The Firehose of Falsehood: Drowning Trust and Destroying the Foundation of Our Democracy, part 1

1. The Firehose of Falsehoods
   1. Flooding the Zone with Shit
   2. The Four Features of the Firehose of Falsehoods
2. High Volume and Multi-Channel Delivery
   1. The Overwhelming Information Landscape
   2. Creating an Illusion of Agreement
3. Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive Messaging
   1. The Anchoring Effect in Information Processing
   2. Repetition and the Illusion of Truthiness
4. Image Attribution

It is no secret that Trump has broken America. At the core of any functioning society lies a fundamental principle: trust. Trust serves as the social foundation built on a collective agreement regarding shared facts. This foundation is fragile and requires careful maintenance; once broken, restoring trust becomes a Himalayan task.

The Firehose of Falsehoods

Trump and the Republican Party have used the Putin-esque propaganda technique, the Firehose of Falsehoods, as a sledgehammer to destroy our foundation of trust. It is an extension of the old Soviet-era technique based on obfuscation and the creation of useful idiots who will continue spreading the message without realizing they are doing so. Putin adapted the technique to the chaotic modern media environment, exploiting social media platforms and the ever-fracturing media environment to his advantage.

The sheer volume of information bombarding us today is overwhelming. Gone are the days when we could rely on publishers to act as gatekeepers, ensuring accuracy and adherence to a shared reality. While that system left us vulnerable to manipulation, it also fostered a semblance of social cohesion.

Flooding the Zone with Shit

Nowadays, the gatekeepers have all been coopted, and Putin has taught the Republican Party to, as Steve Bannon so delicately put it, flood the zone with shit, so no one knows what is true, what is false, or what to believe. The Booberts, Mad Dog Greenes, Nancy Faces, Cancun Cruzes, Dumbervilles are happy little idiots who pop off with whatever floats to the top of the cesspool of their minds or whatever they read off of their Russian-supplied teleprompters. And just like the Soviets predicted, we are drowning in the effluent issuing forth from the various orifices of the Republican Party and their useful idiots.

Political scientist, Giorgio Bertolin, aptly described the Firehose of Falsehoods as entertaining, confusing, and overwhelming its audiences. We’ve all had these reactions as we’ve navigated the daily deluge of sewage spewing from MAGA propagandists as we spare with the trolls on our social media feeds, scratch our asses in collective confusion over whatever Trump is spouting today, and ultimately succumb to the mind-numbing volume of it all. But, whatever we do, trustworthy information drifts ever further from our grasps.

The Four Features of the Firehose of Falsehoods

In 2016, the Rand Corporation published an analysis of how Russia employs the Firehose of Falsehoods. It’s worth revisiting their findings, especially now that the Russians seem to have won yet another round by getting their boy back in office.

The report identifies four crucial features for the technique’s effectiveness: (1) high volume and multi-channel delivery, (2) rapid, continuous, and repetitive messaging, (3) a lack of commitment to objective reality, and (4) a lack of commitment to consistency. How accurately does that describe Trump? It’s as if, on the eighth day, god was bored and decided to create the perfect vehicle for the Firehose of Falsehoods.

Unfortunately, discussing all four features in the detail that they require makes the post TL;DR, so we’re doing the dreaded two parter. Look for part two, wherever you find quality snarky, sarcasticky, profaney political psychology blog posts.

High Volume and Multi-Channel Delivery

We all know that we rely on the beliefs and understandings of those around us to help us determine what is true. It’s part of our evolution. Our voluminous media environment has replaced what used to be the individuals around us—friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, along with the three major broadcast networks and local newspapers.

The Overwhelming Information Landscape

This is perhaps the most salient point. When it was just your favorite drunk uncle blathering on about how the moon landing was faked, it was easy to ignore and shake your head in disbelief at how anyone could be so foolish. Now, though, with algorithms on Facebook, Xitter, and YouTube pushing conservative conspiracy theories, it becomes significantly harder to dismiss. These ideas start to take on a thin veneer of truthiness and knowing who or what to believe is further lost in miasma of the 24-hour “news” cycle.

Consider the advice we’re often given to determine the trustworthiness of information. First, look for multiple sources. Are several sites reporting the same thing? If so, it just might be true. The Russian troll farms have that covered. They flood every forum and social media platform with their content, even running their own “news” sites. So sure, you can find multiple accounts and websites all publishing the same garbage.

This is especially true for disinterested, disengaged, disenchanted voters, for whom the sheer number of arguments is far more important than accuracy, relevance, or quality. Surprisingly, when the volume of information is low, people tend to trust experts more; however, when the volume is high, we often trust Josephine Schlomo sitting on her toilet doing her own research on her phone and posting her conclusions to Xitter more than the experts. It’s how we ended up with RFK, Jr and a mass of people not vaccinating their children against deadly childhood diseases.

Second, check the reliability of the source. Here, we face two problems. First, the Russians and their American useful idiots publish very convincing, news-like websites and produce videos that mimic legitimate media, complete with all the bells and whistles. The second issue is that most American for-profit media often publish the Russian propaganda that Republicans repeat daily as if it were true. When elected officials say it, it must be news, right? Fact-checking is for the readers to worry about, right? Our once trustworthy gatekeepers of truth and agreed upon facts have walked off and left us on our own.

Third, representation matters. By producing a vast number of sock puppet accounts with using a random combination of demographic variables, they’re bound to connect with some group or another. We are all much more likely to believe someone we perceive as being like ourselves. The social media algorithms and seemingly infinite number of Russian trolls and their American useful idiots guarantee that all our zones will be flooded by Steve Bannon’s proverbial shit and truth and trust flushed away with it.

Creating an Illusion of Agreement

This portion of the Firehose of Falsehood works because it creates the illusion that everybody is saying it and even people like me are believing it. Size, as it turns out, does matter. The volume of disinformation effectively dilutes all other messages in the information space. It turns out to be very convincing.

This aspect of the Firehose of Falsehood works because it creates the illusion that everyone is saying it and that people like me are believing it. Size, it turns out, does matter. The volume of disinformation effectively dilutes all other messages in the information space, making it all the more convincing, and swamping any delusion we might have had to having some set of agreed-upon facts.

Rapid, Continuous, and Repetitive Messaging

Remember when an army helicopter collided with a commercial airliner over Washington, D.C., and Trump immediately blamed the crash on DEI before the cause was even known? Many on social media scratched their asses and wondered not only why their fingers stank but why he would make such a ludicrous claim, especially since it was quickly challenged and debunked by reporters on the scene. The Firehose of Falsehood explains the reason Trump would make the claim.

The Anchoring Effect in Information Processing

There’s an anchoring effect in information processing: the first information you receive about a topic often shapes your subsequent thoughts on it. People tend to believe the initial information over later, contradictory facts. In this case, right-wing propaganda outlets reported Trump’s DEI comments as factual, anchoring the beliefs of many of his followers regarding the crash. Whatever else it did for Trump — like maybe insulating him from blame? — it definitely degraded our ability to trust any reporting.

This incident illustrates how Trump acts as a one-person walking Russian troll farm. Propaganda techniques are not constrained by truth or reality, allowing the propagandist to spin events in their favor. Trump’s DEI comments are a prime example; he scapegoated DEI to justify his attacks on the U.S. government, using the tragedy as an opportunity to anchor his narrative.

Repetition and the Illusion of Truthiness

Repetition creates an illusion of truthiness. The more you hear something—no matter how absurd—the more likely you are to believe it. This is how urban legends proliferate, especially among those less interested in the subject. If you’re disengaged, you’re likely to accept seemingly plausible explanations without much critical thinking.

Critical thinking requires effort, so we often avoid it. By shifting the responsibility of fact-checking onto the information consumer rather than the reporter, our capacity for critical thinking is overloaded, ensuring that much of what we hear is accepted without scrutiny and greatly diminishing trust and truthfulness in our society.

Both of features work because they create an illusion of truthiness. Whatever is being said or presented seems true, so we stop thinking about it. Our current federal government is what happens when a sizable portion of the electorate quits thinking and is satisfied with what they’re being told. As Ben Franklin famously said, “It’s a republic, if you can keep it.” And, it looks like we’re not going to be able to keep it for much longer.

Image Attribution

This image was found on Leading in Limbo using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons License search