One of the things I do as a psychologist who studies disinformation is to try to understand how people get hooked on disinformation. The subject of today’s column is how people — people who distrust government, media, universities and other institutions — get hooked on trusting the most untrustworthy people.
In some ways political Distrusters are similar to personal relationship Distrusters, who distrust most people, but may run headlong into relationships with other people — those who go to a lot of trouble to manipulate and fool others.
Let’s venture on into the minds of the political Distrusters and see what’s there.
There has been massive “Distrust the government and societal institutions” propaganda for many decades now in the U.S. As early as the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan kept saying “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
It was all downhill from there. Even mainstream media hire a large number of Right Wingers who repeat Right Wing talking points about government inefficiency, corruption or evil — even when there’s no evidence that it is currently happening in the situation referenced.
Right Wingers also keep putting 100% of the blame for distrust in institutions on the institutions themselves —ignoring the impact of their own repeated Right Wing disinformation, that constantly lies about institutions and bashes them — even when they are doing a good job.
After 40 years of Reagan’s sentiments and numerous related ones, there are millions of people in the U.S. who distrust government or other institutions — not just when there’s evidence of wrongdoing, as there sometimes is, but almost all the time.
Humans are built to trust each other a lot of the time. Most of us can’t resist trusting some people, at least some of the time. So what do you about that do if you are a Distruster?
It’s scary to almost never trust anyone. You want to feel stable and steady though. So you want to have confidence in yourself — to at least trust yourself. You want that so much, you convince yourself you can tell which people to trust just by looking at them or listening to them.
There are volumes of evidence that most people just can’t do that — including Maria Konnikova’s excellent book, The Confidence Game, a history of con artists. In spite of that, you convince yourself that it’s easy to tell who’s lying or who’s corrupt — without even needing to do any fact checking.
Humans often like and trust people who appear to be just like them. So who do you like if you’re a Distruster? Why, other Distrusters of course, and the Distruster Party — the party that says they are anti-government or anti-establishment or in favor of small government. If something is really as bad as the propaganda claims government is, then at least if it’s a really small bad thing, it will be easier to manage.
That’s why, as a Distrustor, when you see a politician who bashes the very government his or her party is often in control of — you don’t think they’re being illogical or contradictory. You see that person as a trustworthy because they seem to be a like-minded individual who hates government just like you do.
Since the person seems so trustworthy by virtue of being a fellow Distruster, you believe them when they say institutions are untrustworthy only when the opponent party — the Distrusted Party — has influence or control over them. When the Distruster Party controls institutions, everything seems fine and on the level to you.
You trust the Distruster Party to be in favor of small government. Even if multiple big news sources say the Distruster Party is ballooning the deficits, stealing from the pubic and acting other corrupt ways, you don’t believe it, You just say ‘Well, those news sources disagree with my Distruster news sources. So they must be fake news controlled by the Deep State.”
Those news sources seem to you to be tools of the Distrusted party, who are persecuting your beloved Distruster leaders.”
Who are Distruster leaders? Some are politicians. Crazy ones have an advantage, because the best salesperson is one who believes in their product. Crazy people often believe the crazy lies they tell.
Even when crazy people don’t believe their own lies, their craziness is so entertaining or distracting that some listeners — even sane ones — often forget to question what the crazy person is saying.
Some other popular Distruster leaders are Right Wing reporters or pundits. Some are podcasters who interview people who are in a wide variety of fields.
Low information voters who consume little or no news are a significant part of the audience of these podcasters. Although many of the subjects covered are nonpolitical, when the political podcasts do get aired, the interviewer seldom or never questions outrageous lies told by some of the constant liars who are invited on the show.
If the interviewees are Distrusters, they will be believed by the large Distruster part of the audience. Distrusters feel that the interviewee is “just like me.”
What do the rest of us do about this problem of Distrusters believing con artists and manipulators and then voting on the basis of lies? It’s hard, if not impossible, to reach them one on one. The main solution I propose is for nonprofit organizations to buy and create new media, to spread truth further than the lies are spread.
We are developing some new media aimed at liberal audiences. We also need to target a wider audience — to spread truth to the same audiences to which the lies are spread. The main method for effectively spreading propaganda is repetition. The same method is needed for truth spreading.
The Right Wing has a 40 year head start, targeting wide audiences. Liberals need to catch up with them. The more we do here, and the sooner, the better things will be. Here is an article I wrote about this solution.
