MAGA Will Fall for Anything

Once upon a time the Republican Party believed in knowledge, objective facts and data, rational discourse and people who had legitimate credentials relating to issues they spoke about.  Those days are far back in the rearview mirror as the MAGA base continually demonstrates that it will believe almost any far fetched lie and false conspiracy theory.  Equally bad is the MAGA base's willingness to embrace and believe fictional stories put out by "influencers." most of which have not credentials or expertise.  Added to the mix is the non-stop lies and disinformation put out by Fox News and its imitators.    Fox News viewers forget that Fox News admitted it had peddled lies and was an "entertainment" outlet when it paid out nearly $800 million to settle a defamation case (other such case remain pending).  Some of this gullibility stems from the fact that educated voters are fleeing the GOP and leaving low information voters in their stead, but the main driver is the willingness to believe anything that supports one's bigotries and hatred, most of which when all else is stripped away comes down to racial prejudice if not open hatred.  Hence, the willingness to believe lies that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating neighborhood pets.  A column in the New York Times looks at the willingness of MAGA world to believe the most fat fetched of lies:

It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen during a presidential debate, and I’m exactly the kind of nerd who has watched every general election debate since he was 11 years old.

A few minutes into the contest, Kamala Harris interrupted her remarks to mock Donald Trump’s rallies. She invited viewers to attend one made fun of Trump’s meandering and self-absorbed speeches and then said, “People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

She was baiting him, and he fell for it. He responded with a barrage of conspiracy theories and misinformation that culminated in a bizarre rant about immigrants and pets in Ohio.

In that moment, Trump amplified a truly strange claim that had spread through the online right over the days before. It’s hard to trace the origin of a rumor, but it blew up with a Sept. 6 post from a prominent right-wing account called End Wokeness . . . .

The next day, a Malaysian MAGA influencer named Ian Miles Cheong posted about a disturbing incident in Ohio in which an American-born woman from Canton, Ohio, Allexis Telia Ferrell, is being prosecuted for killing and eating a cat. (She is pleading not guilty.)

Cheong falsely speculated that she was Haitian, and MAGA ran with it. . . . . It’s hard to describe the sheer weirdness of the discourse, which has also included investigations of whether Haitian immigrants are killing wild ducks or geese — something very different from stealing and killing a person’s pet — and featured a series of memes featuring heroic images of Trump protecting frightened kittens.

JD Vance also jumped on the claim, with possibly the most destructive message. His role in the campaign is to try to apply Yale Law School polish to many of MAGA’s most demented conspiracies. . . . . nd how did he suggest that his followers respond? By continuing to spread baseless claims. “Don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots,” he wrote on X. “Keep the cat memes flowing.”

[O]ne of the defining characteristics of the Trump era is the former president’s willingness to believe (or at least profess to believe) virtually anything negative about his opponents — no matter how outlandish — and then repeat and amplify those claims until they permeate the Republican Party.

But I’m actually less interested in debunking each individual hoax than in answering some questions. Why is MAGA still so gullible? Why didn’t Republicans learn anything from 2020, when they fell for some of the strangest conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard about?

In the days after Jan. 6, 2021, I argued that years of extreme right-wing rhetoric had made millions of ordinary voters vulnerable to the wildest of ideas. If you watch right-wing television — or if you listen to right-wing radio — you will hear the most vicious insults against Democrats and the media over and over. It’s a constant drumbeat of inflammatory rhetoric: “They” hate America. “They” hate Christians. “They” will destroy our country.

And few populations have been more thoroughly demonized during the age of Trump than immigrants. . . . . Trump has been painting a lurid and terrifying picture of the immigrant threat.

Another way of putting it is that animosity fuels gullibility. If you like or respect someone, you’re immediately skeptical of negative claims, and the more outlandish the claim, the more skeptical you’ll be. But if you loathe a person or a population, in a perverse way you become more receptive to the worst stories. After all, they’re the ones that vindicate your hatred the most.

But as our conspiracy crisis continues, I’m realizing that explaining gullibility primarily through the lens of animosity is incomplete.

The problem, then, isn’t just with right-wing villainization, it’s with who the right elevates as its champions. Every movement elevates heroes and leaders, but in the age of Trump, the right’s heroes are created almost entirely through pugilism and confrontation, not through inspiration or elevation. . . . . The first rule of the right is simple: You must fight. In their minds, McCain didn’t fight, so he lost. Romney didn’t fight, so he lost. Trump fought, so he won.

And if your chief combatant is also a gullible conspiracy theorist, then it orients the entire community toward the most lurid of tales.

Of course the friend/enemy distinction is older than politics, but the twist here is that right-wing media doesn’t just elevate the wrong heroes — by making the mainstream media an enemy every bit as loathed as its partisan political opponents — it also walls itself off from accountability. . . . . In this world, the conspiracy theorists are both the fact-finders and the fact-checkers, and there is no restraint on the reach of their lies.

A real-world example helps explain the dynamic. A few days ago, several people I know shared a viral social media post from a Newsmax host named David Harris Jr. that included a video that purported to show a line of Somali illegal immigrants waiting to get driver’s licenses . . . Almost immediately, both local media and Florida officials debunked the video. Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis, posted, “The people waiting for driver licenses & IDs in the video are black AMERICANS. Not Somalians or any type of illegal aliens!”

But MAGA scorns the mainstream media, and it is skeptical of DeSantis after he challenged Trump. In the friend/enemy world of the right, the allegation came from a friend, all the debunking came from enemies, and why would anyone believe those terrible people?

To make matters worse, when you talk to people who are deeply embedded in MAGA America, you know that the friend/enemy distinction isn’t just relevant to how they view public figures, it also applies to personal relationships. MAGA is a very tightly knit community, which gives its members an immense amount of purpose, joy and fellowship, but that community is conditioned on unwavering support for Trump.

How many times can a friend lie to you and remain a friend? Ordinary Republicans should be offended at the way their own media has treated them. They should be outraged at the lack of respect for their independence and intelligence. But for now, they hate or fear their enemies so much that they will not properly vet their friends, and when your friend in chief is Donald Trump, then you will be led astray.