The spread of right-wing authoritarianism is mystifying to so many of us, why humans find it so appealing despite its many, internal contradictions, and why they can’t be reasoned out of it. TL;DR: It is a sort of linguistic hack that bypasses the brain’s conscious thought centers in the frontal lobes using emotions, especially fear and disgust. It actually changes the brain to make it even more susceptible to lies and fear.

I first heard about this effect from, ironically, Scott Adams. Yes, that Scott Adams. To his credit, he recognized the technique in 2015, and called the winner of the 2016 election based on the candidate’s status as what Adams called a “master wizard.” He described how the candidate used words to bypass rational thought, and win supporters. It sounds crazy, and would be hard to believe if you weren’t seeing it happen. And, indeed, it was an astounding mystery, and the election result a shock, to everybody who didn’t know what was going on. He described it in woo-woo terms; this article gives the scientific basis. It’s such a powerful effect that Adams was aware of it, yet it still worked on him, and he has completely lost his mind. (It was a sad thing to watch in real time. James Kunstler, too, predicted the rise of “corn-pone Nazism” in the U.S. on his blog, then fell for it himself.)

This is supremely important to understand. I can’t overstate this point: To understand the rise of right-wing authoritarian movements around the world, and why they seem endemic to the mass-media age, this is it. To paraphrase Sun-Tzu and G.I. Joe, you have to know your enemy, if you hope to beat it.