The Role of Brainwashing in the Conservatives’ Defense of Trump’s Espionage

With a federal indicament of one Ol’ Pussy Grabber, the right-wing propaganda machine has come very close to overheating as the excuse making, normalizing, minimizing, double-talking, and spewing outright lies from every orifice of every conservative that can blather into a camera or tap out pitiful messages on social media. Now is a good time to revisit the propaganda tools that Fox News and others use to bag, tag, and frag its viewers, as well as what can be done to help those held in the cynical sarcastic vice of these faithless purveyors of mis- and disinformation.

The Brainwashing of Our Dads

We’ve looked at many of these tools in the past. Today, with the help and inspiration of The Propaganda Professor and their review of the 2015 documentary, The Brainwashing of My Dad. The film explores the propaganda techniques that the vast right wing conspiracy uses to create mass psychosis in the white rural racist-adjacent Christian right by finding white grievance in every news story and event and the effect it had on the film maker’s father.

We’ll take a special look at brainwashing and the controversies that surround the concept.

Unfortunately, I can’t watch the documentary because YouTube blocks its streaming in Cambodia for some odd reason. Or maybe it is Cambodia that is doing it. Either way, I can’t watch it, but you can and you can comment on it in the comments! And, you can read the Propaganda Professor’s review and comment on that, too. How about that? So much commenting. So much fun! Really, it is. You should try it some time.

According to the Professor, the documentary focuses on personalizing the story by exploring one individual’s journey through the toxic and polarizing right-wing media. By doing so, it connects some of the dots in way the right-wing’s baseless claims of liberal media bias have led to the dangerous normalization of their extreme and unyielding views. The documentary also wades into the debate about brainwashing, providing insight on how propaganda operates in our society. And lastly, it offers hope for a path forward.

As we review brainwashing, we’ll mix in what we know about mass psychosis, persuasive design, and partisan coverage filtering because the right wing media uses them all to keep their viewers stewing in a toxic broth of white grievance, disinformation, and hate. For more information on each, follow the links throughout the post.

Brainwashing

Brainwashing is usually defined as the systematic forcible change of a person’s beliefs and behaviors. Let’s take a look at how right wing media meets the requirements of the definition as well as some of the controversy surrounding brainwashing.

Real or Not? The Controversy of Brainwashing

The popular media presents brainwashing as some all powerful tool that will turn us all into some kind of common Manchurian Candidate or Jason Bourne — yeah, you wish. Okay, so brainwashing might not occur in quite the same way as portrayed in the movies, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a thing. The situationists suggest that most of our behavior is driven by the environment, which suggests that if we control the environment, we can control behavior.

How well does what Fox News and right wing media meet the requirements of the definition of brainwashing?

Systematic Change: Inducing Mass Psychosis

Kahneman’s associative network model explains how we come to understand the world we live in. Essentially, we look to others to inform our beliefs. If everyone believes that the moon landing was staged, then you’re more likely to believe it too. If everyone is saying that the 2020 election was stolen, then you’re more likely to believe it too.

By presenting a variety of shows with different hosts that all support the same lies, Fox News creates the illusion that many people believe these lies to be true, which keeps the audience in a constant state of outrage producing stress hormones. Constant exposure to stress, literally, reduces your brain’s ability to think and reason. It makes you much more susceptible to believing lies and much more likely. to search for simple solutions to problems, which is known as mass psychosis.

Right wing media purposefully selects the what they show their audience so that their lies. and disinformation are supported and any contrary facts or interpretations are omitted. This is known as partisan coverage filtering. For example, they only covered people claiming that the 2020 election was stolen citing vague and alarming sounding “evidence,” which was never produced. Consequently, many Fox News viewers are certain that the election was stolen and Biden and the Democrats are getting away with it. Similarly, they are flogging the Trump is being unfairly indicted and the DoJ has been weaponized against him narrative. They will not make a fair presentation of the evidence against Trump, for example, leaving their viewers to conclude that it is all true when it is painfully obvious that it is not.

Force: The Impact of Partisan Coverage Filtering

The professor seems to think that because no one forces the viewers of Fox News to continue watching, that it can’t be brainwashing. The force that they use isn’t physical, it is psychological. It comes from the fear of ostracization if you do not comply with community expectations.

Fear of being shunned is seated very deeply in our unconscious. Without the protections and help of the group, frail human beings would not have survived long on the savannas as hunter gatherers. Just because you can’t be ostracized from a group that doesn’t actually communicate as Fox News viewers don’t actually meet, is immaterial. Your primitive unconscious fears tell you that it will happen. It makes it much harder to resist and much easier to go along the outrage inducing disinformation that Fox traffics in.

Not only is it the fear, it is addiction. Listening to the rants of their prime time hosts helps to activate the dopamine-driven wanting and opioid-based liking systems. Those systems respond to emotional appeals and leave us feeling powerful. They create the illusion of group agreement. They clearly demarcate an in-group and out-group, helping viewers fear ostracization all the more.

Dopamine is a hungry beast. It only wants more more more. It is never sated.The only thing that will satisfy it in this situation is more conservative red meat. Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up! So, that is what Fox News gives them even though it cost them $787 million to settle the Dominion Voting System’s law suit.

It is also the result of persuasive design: deliberately activating the liking and wanting systems so as to affect change in behavior. You need that obsessive binge-watching to keep them immersed in stress of white grievance so they’ll believe your obvious lies.

Change: The Results of the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine

Anyone who’s lost a loved one to Fox News, QAnon, and conservative media, knows that their beliefs and behavior have changed. They have become an angry seething cauldrons of xenophobic semi-fascist Second Amendment fanatics. They’ve changed.

As I’ve written in posts past, my mother went from a racially tolerant glass-ceiling breaking professional woman in the 70’s and 80’s to race fearing member of upper management in the aughts and tens. To be honest the process started with Reagan in the 80’s, but it didn’t get really deeply engrained and reified until the aughts.

She changed from the woman who taught me to think for myself and that people were people first to someone who believed the worst stereotypes about people and hated Democrats and liberals.

She changed. What more do you need to satisfy the requirement of change?

The problem some people have with the change aspect of the definition is that it isn’t permanent, even though the definition doesn’t say anything about being a permanent change. Once people are removed from the social milieux that supports these irrational beliefs, they revert back to something resembling their old selves.

Hope: Breaking Free from Propaganda

There is reason for hope in the documentary. The family of the father featured in the film were able to bust him out of the concrete bubble of Fox News and conservative talk radio. Once he was removed from the pernicious influence of mis- and disinformation, he was able to revert back to his old self.

No doubt, had I been able to effect a similar change in my mother’s environment, she would’ve, too.

The problem is how do we deal with the deliberate propagation of disinformation and outright lies? If we could limit these outlets, regulate their content, require them to be truthful and present both sides of a story like we did once upon a time, then we might could bring this reign of mass psychosis to an end.

Instead, we can take our inspiration and instruction from the family in the documentary. We can try to wean our parents and other loved ones off of the Fox News teat, sour the milk so to speak. Until, then, we can only rededicate ourselves to the truth and supporting our democratic institutions, most importantly getting out the vote.

Image Attribution

“google brainwashing” by sensesmaybenumbed is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.