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.

  • trafguy@midwest.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    It sounds like since we can clearly articulate the types of strategies used to rile up the masses and bypass critical thinking, it should be possible to create a law that would make this type of rhetoric illegal. While I’m generally opposed to limitations on speech, I would make an exception for limiting the tactics that allow the rise of fascism, particularly since it doesn’t limit sharing of ideas, and simply limits the same type of behavior as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.

    Next time the opportunity arises (next time we have a major event that snaps the zealots back to their senses), we should be pushing our representatives to implement an amendment that bans this behavior. It’s a necessary restraint on freedom of expression to protect the democratic process. This should specifically be an amendment because:

    • Implementing as a regular law would likely be blocked by the supreme court as an infringement on freedom of speech.
    • It’s too important to allow future legislators to easily overturn.
    • vonbaronhans@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yeah the difficulty in applying any sort of speech law is that context matters so much.

      I would call the Proud Boys, for example, Nazis. Or maybe neo-nazi. But one of the examples in this article is how Putin is dehumanizing Zelensky by calling him a Nazi. The only difference is that the PBs are, in fact, neo-nazi fascists based on virtually any academic definition or set of criteria on offer, while Zelensky doesn’t fit any accepted definition.

      I have to imagine a law that could regulate dehumanizing speech would be nearly impossible to construct without being entirely toothless or prone to being gamed by bad faith actors (the exact people we’re trying to stop).

      I’d love to be proven wrong though.

      • trafguy@midwest.socialEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Fair enough, regulating the specific ways that people speak is challenging and prone to either overreach or being ineffectual. The only way I can think of to attempt it would require a law that is algorithmic. Speech that matches a specific pattern, and whose reach is sufficient to be a threat to our democratic process, would be analyzed in court with a team of linguists and psychologists doing their best to explain the problematic bits to a judge and jury.

        I don’t think the general public (or probably congress, for that matter) would accept such a high profile a law that was algorithmic and only understandable to a small subset of the population though, so this isn’t really feasible. And new charlatans would find a way to work around it anyway.

  • TH1NKTHRICE@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Decent article. Maybe not necessarily the most important article in the world. But, interesting ideas that I’m sure some might find useful. Kinda peculiar that the word fascism doesn’t appear.

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      That’s fair. I think the article itself is decent, but I think it’s the most important one right now because it’s the only one talking about the why of right-wing authoritarianism I’ve seen. I’d love to see many more, better discussions in the media on this important topic.