- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The cries that the 2020 election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping. But If voter fraud had impacted the 2020 election, it would already have been proven.
Can a steady diet of lies and innuendo overcome the truth?
In November 2020, former President Donald Trump asserted that voter fraud had altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The day after the election, his campaign hired an expert in voter data to attempt to prove Trump’s allegations and put him back in the White House.
I am the expert who was hired by the Trump campaign.
The findings of my company’s in-depth analysis are detailed in the depositions taken by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The transcripts show that the campaign found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election. That message was communicated directly to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
…
And yet, the cries that the election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping. Whether a stump speech, outrageous lawsuits like the so-called Kraken cases filed by Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani’s lies or the ongoing misguided efforts of people determined to prove the election was stolen, the constant drumbeat hardens people’s hearts and minds to the truth about the 2020 election.
What people are seeing is deep indoctrination at work. This is exactly how it happens in religious fundamentalist cults. You repeat the lie often enough, and it becomes the truth. On top of that, the people within the circle begin to distrust the outside world, and so come to the leaders for “truth.” The leaders are the cornerstones upon which their world is built.
And to question the “truth” means to question the leaders and to potentially lose your community. This is why for apostates, community is often the last hurdle to overcome before fully leaving.
Is deep indoctrination a euphemism for cult? Because it seems like a cult.
Indoctrination is the method. The cult is the result.
I like the BITE model of cults: an organization that engages in Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional Control.
So yes, it is an intrinsic part of a cult.
What I see is that conservatives in general are people who love to be lied to. Convicted Sex Offender Treason Trump noticed this and is trying to use it to overthrow democracy. Before conservatives said Obama was a Muslim they said Eisenhower was a Communist. Before they said horse medicine cures Covid they said Laetrile cures cancer.
They love conspiracies.
Religious people have also been convinced that there is a war between good and evil, so they need to find/create a villian.
Didn’t the exact same thing happen with the WMDs in Irak fiasco that ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people and wasting an absolute insane amount of resources for basically nothing?