Introduction
We’re living in a wild world of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and propaganda. On social media and the Internet, you can say anything you want and make up any story you want. You can even make up your own “facts” to support your made-up story. The more sensational your story, the more it provokes hatred and/or fear, the higher the chances that it will go viral. The degree of truthfulness has nothing to do with the popularity of a story. If you’re interested in knowing the truth, you’ll need to deploy some strategies to defend your brain.
What's at Stake - A case study of what can go horribly wrong when people fail to defend their brains.
Lies can hurt people, including the people who believe them. When we believe lies, these lies affect our brains and make our brains far more willing to believe other lies. If you isolate yourself mentally and don’t bother to expose your mind to a variety of viewpoints and perspectives, if you don’t bother to check facts, if you’re willing to pass along stories that might be false, if you’re willing not to give somebody you don’t like due process, what might happen? Ever hear of the Salem witch trials? Think the same sort of thing couldn’t happen today? Consider this true story.
In 1972, Mike Warnke published The Satan-Seller, purported to be a memoir, in which he described bloody, gross satanic ceremonies. The book went viral and inspired copy-cats like How to Sin with Friends and Sacrifice People. Stories about satanic worship and bizarre ceremonies involving the sexual abuse of babies and young children and the murder of thousands of people multiplied, and people became fearful, even hysterical. Geraldo Rivera added to the panic by airing a two-hour special in October of 1988, “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground.” A survey at the time showed that 70% of Americans believed that these stories were true.
For various reasons, including the fact that the day-care center industry was fairly new in the 1980s and many people weren’t comfortable with it, people began accusing day-care center workers of sexually abusing children in satanic ceremonies, even though there was no physical evidence supporting these accusations. The police, therapists, and social workers interviewed children using unfair techniques, interrogating the children repeatedly until they finally got the statements they wanted. They then used these statements to convict the accused (Maura Casey, The Washington Post, 31 July 2015). Before it was all over, seventy people went to jail for crimes they didn’t commit (Roger Lancaster, The Washington Post, 8 Dec 2016). All were later exonerated, but not before some had spent more than 20 years in prison. Twenty years after Mike Warnke published his “memoir,” it was exposed as a fraud in Cornerstone magazine by investigative journalists Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein . But of course, the damage had already been done.
FBI Special Agent Kenneth V. Lanning devoted 11 years to investigating the claims of satanic murders involving human sacrifice, ritual sexual abuse of babies and young children, and other similar crimes, and the organized satanic conspiracies. In 1992, he published the astonishing results of his research. He wrote, “A satanic murder should be defined as one committed by two or more individuals who rationally plan the crime and whose primary motivation is to fulfill a prescribed satanic ritual calling for the murder. By this definition, I have been unable to identify even one documented satanic murder in the United States.” He goes on to conclude, “There is little or no evidence for . . . allegations that [deal] with large-scale baby breeding, human sacrifice, and organized satanic conspiracies” (Kenneth V. Lanning, M. S., Supervisory Special Agent, FBI, The Lanning Report, 1992).
In spite of reports like those of Lanning, we can see an echo of this sort of thinking in the 2016 Pizzagate story, involving accusations against Hillary Clinton. According to a Twitter account that posted white supremacist content, Clinton was the leader of a satanic abuse and child sex-trafficking ring that had its headquarters in the basement of a Washington, D. C., pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong. Believing the rumor to be true and apparently without doing any fact-checking, Edgar Welch drove from North Carolina to the pizzeria armed with his AR-15 and a revolver, intent on saving the children, and fired into the pizzeria. In fact, the pizzeria has no basement and no victim has ever come forward alleging abuse (The Associated Press, 22 June 2016 ) . Both the FBI and the Washington, D.C., police said there were no facts or evidence to support the allegations (Erik Ortiz, NBC News, 22 June 2017), yet Welch and many others believed the lie.
False rumors and fake news have always been with us. But now with social media and other electronic means of spreading ideas, a lie can go viral in a day. To make matters worse, people have learned that they can make up lies and then make money from the ads. It sometimes takes years to do the thorough investigation needed to establish the truth. Lies today spread so fast researchers and investigators often can’t keep up. This fact means that we need to be acutely aware of the problem and the need to defend ourselves so we don’t become victims.
Defend Your Brain #1- To counter misinformation, evaluate the source of your news.
When Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, Trump retweeted the very next day, long before any kind of investigation had been launched, the conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton was responsible for his death: “#JefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.” When a reporter asked Trump for proof of his accusation, his reply was that the Clintons had been to Epstein’s island. Not really much proof! In fact, a tape found in the NBC archives and released by TODAY on August 17, 2019, shows Trump and Epstein together at a Mar-A-Lago party. Clearly, Trump shouldn’t argue that associating with Epstein is evidence of responsibility for his death. Trump got away with this kind of defamation of character at least partly because Twitter, as is true of all social media, is not regulated.
Contrast this with what happened to Rachel Maddow, the host of a nightly show on MSNBC, a regulated news source. When on July 22, 2019, she accused the TV network One America News of being “paid Russian propaganda,” they sued her for more than $10 million for defamation. Unlike in the case of Trump’s accusation against Bill Clinton, in this case, Maddow will be required to set forth the facts and evidence supporting her claim, and if she can’t make a good case for her statement, she will be in trouble. That’s the way it should be. You get far more reliable information when people are held accountable for what they say.
To defend against misinformation, we need to know the difference between fact and opinion, including commentary and analysis based on opinion. Talk radio is not a good source of news because it’s a mix of interviews and political commentary and is often highly partisan—think Randi Rhodes or Rush Limbaugh. Blogs can be very inaccurate and partisan, depending on the writer.
News is more likely to be reliable if it is from sources that are regulated. Both radio and TV broadcasters operate under the authority of the FCC and must follow FCC rules concerning political campaigns: give equal time to all candidates running for a particular office; provide time for candidates to respond to criticisms against them; and when airing a controversial issue be fair by providing air time to opposing views. Since cable TV isn’t broadcast over the public’s airwaves, it isn’t clear whether or not the FCC has the legal authority to regulate it. Print media (magazines and newspapers) are largely free to print whatever they want as long as they don’t defame anyone ("Government Regulation of the Media", SparkNotes, 2019). The Internet and social media are not regulated at this time.
Of course, all people write with some personal bias even when they are making every effort to be unbiased and fair. But don’t despair. You can combat this kind of bias by getting your news from a variety of sources, both those leaning in the direction of your own political preferences and those leaning in the opposite direction. When you take the trouble to expose your brain to a variety like that, you up your chances of getting a more balanced picture of reality and you help to protect your brain from mental incest—only exposing yourself to the opinions of those with whom you already agree. The fruit of mental incest is defective thinking.
You can also sharpen your ability to identify fake news. Melissa Zimdars, a professor of communications and media at Merrimack College, offers some helpful tips. In addition to getting your news from a wide variety of sources, preferably those that are regulated, she suggests that when you’re looking online, notice the web addresses. If they look suspicious, like those ending in “.lo” or “.co.com,” avoid them. Also, notice the author of the story. Find out more about this author; check out the “about me” or “about us” section of the website. Websites and articles with no listed author or the same author for every story should raise a red flag in your mind. Check to see if a news site hosts bloggers without any editorial or fact-checking process in place. If so, this should also raise a red flag in your mind (Amanda Sakuma and Emmanuelle Saliba, Euronews, 22 Nov 2016).
Defend Your Brain #2 - To counter conspiracy theories, understand how your brain works.
We also need to understand the human brain and how our wiring makes us susceptible to conspiracy theories. According to one study using four national surveys between 2006 and 2011, about 50% of all Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory (J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood, American Journal of Political Science, 05 March 2014). Rob Brotherton, author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe in Conspiracy Theories, lists three biases that are built into our brains that could make us vulnerable to fake news and conspiracy theories: the proportionality bias, the intentionality bias, and the confirmation bias. Brotherton says, “We are all susceptible to the proportionality bias where we think that when something big happens, something big must have caused it” (quoted in an interview by Nicola Davis, The Guardian, 07 Nov 2015). In other words, when something huge and shocking happens like the assassination of JFK, our brains want the cause to be just as huge and shocking. We are suspicious and don’t want to believe it when we are told that one lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for this world-changing event. On the other hand, when Reagan was shot but not killed, we are more able to accept that the shooting was the act of one lone gunman because the event wasn’t as consequential.
Our brains are also susceptible to intentionality bias. We don’t want to think that important events are random; we are uncomfortable with ambiguity; we don’t like accidents and chaos. Events make more sense to us if we think somebody did something intentionally. When we try to understand an event, we naturally look for reasons and intentions, plans and purposes (Brotherton, in an interview by David Shariatmadari, The Guardian, 26 Dec 2015). Even though as adults we have learned that not everything people do is intentional, we still carry this bias and tend to see an ambiguous action as something done deliberately. Many of us also want to believe that everything happens for a reason, especially if the event changed the course of our lives. When we can’t find satisfying reasons for a huge event, our brains are susceptible to believing conspiracy theories that supply reasons.
And we are susceptible to confirmation bias. We tend to seek out and believe information that confirms what we already believe and reject or ignore information that contradicts what we already believe. If we already believe that the US government is evil, it’s easier to believe the conspiracy theory that the US government is evil enough to be behind the events of 9/11. Once we believe that, then it’s easier for us to believe that the US government is evil enough to be behind mass murders like those that occurred at Sandy Hook. Believing lie after lie can cause a person to become jaded, suspicious of everything and everybody, and always ready to believe the worst without the need for any kind of proof.
The more fearful and threatened we feel, the more we feel a lack of control over our situation, the more prone we are to conspiratorial thinking (Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky, Science, Oct 2008). This means that when our political party is out of power, we become “more vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories” (Brendan Nyhan, The New York Times, 15 Feb 2017). After Trump was elected, Democrats became more likely to believe unsupported claims that favored their own party, and Republicans became less likely (ibid).
Hopefully, being aware of our own brain’s biases will help us compensate for them so that we can think more clearly. All people, including politicians, deserve to be considered innocent until proven guilty. We should withhold judgment unless/until guilt is proven rather than believing something merely because it’s what we’d like to believe, because, for example, if it were true, it would help our side and damage the opposition. We need to think critically, look for the facts, consider all the options and counter-arguments, and keep an open mind.
Additionally, Brotherton warns that if we reject all conspiracy theories, we’re likely to miss the ones that turn out to be true in the end. Journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were accused by the White House and their own editorial team at the Washington Post of propagating a conspiracy theory. But it turned out that they were actually uncovering the Watergate scandal (Rob Brotherton, LA Times, 19 Jan 2016).
Defend Your Brain #3 - To counter propaganda, realize we’re in a propaganda war.
We need to realize that for the 2020 campaign, those running for office will be engaged in propaganda warfare. They will purchase ads on every media platform to convince you that they are the good folks and their opponents are the scoundrels. Of course, these ads cost money, so in some sense, candidates will be using ad money to attempt to buy the American mind. The candidate who espouses policies that favor huge corporations and the rich and powerful is likely to be generously funded by those same entities. Thanks to Trump, America’s richest 1 percent received a $278,540 lifetime tax cut compared to the $21,704 on average received by the middle class and $4,975 on average received by the lower class (Laurence Kotlikoff, Forbes, 23 July 2019). We can well imagine that the rich who received such a generous tax cut will be likely to express their appreciation with large donations to the Trump campaign.
Although we didn’t realize it at the time, we have since learned that the Trump campaign built and deployed a monstrous propaganda machine in the 2016 election. By comparison, the Democrats were fighting the 2016 propaganda war with bows and arrows. We now know that in 2014 Cambridge Analytica, principally funded by the wealthy right-wing Republican Mercer family and co-founded with Steve Bannon, hired Aleksandr Kogan (a Soviet-born American) to gather data on 300,000 Facebook users. In addition to using their personal profiles and “likes,” Kogan mined their personal data by paying them to download his app and answer survey questions. He also mined the data of their friends. In the end, Kogan collected data on approximately 87 million voters without their knowledge or permission (Michael Riley, Sarah Frier, and Stephanie Baker, Bloomberg News, 21 March 2018).
Cambridge Analytica used the data to target voters in the 2016 election with “hyper-specific” ads urging them to vote for Trump (Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg News, 09 Sept 2019). According to Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, in the months prior to the election, the Trump campaign was spending $1 million a day on Facebook ads targeting voters in swing states whom Cambridge Analytica identified as “persuadables,” people who might be persuaded to vote for Trump (The Great Hack, a Netflix documentary, released 24 July 2019).
We now also know that Russia supported Trump and used Facebook during the 2016 election to spread propaganda and fake news. Since they were so successful, it is likely that Russia and probably other countries will try to interfere in the 2020 election.
Cambridge Analytica was shut down on May 1, 2018, after Alexander Nix and other Cambridge Analytica executives were caught on tape by Britain’s Chanel 4 News bragging about how they won the election for Trump. Even though they were shut down, we still don’t know what happened to the databases. Were they deleted? Who has them now? Even if the databases were deleted, we don’t have much hope that some other data collection company isn’t already out there collecting our data and creating voter profiles to be used in the 2020 election. I personally have already received one highly personalized ad on Facebook, telling me that a friend of mine and somebody I highly respect is a Trump supporter. How did that happen?
But the point is, powerful propaganda machines exist now and no doubt more are being created, we don’t really know what they look like or how they will be deployed, we don’t know if there will be any nuclear bombs in the arsenals, but we do know that Trump has appointed Brad Parscale, the digital director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, to be his campaign manager for 2020, which suggests that the Trump team “believes the political battles of the future will be won and lost online” (Issie Lapowsky, Wired, 27 Feb 2018).
For sure, we voters are facing an intense battle for our minds. Don’t let your brain become a casualty of the war of 2020. Before we are successfully brainwashed by repeated messages, we need to resolve to ignore all political ads across all media platforms. Just like commercials, political ads almost always distort the truth and twist the facts. Instead of paying attention to what candidates say or what others are saying about the candidates, we should pay attention to what candidates have actually done. Talk is cheap. Let a candidate’s record speak. What a candidate has already done is a good indication of what that candidate will do in the future.
We should also refuse to believe, pass along, “like,” or retweet any story unless we have done our homework. Unless we have ferreted out the facts and we know the story is true, we should not let it influence our thinking. Know in advance that social media and the Internet will be flooded with fake news and misinformation designed to cast doubt on real news and push our buttons, rile us up, sow doubt and discord, make us feel fearful, etc.
We are facing this sort of warfare right now and it will only get more intense as the 2020 election heats up. We can and must defend our brains, but it’s not going to be easy.
Ann McArthur
10/24/19