The Threat of Denialism

[JohnT]

Excerpts from my latest Substack…

The Threat of Denialism

First, a definition:

Denialism : The employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists. 1

People suffering from Denialism do some, or all, of the following:

1. Use fake experts
2. Exercise selectivity of information sources
3. Identify conspiracies
4. Make exaggerated demands of what true research can answer
5. Use of misrepresentation (lies) and logical fallacies

We all deny reality in our lives, many of these denials just part of the social structures which make living together possible: I may decide to deny the reality that my neighbor is a complete and utter shit when I run into him at the store, even to the point of exchanging banal pleasantries. Denial? Yes. Necessary? Also, yes.

The next level of denial is where we believe things which may not be consistent with reality but the belief itself is relatively harmless - moon landing denial, believing in Bigfoot in 2021, JFK was likely killed by someone not named Oswald – forms of denialism which may make you an irritating (or esteemed) member of some online community or other, but the beliefs themselves pose no harm to you or others.

However the last two decades have witnessed a fundamental change in socially allowable, capital-D Denialism , a metastasizing of a relatively benign condition so that it is purposely harming millions of people. As with Holocaust denial, the first extreme version of Denialism which was studied extensively these denials go beyond fun, even beyond self-harm, and they are now becoming a literal threat to the future of the country and possibly the species:

… Climate change denialism

… Anti-Vaxxing

… COVID Maskholes

… Big Lie (2020 was a stolen election)

… Satanic Panics (a catchall phrase for the moral panics endemic in modern life)

… QAnon

This growth is fueled by two historic trends it may be impossible to buck, the internet and human nature.

*** How is Denialism propagated? Why are we now being swamped by people who deny basic reality?***

For the internet, the issue is that, for the first time in human history vast swaths of humanity both receive the mental disorders of thousands of other people directly and, in turn, are able to transmit their own mental disorders to an audience of thousands, possibly millions. So 2-4 billion of us get on the internet, in what, at times, just seems one REALLY LOUD ROOM, passing on our own neuroses’ and allowing others, including malevolent actors, to pass theirs on to us. The internet is easily the single greatest vector of mental disorders created by mankind, and I don’t think a single one of us has been left untouched.

The structure of the internet, and how we interact with it, is tailor made for mental disorders such as Denialism to flourish. We register to websites to which we find interesting and supportive, thereby ignoring differing points of view. Information bubbles are easily created merely by clicking the subscribe button on YouTube, or the follow button on TikTok. We join Facebook groups which are moderated so that Thoughtcrime is not allowed (Just go to a Mommy group sometime. I dare you.) And, eventually, algos pick up on this and start feeding us engaging content, which, many times is content which reinforces previously held notions by means of creating feelings of hostility and fear of others.

But… Civilization threatening?

The above is problematic enough were it just 340,000,000 Americans venting their mental issues online, but when you add in foreign actors who prefer American power to decline, tired of our moralizing re: Democracy, tired of the Pax Americana imposed upon the world since 1945, tired of the cultural imperialism, and with their own internal and personal needs, America finds itself in an epoch-defining moment, where foreign actors are using the above power of the internet to fuel anger-based delusions, with the goal being to, at least, weaken American power and, at most, to break this country from within.

And America is easily fractured, for America is nothing but a shared delusion in and of itself. The theory of Americanism is that we are not Americans because we were a tribe who lived here since time immemorial, but that we are Americans because we believe in the ideals of the Founding Fathers, or, as Superman so elegantly put it, Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and if you choose to believe in this system, you, too, are an American.

But… destroy this belief, make “America” into some ethnonationalist state, convince 25-35% of the people that the remaining 65-75% are not “real Americans”, create an alternate reality where objective facts don’t matter, only winning does… and you can shatter America.

By any measure, a President which lost 16 million jobs and 250,000 lives the year prior to election day, all while lying about it, should have suffered a Hoover-esque drop of support (over 25%). But Trump gained over 9 million votes from 2016-2020 despite being the worst President since, well, Hoover.

In addition, while promoting the Big Lie that the election was stolen, he led a televised Insurrection against the United States of America on January 6th, 2021… with the reality of this Insurrection is being denied by the GOP five months later. And Trump is still denying the reality of the election, recently it being reported he is telling people he is going to be reinstated in August.

Denialism has become the official position of the predominant organ of the American Right, the GOP, even while Denialism was killing over a half-million Americans in the pandemic alone :

So… how do we reach people suffering from Denialism?

I have bad news: talk isn’t going to do it. To the experts, Denialism is not treated by discussion: arguing with denialists just reinforces Denialism as the following Guardian quote notes:

"… in democratic societies at least, denialism cannot be beaten legally, or through debunking, or through attempts to discredit its proponents. That’s because, for denialists, the existence of denialism is itself a triumph. Central to denialism is an argument that “the truth” has been suppressed by its enemies. To continue to exist is a heroic act, a victory for the forces of truth."

Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth | Politics | The Guardian

The Mayo Clinic isn’t much better:

You might find it frustrating when someone you love is in denial about an important issue. But before demanding that your loved one face the facts, take a step back. Try to determine if he or she just needs a little time to work through the issue.

At the same time, let the person know that you’re open to talking about the subject, even if it makes both of you uncomfortable. Ultimately, this might give your loved one the security he or she needs to move forward. Your loved one may even be relieved when you bring the issue up.

It may be me, but the above seems an extremely weak approach to the situation we are facing today. “Work through the issue”? The issue is that the Internet is the single greatest vector of mental disorders the world has ever seen, its ability to create reinforcing intellectual and emotional bubbles unparalleled, and there are bad faith actors who, for over 10 years, have been using this to tear America asunder by creating alternate realities and belief systems specifically designed to turn American against American.

We don’t have time to wait.

Well, holy hell, this is bleak. What does this mean for America?

… Infecting a nation bristling with 6,000 nuclear weapons with a self-inflicted, reinforcing mental disorder where the afflicted literally create, and react to, their own reality may not have been the long-term game-winning play originally thought. Subverting the party who already was displaying fascistic penalties… not too great either.

Usually, this is the part of the essay where I’m supposed to fire off some suggestions on how to combat this, some policy suggestions, but, to be fair, I don’t know what to do. On the individual level, we can’t talk to the Denialists, not about the things they’re doing which are threatening the global order and American Democracy, as that reinforces the alternate reality. We cannot wait until they figure it out as the Mayo clinic advises, as we don’t have time to wait, not if we genuinely don’t want nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the very people who weaponized the Coronavirus by means of Denialism.

In some ways, the problem with Denialism is worse in America because our First Amendment freedoms and economic structure strictly limit the government’s response to this problem. We can’t just ban Facebook (to pick one), we can’t install “truth filters” on the individual users, we aren’t going to set up a Bureau of Fact Management (nor should we), and, of course, we sure as hell aren’t going to turn off the Internet.

I just fear that what usually happens… that the contradictions explode into warfare at the expense of millions of lives and global suffering… is going to happen again. China is not going to be interested in sitting back, watching a nuclear power go insane because the mental and legal restrictions caused by our belief in something called “the First Amendment” is in conflict with the obvious need to bring our citizens back to a shared reality, and China… or someone… will be compelled to intervene.

(If the above is choppy, feel free to read the full article, linked at the top.)

My Substacks are largely articles, with no questions or interactive portions at the end, so here goes with some topics to discuss…

How many people do you know who are in denial about things to the point where they place others in danger? Have you seen an increase in this the past few years? Can a country which in itself is little more than a shared mass delusion survive when that mass delusion is shattered? How do we reform a shared mass consensus if that consensus is always being tested and broken by foreign actors? How do we reconcile the First Amendment when it is being used to break apart the country? How can we change the internet so that it doesn’t propagate mental illness as well as it currently does?

[penultima_thule]

I perscribe a Bex and a good lie down.

[Jackmannii]

I don’t have much to offer other than the need for Rapid Truth Deployment Squads (official and unofficial) to counteract bullshit online and elsewhere. The tough but only truly effective solution is to mandate the teaching of critical thinking skills from elementary school on upwards.

@JohnT

People suffering from Denialism do some, or all, of the following:

3. Identify conspiracies

…

How do we reform a shared mass consensus if that consensus is always being tested and broken by foreign actors?

Um.

[Velocity]

IMHO, this is part of a bigger overall phenomenon/problem - the notion that truth is what people want it to be, not what it actually is. It started with postmodernism but certain warped forms of religion also chipped in.

[JohnT]

@Jackmannii

Um.

Lol, yeah, it can be self-referential, can it not?

An earlier draft went more into Russian bot farms, but a Substack error cost me about 4 hours of work, AND ALL MY DRAFTS, forcing me to rewrite a good chunk. And the section about the bot farms was completely forgotten, so I didn’t include it. C’est la vie.

But foreign actors using the internet to influence American thinking isn’t a conspiracy, other than the fact it is happening:

Weaponizing Social Media: Heinz Experts on Troll Farms and Fake News

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicts Russian bot farm for election meddling...

Researchers say they've uncovered a massive Facebook bot farm from the 2020...

Twitter released 9 million tweets from one Russian troll farm. Here’s what we...

Anyway, I was going to ask that this thread be deleted - the OP did not at all come out the way I wanted and I was distracted by a phone call before I could do anything about it. BUT it seems to be getting some responses and I hate to waste the time and work of others.

And please subscribe to my Substack - it’s free!

[What_Exit]

Modnote: JohnT, we had a quick mod discussion on this.

1. Please place future Bloggish posts in MPSIMS {No problem, I’ll move it}

2. As you’re requesting subscribers, please request permission of the Mods first.
   I recommend you ask the MPSIMS mods, Send a PM to all of them for faster reply.
   @engineer_comp_geek
   @Loach
   @Puzzlegal
   @Hari_Seldon

3. As per the Mod discussion we’re giving you permission in this case.

Thank you.

Note: Moved from IMHO to MPSIMS

[TriPolar]

I don’t believe denialism is a problem at all. I’m not sure it even exists.

[Gyrate]

@Velocity

IMHO, this is part of a bigger overall phenomenon/problem - the notion that truth is what people want it to be, not what it actually is. It started with postmodernism but certain warped forms of religion also chipped in.

No, it didn’t start with postmodernism. It has always existed. Susceptibility to the power of stories to overwrite reality is a fundamental part of being human. And there have always been bad actors willing to exploit it.

What’s happening now is simply that the internet has increased by orders of magnitude the ability of those bad actors to weaponise targeted falsehoods from anywhere to anywhere in a relentless torrent.

[bump]

Exactly. We’ve seen denialism at work for decades, if not centuries. Heliocentric model of the universe, germ theory of disease, earth as a sphere, evolution, and so on.

What’s changed is that in the era of say… the Scopes monkey trial, everyone was dealing with the same basic sources of information- the newspapers of the day, which were mostly devoted to reporting the news, albeit potentially with editorial slants. But slants, not fabrications. This meant that people all agreed that the trial was going on, what Bryan said, what Darrow said, and how the court case proceeded. Everyone had their own opinions on that stuff, but the meat of the actual news wasn’t in dispute. For the most part, the battleground back then was the tension between religion and science, and where you stood personally with respect to those two poles.

Today, you’d have the right-wing media apparatus claiming all sorts of jury shenanigans, interference, attempts to discredit the judge’s record, and so on; the trial itself would be tainted, and by extension everything but their own position within the eyes of their viewers. Never mind the actual philosophical debate; they don’t want to debate, they want to make the whole thing out to be fraudulent and an attack on their viewers- it’s a whole lot easier to manipulate fearful and indignant people than people who are peacefully considering a point of view.

It’s an assault on the truth; “Fake news” isn’t just a dipshit political saying, it’s literally an attempt to discredit the actual truth in favor of ideologically approved variants of it. We see this right now; Jan 6 was effectively an attempted coup and insurrection, but that side is still refusing to even acknowledge that as truth, or that it was anything more than a “boisterous demonstration” or some other abject bullshit like that. Or they cater to the ridiculous notion that any of these ongoing audits of presidential election votes are of any consequence; regardless of what happens, the Electoral College has voted, the President has been sworn in, and has been in office for nearly six months. There is no legal mechanism to remove the President from office at this point, and the mere suggestion that something extralegal should be attempted should be confronted strongly.

The problem as I see it, is that the right has basically groomed their people for decades, starting in the 1990s with Rush Limbaugh, into thinking that the mainstream media is “liberal”, and not reporting fairly or honestly on events, and introducing a lot of doubt and disrespect for the mainstream media. Fast forward 30 years, and you have a cohort of people who distrust the mainstream media as a result, and are primed to accept stuff like OAN, Fox News, NewsMax and a whole bunch of even less reputable news sources, because they’re “approved” and showing the “truth” as they’d like to see it.

Once that happened, it’s not much of a stretch to start reporting more and more slanted stuff and to divorce them from the actual truth in favor of the party’s own curated version of the truth.