What is it called when someone (or several someones) deliberately gets stuck on one topic for months, when they obsess publicly about that topic, and when that topic just happens to, in their mind, indict people they see as liberals? Is it delusion? Is it a type of fascist bullying? Is it propaganda? Is it something more sinister like mind control? Republicans must feel that this is a strategy that works because they consistently resort to it. Is it about the power of suggestion? Who is susceptible?
What Experts Say
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth
“Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not.
‘Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda, says psychologist Tom Stafford.’
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this is known as the "illusion of truth" effect. Here's how a typical experiment on the effect works: participants rate how true trivia items are, things like "A prune is a dried plum". Sometimes these items are true (like that one), but sometimes participants see a parallel version which isn't true (something like "A date is a dried plum").
After a break – of minutes or even weeks – the participants do the procedure again, but this time some of the items they rate are new, and some they saw before in the first phase. The key finding is that people tend to rate items they've seen before as more likely to be true, regardless of whether they are true or not, and seemingly for the sole reason that they are more familiar.”
https://www.restaurantnorman.com/what-is-an-example-of-repetition-propaganda/
Why is repetition so powerful?
More importantly, studies show that using repetition as a persuasive tactic is most powerful when the audience is not paying close attention. This means that attentive listeners are less likely to be swayed by weak arguments just because they are being repeated.
“How Hitler Conquered Germany
The Nazi propaganda machine exploited ordinary Germans by encouraging them to be co-producers of a false reality.
Hitler was different. Mein Kampf is an incontinent bulk crammed with reflections, ruminations, biographical extracts, and frenzied speculations. But, within its seething mass, there is a complete manual of propaganda, one which is focused, concise, harsh, and pragmatic. Hitler’s great insight, which makes him unique among historical actors, was the recognition that violence and propaganda could and should be an integrated phenomenon. War and its articulation should not be disentangled since they were interdependent. The Nazis claimed, “we did not lose the war because artillery gave out but because the weapons of our minds did not fire.””
How Republicans Use Threats of Violence and Repetition
Let’s not call Republicans Nazi’s, but instead call them fascists. Fascists are bullies who are not afraid to threaten violence to make their points and who often resort to propaganda to “mess with people’s understandings of what is true and what is false.” This is where Republicans toe the fascist line. They offer tacit support to domestic militia groups and insist on the proliferation of guns in America, most recently to allow open carry of weapons as a norm. But what they have really excelled at is trying to use the principle that is offered by the experts “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. This technique is used often when there is a looming election (which is almost always). It was used most recently in the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, candidate to sit on the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court was once considered to be politically neutral, although that was never actually true, but Congress was not as polarized as it is now. We only have two major parties, so is it not a surprise that a party will pick someone to sit on the court who will represent their ideology. However, our ideological camps have moved farther apart. Republicans claim that the left-wing has become extreme, but the left has been forced by the media to enact a moderate or even slightly conservative legislative slate as none of the progressive legislation can get through Congress. The Republicans are reported in the media as if it were still a party full of moderate conservatives with a few right-wing extremists in the mix, but if you have been paying attention even some of the most elderly statesmen (Senators and Representatives, even Attorney Generals and Secretaries of State), if they are Republicans, are cleaving to those far-out right-wing extremes.
In the 2016 election the drumbeat of Republicans was “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi”, reeking with implications of wrongdoing on the part of both Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“Her emails,” referring to the use of a private server by Hillary Clinton and the way she sorted her emails before handing them over to be archived turned out to be a nothingburger, although not until well after Trump asked Russia to find the emails she deleted. He has always behaved as if it is perfectly normal to ask Russia to assist American presidential candidates.
“Lock her up”, another chant repeated at Trump rallies, perhaps to cover up all the reasons that Trump is the one who should be locked up.
Americans obsessed with football and other sports are suckers for a good chant.
It is better to not repeat the chants that Trump offered up during the pandemic because they have already caused quite enough damage in terms of encouraging hateful racist attacks. But everyone should remember the heated demonstrations against health mandates for masking and vaccines and how that has morphed into harassment of local school boards and boards of election, and now banning books (a mainly right-wing phenomenon). (And the violent behavior on airplanes.)
More recent topics repeated in print media, social media, and on Fox news include outrage about changes to Mr. Potato Head and green M & M’s. Having fun with propaganda makes the harsher propaganda seem just as folksy perhaps.
And now we have Critical Race Theory and the 1619 articles/book, accusations of teaching babies to hate their parents because of the bad things they have done, and that their ancestors have done. Teaching tolerance is, of course, not the same thing as teaching hate. Republicans cannot seem to be able to get through to the bigot that lives on in the things they say and do, and they don’t’ want to pass on historical facts about the matter to their children. Being honest with our children is important. Lying to them or withholding information about American history is far more likely to backfire than owning up to the truth and trying to make a new truth. Bullying a black woman who defied the odds to become a candidate to sit on the Supreme Court is fascist behavior. We see you. You may be able to fool your base, but the rest of us are not fooled.
Republicans turn all liberal ideas against the Democrats. They sneer at progressives because they don’t think government should help those at the lowest socio-economic levels. Republicans paint Democrats as pedophiles. They implied that Hillary Clinton participated in ceremonies where babies were sacrificed and if you believe that one, they insisted she was a child trafficker with an active cell in the basement of a Washington DC pizza shop. One Republican sympathizer who fell for their indoctrination went to the pizza shop with a gun to put a stop to the fake activities and we learned that the pizza shop did not even have a basement.
Now Republicans intimate that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is sympathetic to child abusers and gives them light sentences. They avoided accusing her of favoring her own race by not divulging the race of the pedophiles who came before her, but her racial bias is implied. Doesn’t this border on actionable libel or slander? Sometimes it’s embarrassing to think that the world is watching how America does politics these days.
This article is hardly exhaustive when it comes to giving examples of Republican propaganda. Everyone will remind us that Democrats use propaganda too. Is it propaganda if it’s true? There is far more truth on the Democratic side of the aisle right now than on the Republican side because Republicans are the ones who want to steer America back to the fifties, a time when they believe that America was a white Christian nation that hewed to a strict interpretation of both the US Constitution and the Bible. If we bury all the concerns of minority groups and women, outlaw abortion and the pill, roll legislation back before the Civil Right Bill of 1964-65 then America will be the country they recognize and love. They are having trouble loving this incarnation of America and the world, so they will do any un-American thing to get that old America back, such as killing off a rival political party. Just like Putin will do any awful thing to get the old Soviet Union back and to hold the future at bay.
Another Word about the Power of Propaganda
They say that “a word to the wise should be sufficient”, but they also say that “there is a sucker born every minute.” (Attributed to P T Barnum)
Subscriptions are free and this newsletter will come directly to your email.