Ministry of Truth
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. …
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God,
never without belief in a devil.
— Eric Hoffer (1902 – 83)
(Barak Goodman,
Clinton,
PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2012)
Hillary Clinton (1947):
[To] be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. …
They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic … you name it.
[But,] unfortunately, there are people like that.
And he has lifted them up. …
But the other basket are … people who feel that:
- the government has let them down,
- the economy has let them down,
- nobody cares about them,
- nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.
And they’re just desperate for change. …
Those are the people we have to understand and empathize with.
(Amy Chozick, Hillary Clinton Calls Many Trump Backers "Deplorables," and GOP Pounces,
The New York Times, 10 September 2016)
Mitt Romney (1947):
There are 47% of the people:
- who will vote for [President Obama] no matter what …
- who are dependent upon government,
- who believe that they are victims …
- who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them …
- who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, [and that] the government should give it to them. …
These are people who pay no income tax. …
[My] job is not to worry about those people.
I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
(David Corn, Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He Really Thinks of Obama Voters, Mother Jones, 17 September 2012)
Ross Garnaut (1946):
In the United States … high incomes have risen [thoughout the period since the Great Crash of 2008,] while those of ordinary citzens have fallen. …
[If] living standards for ordinary people continue to fall, this will have large and unpredictable ideological and political effects.
(Dog Days, 2013, p 30)
(Liz Garbus,
American Carnage,
The Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump, Episode 3, 2018)
The main requirements [of a mass movement leader] seem to be: …
- a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth;
- faith in his destiny and luck;
- a capacity for passionate hatred;
- a cunning estimate of human nature;
- a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); [and]
- [an] unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness …
The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership.
What counts is
- the arrogant gesture,
- the complete disregard of the opinion of others,
- the singlehanded defiance of the world.
Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. …
[The] mass movement leader … draws his inspiration from the sea of upturned faces, and the roar of the mass is as the voice of God in his ears.
He sees an irresistible force within his reach — a force he alone can harness. …
The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present.
They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence
- their recklessness, and
- their will to chaos and anarchy.
They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action.
Thus, they are among the early recruits
- of revolutions,
- [of] mass migrations, and
- of religious, racial and chauvinist movements,
and they imprint their mark upon these upheavals and movements which shape a nation’s character and history. …
The ideal potential convert is the individual
- who stands alone,
- who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence. …
A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not
- by its doctrine and promises, but
- by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.
It cures the poignantly frustrated not
- by conferring on them an absolute truth, or
- by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable,
but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves—and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole. …
It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by
- the truth of its doctrine, and
- the feasibility of its promises.
What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated.
Where new creeds vie with each other for the allegiance of the populace, the one which comes with the most perfected collective framework wins. …
The self-mastery needed in overcoming their appetites gives [the frustrated] an illusion of strength.
They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world. …
All active mass movements strive … to interpose a fact-proof screen between:
- the faithful, and
- the realities of the world. …
It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.
He cannot be:
- frightened by danger, nor
- disheartened by obstacles, nor
- baffled by contradictions,
because he denies their existence. …
The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. …
The fanatics of various hues … are ready to fly at each other’s throat.
But they are neighbors and almost of one family.
They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. …
And [so] it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal. …
It is easier to hate an enemy with much good in him than one who is all bad.
We cannot hate those we despise. …
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners.
An American’s hatred for a fellow American (for Hoover or Roosevelt) is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners.
It is of interest that the backward South shows more xenophobia than the rest of the country.
Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life. …
The practice of terror serves the true believer not only
- to cow and crush his opponents, but also
- to invigorate and intensify his own faith.
Every lynching in our South not only
- intimidates the Negro, but also
- invigorates the fanatical conviction of white supremacy. …
The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse.
It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must either win men or destroy the world."
(
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, 1951)
To an outside observer, an individualist society seems in the grip of some strange obsession.
Its ceaseless agitation strikes him as a kind of madness. …
When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are.
We demand more of them than we do of ourselves, and it is as if we wished to be disappointed in them.
Rudeness luxuriates in the absence of self-respect. …
Now that the new industrial revolution is on the way to solving the problem of means, … it behooves us to remember that man's only legitimate end in life is to finish God's work — to bring to full growth the capacities and talents implanted in us.
A population dedicated to this end will not necessarily overflow with the milk of human kindness, but it will not try to prove its worth by proclaiming the superiority and exclusiveness of its nation, race, or doctrine.
(
The Ordeal of Change, 1963)
Rule of the Red Queen
Alice:
There's no use trying … one can't believe impossible things.
Red Queen:
I daresay you haven't had much practice …
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
— Lewis Carroll | Charles Dodgson (1832 – 98), Through the Looking-Glass, 1871.
Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because,
- owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread information, and
- owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Sceptical Essays, 1928.
Carl Sagan (1934 – 96):
Many of those alleging satanic abuse describe grotesque orgiastic rituals in which infants are murdered and eaten.
Such claims have been made about reviled groups by their detractors throughout European history, including:
Ironically, reports of cannibalistic infanticide and incestuous orgies were among the particulars used by Roman authorities to persecute the early Christians.
(Demon-Haunted World, 1997, p 151)
Would you like to know more?
Alex Jones (1974):
And I’ll tell you, it is surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word for word hear Trump say it two days later. …
These people are not fricking humans, OK?
Hillary Clinton is a demon damned to hell!
Donald Trump (1946):
She’s the devil. …
It's true.
Alex Jones (1974):
As we’ve been saying for three years, Hillary is the founder of ISIS, along with Obama.
Donald Trump (1946):
He founded ISIS, and I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.
Alex Jones (1974):
"Was Cruz’s Father Linked to the JFK Assassination?
Cuban hired by Lee Harvey Oswald bears striking resemblance to Cruz."
Donald Trump (1946):
You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being shot.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
Alex Jones (1974):
[A] copy of [Obama's] new fake birth certificate.
Now, we’ve looked at it, we’re going to go over why it’s fake, how it’s a composite …
(Where's the Birth Certificate?, 25 May 2011)
Stephen Schmidt (1970) [Former Republican Strategist]:
[Sarah Palin] is the first of generation of politicians who live [in] a post-truth environment.
She was … a serial liar.
She would say things that are simply not true, or things that were picked up from the Internet …
And this obliteration of fact from fiction, of truth from lie, has become now endemic in American politics.
But it started then.
Stephen Schmidt (1970):
When [Sean Spicer] goes out and says,"This is the biggest crowd size ever" — what he's saying in essence is, "What's true is what the leader says is true."
The obliteration of the line between truth and the lie is fundamental to grasp because it's so elemental to a functioning democracy. …
Kellyanne Conway (1967):
[What you're saying is] a falsehood, and … Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. …
Chuck Todd (1972):
Look, alternative facts are not facts; they’re falsehoods.
Donald Trump (1946):
One thing this shows is how far over they go here. …
This goes all the way down here, all the way down. …
You don't see that in the pictures.
But when you look at this tremendous sea of love — I call it a sea of love — it's really something special.
(America's Great Divide: Obama To Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
(Geeta Gandbhir & Sam Pollard,
Tribalism,
Why We Hate, 2019)
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 75):
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not
- the convinced Nazi or
- the convinced Communist,
but people for whom
- the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and
- the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought)
no longer exist.
(The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 / 1968)
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A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
— Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, 15 December 1791.
[The] state of men without civil society … is nothing else but a mere war of all against all …
— Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), Leviathan, 1651.
Alex Jones (1974):
It’s got "inside job" all written all over it. …
Sandy Hook is a synthetic — completely fake, with actors — in my view, manufactured.
(Michael Kirk, America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
Mark Bankston:
From then on it was an absolute quest to destroy [the victims'] parents.
[An avid follower of Jones and InfoWars] began stalking Mr Pozner and his family in south-central Florida, [and] started threatening their lives. …
[She was] sent to federal prison for [5 months.]
Alex Jones (1974):
I, myself, have almost had like a form of psychosis … where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I've now learned a lot of times things aren’t staged. …
And so, over the years, I’ve … had a chance to believe that children died, and it’s a tragedy.
(Michael Kirk, United States of Conspiracy, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2020)
Would you like to know more?
(The Murdochs: Empire of Influence, CNN, 2022)
(Jamie Roberts, BBC The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty, 2020)
