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I really think that many moderates and liberals simply don't understand the grasp that he has over some people. This is how post WW1 Germany became Nazi Germany right before WW2.
We can make fun of it. We can complain about it. But what I rarely see is people studying it and trying to understand both the draw and the origins of this deadly attraction.
As much as we want to simply call these people "stupid" or "clueless" (which many people in this thread have already one) but it is much deeper than that. In fact taking that simplistic approach only makes it that much easier for him to recruit more people. The Left is so quick to minimize the hardships that many Trump supporters have faced in the past which might have pushed then to join his cult. If you constantly push groups away and this cult is openly embracing them and saying they understand their pain, then you can't be surprised when you hear headlines like the one for this story.
Well, yeah people call them stupid because they have the most access to facts out of all humans throughout history and yet work hardest to reject ALL of them except those they want to believe.
And I don't think most people were all that quick to dismiss these people's pain at first, in fact a lot of us have felt it firsthand. It's just really hard to feel sorry for people who are proudly bigoted, hateful, and willfully ignorant.
You're right, it's not helpful to call them stupid and dismiss their views, but it's honestly like we have no choice. How do you help and have empathy for people who would make your friends' existence illegal? How can you take seriously someone who constantly screams about problems that don't really exist, and are solely based on fearing people who have no interest in bothering them?
Seriously? Real questions.
I miss who my uncle used to be. No idea how he can do a complete 180. His father, who was an illegal immigrant must be rolling in his grave.
How do you go from attending your friend's gay wedding to telling that same friend they should get divorced and seek help?
it makes me think that this constant recital of "people are waking up" is more like people have fallen for deceitful marketing. if he happily attended a gay wedding beforehand, then the only reason he speaks down upon it now is because he's been programmed... played like a kazoo, if you will
because playing a fiddle actually takes some semblance of knowledge, and god knows these guys don't have that lmao
Rather than trying to understand their pain, my opinion is that the US right wing voter is under the control of one of the largest propaganda networks in history. The evangelical church, the billionaires that own local TV stations (Sinclair), Fox News, AM radio, and now social media echo chambers have led to a complete epistemic closure of the American right. Facts cannot penetrate that wall. Science cannot penetrate that wall. No amount of Democrat messaging can penetrate that wall. Seeing something with their own eyes cannot penetrate that wall.
History teaches us that this kind of propaganda leads to a very bad ending. Civil war, genocide, authoritarian dictatorship... pick your poison. America needs to find a way to dismantle the right wing propaganda apparatus, without that I see no hope. (I know, doom and gloom.) I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
Completely on the dot! A couple of years ago during Covid I landed into the far right echo chamber. The way it happened: I was looking for answers to all the craziness that was unfolding, and found my source for answers. Apparently, it was all just a big conspiracy, and there was a group of satanist elites that were trying to take over the world. Terrifying stuff, and even more terrifying, apparently they had so much power that they managed to gain control of all big news channels! Don't look at the news anymore, and beware of contradicting news sources, they might be controlled opposition! I was in it for about two years and learned about all kinds of weird stuff, Freemasons, MK Ultra, Adrenochrome, Archons, Reptilians, you name it. Recently, through discovering contradictions, I've been re-assessing my beliefs and have come to the conclusion that most of it is nonsense.
The grip is very strong once it's got you. Its whole schtick is in systematically closing off all your access to contradictory information and getting you hooked on sources from the inside, based on fear of the "powerful elites". It's a self-controlling system of more of the same, leading to more and more rigidness and nonsense as you get sucked deeper into the belief. At the same time it is actively trying to gather new members. This is why it can live on so many separate channels, even outside of the internet. No moderators are even needed to control the information from its members, as members themselves already do the job on their own. It's the perfect epistemic loop, and the thought that you're in one won't even cross your mind.
I'm afraid that TV stations, Fox News and the church are not the primary spreaders of this belief. It might not necessarily be spread top-down. The echo chamber can be compared more to a living organism, which self-corrects and evolves based on its environment, to grow and gain members. Scary stuff, the way it traps people looking for answers.
For me the solution has been a new belief system: one where I am aware of the way echo chambers work, and am actively looking for them in my own life so I can escape them, with daily practices and all to assist me in this. A lot of our problems are built on echo chambers that we build ourselves. I've been experimenting with this for about half a year now, with some really great success. I'm making posts about this here on Lemmy if you're interested:
The principles of all echo chambers: https://unilem.org/post/120862
I've been fascinated with how the religious right has stood behind someone so obviously out of line with their 'principles'. There actually have been people doing interesting work on that front, if you know who/where to look. I'd definitely recommend the book "Jesus and John Wayne" by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which chronicles the growing power of conservative Christianity in government starting back in the 40s through the election of Trump, and how electing Trump really was an expression of their values, not a departure from it. Podcasts like "Conspirituality" and "Straight White American Jesus" also try to take an honest look at the cultishness and where it's coming from. What's hard is that deradicalization is hard and often has to be done one person at a time. When we have one percent of the country needing to be deradicalized, maybe we can find people to go talk and make connections with each person. When it's 30% of the country, that's a much different proposition. Maybe society can figure out how to do that better--Conspirituality sometimes talks about how cults differ as leaderless, online only groups. Maybe social media can also reach people... But it won't if kids can't find information online that challenges the worldviews their parents want to program into them.
And recently, that Amazon Duggar documentary "Shiny Happy People" came out, and it's not a bad entry point to understand the issues I'm talking about either. I think it does a good job to show how these 'throwback' values play on nostalgia too act as an on ramp for people to raise their children in--children who are then encouraged to be literal warriors for Christ--or their GOP allies.
Hey, I'm running a community here on Lemmy that is focused on the topic of echo chambers and the way they form, and I think you might like it:
[email protected]
Excuse my shameless plug, lol
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The part that is fascinating to this Canadian, is that a lot of his supporters' hardships are increased by the policies of the GOP. The demographic that is the largest recipient of federal social aid in the US is poor white people in the South and Midwest. Yet they continually vote for the party that has a clear policy of eliminating these programs.
Just before 2016, I saw this video that I wish I could find again. This journalist went somewhere in the Rust Belt to talk to these (overwhelmingly white) people. Of course, she got the usual "We believe in God, Guns and Country, and active trying to change that... Yada yada" stuff. But the interesting part was when she had an exchange with some fellow that went sort of like this (from memory):
"So, you've voted Republican all your life?" "Yep." "And in your lifetime, have things gotten better, of worse for you?" "Oh, way worse." "So... You keep voting for the same party, and your situation never get better?" "Yeah. But it could..." "Right, but it hasn't. So why not try voting for the other party and seeing?" "Yeah, but it could!"
I'm not sure how you fix this type of "logic".
I tried finding that video a few times the last few years, and couldn't. Maybe it's time to try again.
I think it's possible that a lot of people don't fundamentally understand what voting does. They see it as more of sports team color than the actual underlying policies being driven by political campaigns.
A decent number of young people around me think (or thought) that voting doesn't matter, that the only way to accomplish anything is through violent, disobedient protests.
But those don't fund infrastructure plans to rebuild schools and give schools bigger budgets. Those don't help people get the subsidized vaccines every child needs to be healthy. It doesn't help establish an impartial body for drawing voting maps. It doesn't help establish rights and minimums for the bottom 35% of families in the US. It doesn't decide public foreign policy or local bus and rail routes.
Voting does.
It's a message our young people need. Voting, and the due diligence and research you need to do to make an informed vote, usually takes less than one hour if you look at all their campaign issues, education, and political depth (did they work for a government before, what positions were they in, what were their accomplishments, etc.).
Further, doing so will galvanize their support for their guy.
People like to imagine that making it obviously shameful to follow a guy would discourage people, but if you are open to considering the guy, you just get pissed, dig in, and let your persecution complex run wild. Famously, Hilary Clinton did a misstep in calling Trump followers "deplorables". Which might have been an apt word to describe his die-hard adherents, but a much broader population took that as an insult, that the perception of "it's us or them" had been validated. Even if they didn't believe in Trump "per se", the culture is absolutely support your guy, no matter what, or else the bigger evil other guy will ruin your country.
No one wants to believe they are being conned, that they are being manipulated. That the person they believe in is so bad. In the rare case where someone admits they were for Trump, but now recognize that he is a bad person, they are still likely to face ridicule for having ever been in a situation to fall for Trump's shtick.
I don't want to "study" or empathize with magats.
I want to belittle and (electorally) destroy them into irrelevance.
I grew up in a magat household. They're magats because they're fucking morons. I solved the mystery for you - no additional study is required.
I got in a debate once with my mom about the age of the Earth (of course she's a young Earth creationist). I brought up the speed of light - we see things that are farther than 6000 light years, so the Earth has to be more than 6000 years old. Her rebuttal: "What if the sky is like an Etch-a-Sketch that God is holding up for us to see?" How do you reason with someone that believes something like that? Do you really think I if brought up stellar parallax or spectroscopy or stellar evolution that would change her mind?
My grandma, I bought her an iPad 10 years ago so she could get on Facebook and watch YouTube and stuff. Big mistake! Now I have to hear stuff about how Hillary Clinton has been arrested and convicted by a military tribunal and is wearing an ankle bracelet and will be put in prison after the 2018 election. Adrenochrome. Comet Ping Pong. Democrats want to chop off elementary school age boys penises. Bamboo ballets. Mike Lindell. Ballots dumps. Obama controls everything. Porn in schools. Democrats are trying to make us eat bugs.
Prior to the iPad I had probably heard her mention politics like less than a handful of times in my entire life.
She wouldn't get the COVID vaccine... Even though she's 83 obese, arthritic, congestive heart failure, diabetic, and has had two previous heart attacks. Then she got COVID and almost died, was in the hospital for more than month, now on oxygen at home... STILL WON'T GET VACCINATED.
These are not people that reason or think about anything. The only way to get them on our side would be a propaganda network to compete with Sinclair, Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Hannity, Neck, Levin, Shapiro, PragerU, Crowder, Savage, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Project Veritas, The Blaze, WND, Candace, Jordan Peterson, The Washington Times, etc... And then pump that down their YouTube and Facebook feeds. Unfortunately I don't know any left wing billionaires that want to create competing institutions to these things.
Not to mention the right wing message of simple solutions, zero thinking, and your prejudices are actually a good thing is hard to compete with.
Way to completely miss the point.
You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.
I think a lot of Democrats/liberals have West Wing Syndrome where they think if they make a convincing argument in a speech or debate that the other side will then come to the light... They won't. They're either evil or stupid or a combination of both.
Interestingly the magats don't have this problem. They don't give a shit about convincing you of anything, they just want their side to win and our side to lose.
Take a look at Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians", available for free at https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
He's a psychologist who has studied the right-wing authoritarian personality type. Here, 'right-wing" is a term in psychology, and doesn't mean "American political conservative in the 2020s", though there's a considerable amount of overlap.
There's a lot of grim reading in this book, and some of his attempts at comic relief are a bit dad-jokey, but on the whole, I heartily recommend this to anyone who's wondered what makes a fascist tick, and whether Trump supporters have anything in common with actual fascists (as opposed to just namecalling on the Internet).
You should post this as it's own thread or higher up so more people see it.
I agree. Fundamentally, these folks that support him now are not doing well. It's not the same for everyone. Some are feeling disenfranchised from parts of daily life, some are experiencing undesired change, some are terribly unhappy and don't know where to point their frustration, etc. Trump isn't a likely cult leader. He isn't very charismatic like we normally associate cult leaders. But he came with the right message at the right time and for a very large segment of our population, that message made sense to them. It gave them a REASON for how they were feeling, even if they didn't understand their own feelings in the first place.
When the day comes that the spell is broken, society must be ready to re-engage with these people in a meaningful way. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat it with the next person to show up and given them another reason.
Oh, we know that Trump and Fascism have a strong grasp on certain people; that is why we have been alerting everyone since 2015. We know the history and the extreme dangers to the planet that someone like Trump is. We won't rest until the threat is removed.
You can't remove the threat without understanding it. Simply calling his supporters "idiots" don't do it. And that has been done countless times in this thread already. Yeah it feels good to make fun of them and call them names, but without understanding their motives and their history and what led them to be MAGAts, someone new will simply come along and take his place when he finally keels over and drops dead. The WHY is the single most important thing in this situation and far too many of times when I bring up the fact that these folks feel marginalized, I get downvoted and simpletons just scream out "no, it's because they are RaCiSt".
We will take care of them once Trump is removed from the election. These types will expose themselves, and thousands will break the law to express their anger their fascist leader won't be President. The best way to eliminate the right is to put up barriers, and they will show themselves and destroy themselves simultaneously. The job of actual American citizens is to shame them and prevent them from being part of civilized society because of their actions. We MUST make examples out of them, or we will continue down this cycle repeatedly.
There appears to be a good example of Spain in the 30s before the civil war. Both sides saw each other as the devil incarnated. There was no talking with each other,no middle ground. Bloodshed was the only way they were going to sort it out in the end.
Except that the Left doesn't really see Trump and MAGAts as being "devil incarnate". They kind of do, but they spend more time writing funny memes or posting snarky comments on Twitter than anything else. They are simply not taking as seriously as they should.
The Right sees this as war. Not in political discord and verbal debate, but as an actual fight for survival.
One thing I'd like a better understanding of is the percentage of people that really are rabid Trump supporters vs the people who just voted for him because he was the Republican candidate. I feel like the polls at this point are worthless and we really won't know how many of them there really are until the primaries. Maybe we will get a better view after the debates.
Anyway, I'm curious if you or anyone else has stats as to how many cult members there really are?
I personally don't have a problem with Republicans. l think low taxes, small, government and even religion are a valid world views. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand why they do, I just wish they backed someone who respected our institutions.
They claim about 60% of GOP votes. That translates to about 20% of all voters are hardcore MAGAts. Even if that number is rounded up a little, I would say at least 15% are the rabid Trump supporters you are talking about. That's roughly 25M people. That is not an insignificant number of people. Then there will be a ton of other votes for Trump and the GOP simply because some people will vote for their party regardless.
Now in THEORY I could agree with you that having a party push for low taxes and small government isn't bad. But the GOP hasn't believed that in decades. They might still campaign on that message because who doesn't want their taxes lowered, but there is absolutely nothing "fiscally responsible" about that party and every time they gain power, they prove that.
And that is my personal biggest worry is that if Trump somehow doesn't win the GOP nomination, some other Republican could step up and start singing the same "lower taxes" bullshit that they've been trying for ages but ultimately when they get power they will try shoving religion down our throats, cut abortion rights even further, cut taxes - but only on the ultra wealthy, which will leave the rest of us with even more massive deficits - and increased spending on military programs we simply do not need.
Republicans have proven time and again that they do not deserve support.
You don't see earnest studying of it because both established parties enjoy the "Go Sports Team" dynamic it's part of.