Misinformation Wars
One of my favorite Dave Frishberg Songs is “Marooned in a Blizzard of Lies”. It seems to have been background music in the past two or three months, but even if we now have a twice impeached person in the American White House for a few more days, I am less confident that we have survived the misinformation wars - even with 20,000 troops assembled to reduce the risk of violence.
Misinformation has never been easier to produce. You can find an image and put a slogan on top of it and disseminate it on social media in less than two minutes and have others share it hundreds of thousands of times. Video editing is a bit trickier but possible. The effects can be visceral – immediate anxiety, increasing to anger and leading to violence. Words and images don’t always lead to violence – but when it occurs, they have almost always preceded it. That should give us pause.
Most us watching from a distance in Canada, but inundated with US news are still confounded by the actions of a rising star like Josh Hawley. How could someone with his credentials – Stanford, Yale Law School, clerking for the Chief Justice be seen raising a clenched fist to rioters and continue to claim a lost election? His local newspaper the St Louis Post Dispatch now claims he has blood on his hands and accuses him of blind ambition. His rise not be as easy for him now as he meets disgust from his own party and a lost book contract. But even blind ambition doesn’t seem to account for something so evil in either intent or consequence.
Katherine Stewart writing in the New York Times sees something deeper accounting for his actions. Citing an article that Hawley wrote for Christianity Today, she views him as part of a religious-right framework that wants America to return to religious roots that are endangered by liberal ideas of freedom. Who knew that the problem was that America had succumbed to the Pelagian heresy? Hawley says conforming to what religious leaders say is correct is how society should be governed – and that includes politics. My own response to that as a person who is still a member of a faith community (Anglican/ Episcopal) doesn’t land me in such a place – that it is okay for a lawyer to pretend an election is stolen to bring in some kind of religious oligarchy - just won’t wash.
Why do such views gain traction at all? Hawley was not alone. In another article Stewart wrote, the religious right is estimated as 28 percent of the US population who identify as white evangelical or born again Christian; 76% of them voted for Trump. Stewart cites several reasons why they prevail and why they are likely to continue to do so. Economic inequality exists and it can be used to foster discontent. Paradoxically much of this is financed by wealthy individuals who fund the religious right to protect their own wealth. Persons in smaller communities receive much of their news through local or regional religious publications that reinforce their views. Religious organizations of all types are well organized and networked. For these reasons, views on subjects like abortion, appointment of judges and religious freedom and can become key issues to organize around. A president’s appointment of 220 court judges and three to the Supreme Court is worth overlooking obvious shortcomings of misogynous bullying, racial tweets or conspiracy narratives of stolen elections.
Stewart notes:
“While many outsiders continue to think of Christian nationalism as a social movement that rises from the ground up, it is in fact a political movement that operates mostly from the top down. The rank-and-file of the movement is diverse and comes to its churches with an infinite variety of motivations and concerns, but the leaders are far more unified. . . . (They promote) a radical ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid, and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world. Partisan politics is the lifeblood of the movement.”
Are there solutions for the rest of us? Another Times writer suggests we can ask questions such as:
Who is the author?
What is behind the information provided?
What is the evidence?
What do other sources say?
When we encounter a meme that seems suspicious, we can check the original image. We can avoid using social media as a news source. We can also resist the impulse to “share” and “like” which enhances dissemination. We can also make decisions about what we choose to be our trusted sources of information.
But how do we convince others to do this? David Brooks, writing this morning is somewhat pessimistic:
“The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.
Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.”
He goes on to cite another writer whose prescription is to separate leaders from the group. If Stewart’s analysis is correct this may produce some hope in a new era of government.