[This is more or less a continuation of the previous post.]
The important variable in democracies shifting to authoritarianism is media.
When people can remain within an informational world that frames all policy issues as zero-sum battles between good and bad people, the foundation of democracy (pluralism) is actively is undermined. And, the response of “both sides are bad,” or any version of “left v. right,” makes the situation worse. We can’t undermine or escape authoritarianism by trying to argue within its frames.
Authoritarianism is a politics of identity, so the more that we accept the depoliticizing of policy questions by framing them as questions of loyalty, univocality, or identity to Us or Them, the more that authoritarianism thrives.
If you argue with Trump supporters about Trump, you’ll get nowhere. And, really, he isn’t the problem. If it hadn’t been Trump, it would have been someone else. (As I argued in a book I tried to publish in 2013. Not that I’m bitter.)
Trump supporters live in a world that has trained them to reject any evidence that he is corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, and mentally unwell as “biased.” This is important.
The way that people get persuaded to reconsider their support of Trump has to be direct and personal, when the leopard eats their face. That isn’t something we can count on happening, so I’m not sure it’s a great strategy (although it is useful to point out that it’s likely to happen).
Scholars sometimes pose the question: why did the slaver states secede? They were doing fine, actually, and Lincoln wasn’t really a threat. The answer is that their media had worked them up about secession. It was possible to be in an informational world that presented innumerable (and I do mean that) abolitionist conspiracies, plots on the part of African Americans (free and enslaved), and threats to the slave economy. Almost all were fabrications, wild exaggerations, nothing more than rumors, or misrepresentations of actual events. The AAS did not flood the South with anti-slavery pamphlets in 1835, but it was continually repeated that they did (and still is because it was so commonly repeated).
Weimar Germany was a world of informational enclaves, in which it was possible to believe that Jews had been proven to be…whatever. As I mentioned in the previous post, and as anyone who has regular contact with a Trump supporter knows, they are in an informational enclave.
So, here’s my crank theory.
Don’t argue with family members about Trump. Instead, try to point out the flaws of their information. Try to get them to understand that they’re being lied to.
I’m not entirely sure about the best strategy, but here are some ideas:
1) Ask them if there is any evidence or information that would persuade them to change their mind on X. X might be whether they should support Trump, if Fox is reliable, specific claims about Trump.
2) Ask them if their media holds Trump’s family to the same standards they held Biden’s.
3) Ask them if their media showed them [this] or reported on [this].
My intuition is that, when they say no to each of these questions, they’re likely to respond with whaddaboutism. I’m not sure that continuing the discussion is worth the time—they’ll just use it to persuade themselves that they’re right. The whole point of being MAGA is upsetting “libruls,” so if you aren’t upset, and just refuse to engage, and treat them as not worth engaging, they don’t get the rush of being an edgelord upsetting a lib.
So, asking things like, “Did you know Trump fell asleep during the NBA game?” “Do you think a family member profiting from what the President does is bad?” and so on. And then don’t engage an argument about whether it happened. If you have them in your social media world, then post information from sites that cite, and that you have double-checked. Sharing information they can easily show is false or misleading confirms their commitment to their media enclave.
Sharing that well-sourced and accurate information is a way of usefully disagreeing. Without arguing.
Leave them uncomfortable. Not about Trump, but about Fox, or wherever they get their information.
You’re putting a hole in the dam, and eventually they’ll run out of fingers.