Trump’s lying reaches new levels; and Musk’s DARVO strategy. (Deny, Attack, Reverse the order of Victim and Offender)
NY Times, Peter Baker, 23 Feb 2025: In Trump’s Alternate Reality, Lies and Distortions Drive Change, subtitle “Condoms for Gaza? Ukraine started the war with Russia? The president’s manipulations of the truth lay the groundwork for radical change.’ [gift link]
Hardly new news, but it seems to be getting worse.
The United States sent $50 million in condoms to Hamas. Diversity programs caused a plane crash. China controls the Panama Canal. Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Except, no. None of that is true. Not that it stops President Trump. In the first month since he returned to power, he has demonstrated once again a brazen willingness to advance distortions, conspiracy theories and outright lies to justify major policy decisions.
Mr. Trump has long been unfettered by truth when it comes to boasting about his record and tearing down his enemies. But what were dubbed “alternative facts” in his first term have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second to lay the groundwork for radical change as he moves to aggressively reshape America and the world.
And:
Taking his real-estate hucksterism and reality-show storytelling into politics, Mr. Trump has for years succeeded in selling his version of events. The world according to Mr. Trump is one where he is a master of every challenge and any failure is someone else’s fault.
He claimed to have built the greatest economy in history during his first term so many times that even some of his critics came to accept that it was better than it really was. He dismissed intelligence reports that Russia intervened in the 2016 elections on his behalf so often that many supporters accepted his denial.
Most significantly, Mr. Trump has waged a four-year campaign to persuade Americans that he did not lose the 2020 election when in fact he did, making one false assertion of widespread fraud after another that would all be debunked yet still leave most Republicans convinced it was stolen, according to polls.
Familiar authoritarian tactics. Say something, no matter how outrageous, often enough, and people will believe it’s true. It’s what everyone’s saying, everyone says.
“Trump is a highly skilled narrator and propagandist,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and a historian at New York University who specializes in fascism and authoritarianism. “Actually he is one of the most skilled propagandists in history.”
Dr. Ben-Ghiat said what made Mr. Trump’s “easily refutable lie” about the 2020 election so remarkable was that he was “working not in a one-party state or authoritarian context with a controlled media, but in a totally open society with a free press.”
But she and other scholars said some of Mr. Trump’s themes resemble those seen in authoritarian states. “The kind of propaganda and disinformation that we see now is not particularly new and not dependent on the internet,” said Benjamin Carter Hett, a historian of World War II at Hunter College. “Exactly the same kind of thing happened in the very diverse and lively German press of the 1920s and 1930s.”
With examples of how Trump or his staff misunderstands or distorts something, and then not only clings to the lie or misrepresentation (remember: they never apologize, never explain), but forces everyone under him to endorse the story too.
Again, an old story. My own thought along these matters is how many MAGA Trump fans are also religiously devout, and how belief in religious fables, especially from early childhood, simply undermines the ability to think rationally. You are taught from an early age to accept certain stories as absolute truths, not to be questioned, no matter how implausible in terms of the ways the world apparently works today, no matter how obviously such stories make sense in historical and psychological terms (Dawkins addresses this in his last chapter.) So, if you believe those stories, you’ll believe anything, including all the stories Trump tells you, in spite of all the objective and circumstantial evidence against them. (And thinking long term, this could be what cripples the human species into not dealing with existential crises, and by extension, an explanation of the Fermi paradox. Intelligence has its limits, and is burdened and undercut by tribal thinking.)
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Something similar is going on here, in the way a simplistic narrative, or psychological strategy, is blanketly applied to diverse real world situations. And people.
Slate, Denise Cana, 21 Feb 2025: I’ve Pinpointed the Psychological Phenomenon at Play in Every Elon Musk Move
Last Friday, tens of thousands of public servants were fired.
The nation lost the dedication and service of these individuals, their communities have lost the security of a reliably employed core of families needing services, and the federal workers and their families have been catapulted into uncertainty, many into serious financial turmoil.
The mass terminations, led by the Department of Government Efficiency, were likely illegal. They were certainly cruel. And they clearly had nothing to do with the “performance” of the individuals let go.
Meanwhile, the daily assault on federal workers’ credibility, professionalism, and patriotism continues. We’re “crooks” who have “forgotten” our oaths to the country and the Constitution. We’re told we cannot share research results, investigate public health threats, start new projects, conclude old projects, continue to work on projects initiated under the previous administration (or even projects initiated during the administration before the previous one). We’re directed to work more efficiently with little direction as to what is allowed and what will be deemed insubordination by paranoid agency leadership teams.
And here’s the strategy.
Those with the misfortune of having seen cycles of abuse recognize the administration’s framework for governance by its acronym from psychology, DARVO: Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
First: Deny. Any and all claims of wrongdoing are derided as false. They’re baseless lies, slander, misinformation.
Next: Attack. The accuser is cast as the enemy. The people pointing out missteps and misconduct? They’re not trustworthy, they aren’t properly virtuous, they’re too stupid to understand the situation, or they’re so gullible they’ll believe anything.
Finally: Reverse the positions of victim and offender.
DARVO is the pathology of a narcissistic abuser. It’s a small-minded and petty ploy, but it’s a dangerous one. And it is the go-to move at every level of this administration.
Examples:
Presented with mounting evidence of and growing public concern for institutionalized racism, the administration says, No, you’re the racist! And then it sets about dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs with a doth-protest-too-much fury.
Called out by reporters for demonstrably spreading misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories, the administration insists, No, you’re spreading misinformation. Or, an oldie but a goodie: No, you’re selling fake news.
…
These are the adult tantrums of “I know you are, but what am I?” bullies, vacuous but vicious. And they have the desired effect of confusing the story, forcing onlookers to choose a side based on whom they trust rather than the evidence.
Beware simplistic narratives, especially those that target the opponents of the narrative-tellers. It’s alarming how large the proportion of the population is that continues to fall for these.
