and we are now bringing in the chaff of that disinformation and distortions of truth.that has been fed to us. The wheat of this propaganda is what has been stolen from us and now what do we have?
Really looking into the core of our being we are no better off than the Medieval serfs of ages past. The slave knows everything about the master and the master knows nothing of the slave. Why? Because we ( the people) have been filled with repetitive lies broken promises and dis or misinformation for years. A great example of what I’m saying is Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane stricken hungry people of Porto Rico. Clueless master ( except for his lust for power)leaving us with the dredges of the harvest for this great country.
I'm certain that not all of us have allowed ourselves to be filled with those lies. Some of us can see through the "masters". What's sad is the number of people who can't or won't. They are what keep us at the level of serfs.
Susan…. So very true! Here’s an example: My niece( sane Republican ) just had an encounter with her hairdresser of 30 years and was shocked at how she- the hairdresser was spewing the Trumpian rhetoric at her! Quote by hairdresser: “I’ve researched everything he says and I know it’s the truth!
Chris ( my niece) asked her where she got all her “Research” info and she replied Twitter(X). My niece is an advid Republican for Harris person - but that’s how Trumpian rhetoric has eaten into good people’s souls and distorted their thinking. So glad for Ruth and my fellow Lucid followers of the truth!
You know, Liz, I've never been near X (Twitter), and as a matter of fact I quit all social media several years ago. I never got any of the stuff that people seem to get now, but I'm appalled at how little people understand about doing research, or their unwillingness to look beyond their usual sources. When I do research (it's usually on medical subjects), I start immediately to evaluate what I'm reading, and move on if it sounds at all strange. I don't accept information as truth unless there is proof, either from what someone is saying, for from my prior education (I mean formal, university or work education). For political stuff, how hard is it to look for other points of view?
It is quite an amazing thing - and one I’m a tad jealous of - that Trump lies incessantly … BUT the lies are so plentiful (and his character so predictable) that he doesn’t even bother to remember his latest lies! Astounding.
Thanks Ruth! We need to know how authoritarians shred truth in their quest for power. But also we must pay attention to the cardinal lie of America - White Supremacy. Read more about that lie here - and please consider following me on Substack. I’ve got more coming soon. Thanks all. This is a great community.
To paraphrase Walt Whitman, “If you stop this day and night with me, shall we possess the origin of all lies?” The foundational lie of America is White Supremacy. It is asserting itself with violent psychological force now. A thoughtful meander, ending with a new creation myth, the origin of stories themselves, and an urgent call for us to forge a new, inclusive story for a better future for all.
I appreciate such granular explanations of what we are living through. It is vital that we who are not within the movement, remain firmly grounded in truth. So far this election season, I’ve been encouraged by the lack of yard signs for DT in my area, compared to 2020. But yesterday on the street behind my house I was bombasted by a massive banner strewn across the balcony of a very upscale and huge new home. The mere size difference between that banner and my typical Harris yard sign, hit me hard. I know we have the strength to get through this, but I’m more uneasy than ever before. As to how so many landed in this cult, also the big frustration for me, we must be more circumspect in making policies. Unions were not protected well enough, our public schools were not protected well enough, and electeds who had power, failed us mightily by not stopping the momentum of Limbaugh, Gingrich, McConnell, and Norquist. But right now, WE GET TO VOTE!!! “The most powerful person in the world is an American with a ballot.”- Anon.
"This situation has transformed the GOP into an autocratic entity dependent on institutionalized lying, so that maintaining party falsehoods about elections, immigration, crime, and other topics becomes a political duty and a test of loyalty for political elites and their media allies."
"[M]aintaining party falsehoods about elections, immigration, crime, and other topics" including the federal government is practically frictionless because the institutions and officeholders who have the power of the law at their disposal and are supposed to protect us view those falsehoods as constitutionally protected speech. Presumably that approach advances a social good that has greater value than preventing authoritarians from erecting their fortresses of lies. That philosophical calculus is going to seem naive if Trump recaptures the presidency. Should Trump's loss win us a reprieve, however, it's unlikely we'll take advantage of the opportunity to reassess our apparently limitless permissiveness toward politically motivated lies. We're free speech masochists.
Perhaps if social media was regulated as news is, truth, honesty, that could take some heat off of Fox as a "news entertainment". I don't see how cable "news" survives if people get majority of their news from social media nowadays. That Rupert Murdoch made a business decison based on losing his audience or telling the real truth, wont he chose his business everytime? Yes, I think its reasonalbe that he will continue that path. Its really a lot like the history of yellow journalism. As the telegram beat out the print news to the punch with lies and outrageousness, and then radio, then tv, now the social media. If the zone is filled with yellow journalism and lies...how can something like Fox compete with lies, outragious click bate prostituted as real news? New regulation and laws are necessary and vital to Democracy, when $1 billion defamation lawsuits don't really work anymore. The nonsesical goes on and on and on. Trump and down ballot R's are going to lose huge. But a new BIG LIE will be regurgatated after the election. Lawsuits will fly again. Red states will refuse to send their results in on time. Delay. Delay. Delay. All their fruad claims will be shot down, but that wont change the minds of the red state elction officals in time. We can not let this election get to the House of Representatives, full of extremeist zealots. I am not anxious anymore about Harris Walz winning, I am anxious about the chasos DT, the red state Republican election workers, supported by the House of Representatives and corrupt Scotus will unleash after the votes are counted. I think we need a concerted effort of protest to support democracy at every level, everywhere, should the unthinkable happen. We need to out organize protest now.
The problem now is how to successfully, albeit perhaps slowly, de-program those afflicted by the Big Lie are filtering down to local officials and races.
Dubious of large percentage of converts from this cult, the miasma of MAGA morons is nearly as strong as Trumps filthy diaper! Excellent piece, thanks Ruth!!
The solution probably is a devastating, humiliating loss by the Republican Party. Following such a loss, the Party may be able to reconstitute itself and become a Party of integrity, and honor, soundly based in a level-headed ideology. If the Republicans are unable to reconstitute themselves as a "loyal opposition" Party, I see no meaningful future for them.
I think they are doomed for life to live out their delusions. Without professional help, how does one get out of a cult?
Radicalized.
True Believers.
My real disgust is for the 45% of my fellow Americans who eagerly swallow the lies not because they really believe them, but because deep down in their bigoted and misogynistic hearts they desperately want the lies to be true.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Your writing is at the very top of my daily reading, especially your beautiful writing about the times of il Duce, where the deep-rooted beauty that is Italian culture showed through even in the worst of times, of oppression.
I can think of no worse propaganda job, that condemns Fox News, than the exposé of truth you set out here:
"A memo that formed part of the lawsuit's documentation showed that Rupert Murdoch floated the idea that Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and other top hosts trusted by the Fox audience should appear together on television in Nov. 2020 and state clearly that Biden had won the election. Murdoch wrote that presenting a united front "would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen."
"Instead, Murdoch & Company went in the opposite direction to preserve audience size and profit margins."
That exposé shows a stark contrast between a responsible, promising draft-plan, and a cynical, jaded, naye, naked greed for money, money, money.
A form of political, obscene prostitution.
Deliberate manipulation of good-faith viewers.
The irony is: The Murdochs hurt their own followers.
Most of us are NOT followers of Murdoch, and are unaffected by his disinformation.
It is totally wacky for a "news" agency to formulate a broadcast strategy that intentionally hurts its own paying audience and nobody else.
Strange, strange!
Obscene and greedy.
This obscene and intentional STRATEGY of disinformation constitutes at least two, maybe three of the seven deadly sins: Pride (Hybris), Greed, and maybe Lust (for Power?!).
In a real sense, fascist, authoritarian movements go beyond lies and laws. For them there simply is no such thing as truth, laws, or values - only power and its applications. This is an old pattern outlined many centuries ago in the Melian Dialogues of Thucydides in the late 5th century B.C.E: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must..." Might makes "right..."
“We do not see things as they are ; we see them as we are.”
As the old saying goes,”The truth ain’t in them!” Never has, never will!
Thank you for another insightful article .. it is not only about the orange man and his cronies .. your insights can also help the rest of us understand when we are faced with an individual in our lives that exhibits similar traits. All based on insecurities ..
It is mind-boggling to think what a huge percentage of our population is insecure…
Ruth, I think you've accomplished a miracle: you've made trump make sense to me. Thank you for that. I think in a way what you've said are things I've known, but never have been really able to put together. It still floors me, though, that so many people believe him. I'm guessing they must also be very weak people.
Psycholo-social propaganda by those in power has been at work on this country’s population most overtly since the Reagan era. What you sow you reap and we are now bringing in the chaff of that disinformation and distortions of truth.that has been fed to us. The wheat of this propaganda is what has been stolen from us and now what do we have?
Really looking into the core of our being we are no better off than the Medieval serfs of ages past. The slave knows everything about the master and the master knows nothing of the slave. Why? Because we ( the people) have been filled with repetitive lies broken promises and dis or misinformation for years. A great example of what I’m saying is Trump throwing paper towels to the hurricane stricken hungry people of Porto Rico. Clueless master ( except for his lust for power)leaving us with the dredges of the harvest for this great country.
I'm certain that not all of us have allowed ourselves to be filled with those lies. Some of us can see through the "masters". What's sad is the number of people who can't or won't. They are what keep us at the level of serfs.
Susan…. So very true! Here’s an example: My niece( sane Republican ) just had an encounter with her hairdresser of 30 years and was shocked at how she- the hairdresser was spewing the Trumpian rhetoric at her! Quote by hairdresser: “I’ve researched everything he says and I know it’s the truth!
Chris ( my niece) asked her where she got all her “Research” info and she replied Twitter(X). My niece is an advid Republican for Harris person - but that’s how Trumpian rhetoric has eaten into good people’s souls and distorted their thinking. So glad for Ruth and my fellow Lucid followers of the truth!
You know, Liz, I've never been near X (Twitter), and as a matter of fact I quit all social media several years ago. I never got any of the stuff that people seem to get now, but I'm appalled at how little people understand about doing research, or their unwillingness to look beyond their usual sources. When I do research (it's usually on medical subjects), I start immediately to evaluate what I'm reading, and move on if it sounds at all strange. I don't accept information as truth unless there is proof, either from what someone is saying, for from my prior education (I mean formal, university or work education). For political stuff, how hard is it to look for other points of view?
It is quite an amazing thing - and one I’m a tad jealous of - that Trump lies incessantly … BUT the lies are so plentiful (and his character so predictable) that he doesn’t even bother to remember his latest lies! Astounding.
Thanks Ruth! We need to know how authoritarians shred truth in their quest for power. But also we must pay attention to the cardinal lie of America - White Supremacy. Read more about that lie here - and please consider following me on Substack. I’ve got more coming soon. Thanks all. This is a great community.
MOSF 19.15: TrumpVance and their Proposed Advance of the Plantation of Lies and Weirdness https://eastwindezine.com/mosf-19-15-trumpvance-and-their-proposed-advance-of-the-plantation-of-lies-and-weirdness/
To paraphrase Walt Whitman, “If you stop this day and night with me, shall we possess the origin of all lies?” The foundational lie of America is White Supremacy. It is asserting itself with violent psychological force now. A thoughtful meander, ending with a new creation myth, the origin of stories themselves, and an urgent call for us to forge a new, inclusive story for a better future for all.
Also this one about his force on our minds -
MOSF 19.11: The People and Harris v. An Increasingly Unhinged Trump (the Rising Culture of Democracy and the Beloved Community v. the Culture of King and Cult) https://eastwindezine.com/mosf-19-11-the-people-and-harris-v-an-increasingly-unhinged-trump/
Democracy , the Enlightenment, emerged from
the struggle between science and dogma.
The revolution in 1776 challenged the Devine
Right of Kings.
Trump is essentially declaring himself a King.
Facts and science no longer prevail.
Trump is telling us if you oppose him you will
be crushed.
I appreciate such granular explanations of what we are living through. It is vital that we who are not within the movement, remain firmly grounded in truth. So far this election season, I’ve been encouraged by the lack of yard signs for DT in my area, compared to 2020. But yesterday on the street behind my house I was bombasted by a massive banner strewn across the balcony of a very upscale and huge new home. The mere size difference between that banner and my typical Harris yard sign, hit me hard. I know we have the strength to get through this, but I’m more uneasy than ever before. As to how so many landed in this cult, also the big frustration for me, we must be more circumspect in making policies. Unions were not protected well enough, our public schools were not protected well enough, and electeds who had power, failed us mightily by not stopping the momentum of Limbaugh, Gingrich, McConnell, and Norquist. But right now, WE GET TO VOTE!!! “The most powerful person in the world is an American with a ballot.”- Anon.
"This situation has transformed the GOP into an autocratic entity dependent on institutionalized lying, so that maintaining party falsehoods about elections, immigration, crime, and other topics becomes a political duty and a test of loyalty for political elites and their media allies."
"[M]aintaining party falsehoods about elections, immigration, crime, and other topics" including the federal government is practically frictionless because the institutions and officeholders who have the power of the law at their disposal and are supposed to protect us view those falsehoods as constitutionally protected speech. Presumably that approach advances a social good that has greater value than preventing authoritarians from erecting their fortresses of lies. That philosophical calculus is going to seem naive if Trump recaptures the presidency. Should Trump's loss win us a reprieve, however, it's unlikely we'll take advantage of the opportunity to reassess our apparently limitless permissiveness toward politically motivated lies. We're free speech masochists.
Perhaps if social media was regulated as news is, truth, honesty, that could take some heat off of Fox as a "news entertainment". I don't see how cable "news" survives if people get majority of their news from social media nowadays. That Rupert Murdoch made a business decison based on losing his audience or telling the real truth, wont he chose his business everytime? Yes, I think its reasonalbe that he will continue that path. Its really a lot like the history of yellow journalism. As the telegram beat out the print news to the punch with lies and outrageousness, and then radio, then tv, now the social media. If the zone is filled with yellow journalism and lies...how can something like Fox compete with lies, outragious click bate prostituted as real news? New regulation and laws are necessary and vital to Democracy, when $1 billion defamation lawsuits don't really work anymore. The nonsesical goes on and on and on. Trump and down ballot R's are going to lose huge. But a new BIG LIE will be regurgatated after the election. Lawsuits will fly again. Red states will refuse to send their results in on time. Delay. Delay. Delay. All their fruad claims will be shot down, but that wont change the minds of the red state elction officals in time. We can not let this election get to the House of Representatives, full of extremeist zealots. I am not anxious anymore about Harris Walz winning, I am anxious about the chasos DT, the red state Republican election workers, supported by the House of Representatives and corrupt Scotus will unleash after the votes are counted. I think we need a concerted effort of protest to support democracy at every level, everywhere, should the unthinkable happen. We need to out organize protest now.