| Hey readers, This week's events — the storming of the Capitol, the eventual certification of the election results over the objections of many Republicans, the president's vague admission that he will no longer be president on January 20 — have been on everyone's minds. I think it's worth lingering on how we got here, not least because the state of American governance is so immensely consequential to the lives of billions. Since the election, I've developed the nervous habit of checking in on thedonald.win and similar forums for die-hard Trumpists, and I've observed something striking: Every court ruling that has found no substantial evidence of election fraud and every recount that concluded with the same votes as the original count only make the posters on these forums angrier and even more convinced that the election was stolen. In other words, things that should be evidence against their views only serve to deepen those views. What's going on? A depressing –– and, in hindsight, awfully prescient –– November Atlantic article, "When the MAGA Bubble Burst," describes the scene at an election night party as it became steadily clearer that the president had lost. The piece drew an analogy to the 1956 social psychology book When Prophecy Fails, about a UFO cult whose members became even more convinced of their righteousness when the UFO never arrived.
And so it might go with Trumpists, the article warned: When a true believer is faced with "undeniable evidence" that what he believes is wrong, he "will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view." As we saw, the MAGA bubble did not burst on election night, nor a few days later when the race was called by the networks, nor when the states certified their results, nor when the Electoral College voted. So when Trump seemed to concede the election and sort of condemned the violence in the Capitol, I wondered, "Is this, finally, what will burst the bubble?" From reading extremist forums, it looks like it's the closest it's come — even if some continue to cling tenaciously to Trump. "Wow, what an absolute punch in the gut. He says it's going to be wild, and when it gets wild, he calls it a heinous attack and middle fingers to his supporters that he told to be there. Unbelievable," one supporter complained. "See you in the gulags," one told the others. Most of them believed Biden would be the next president. But there were still a few diehards left. "This MOVEMENT started with Trump. Who gives a fuck if he threw in the towel tonight after 5 years. He just spent 5 YEARS going solo against every supposed ally & the deep state. Do you need this guy to carry you forever? It's OUR turn now. He lit the way, we have to follow the path," a highly voted post declared. The whole thing reminded me of a different detail from When Prophecy Fails, a detail I first ran across in AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky's blog post on cults. According to the book, when the UFO failed to show up, one of the cult members immediately turned around and walked out the door. It's not the case that everyone sticks with a movement as it gets more extreme: the ones who change their minds leave the movement, so if you just look at the people in the movement you'll see even more extreme views — a phenomenon Yudkowsky dubbed "evaporative cooling." Indeed, extremist Trump communities seem deliberately set up to make their moderate members walk away. On thedonald.win, users get banned for accepting defeat and are labeled "doomers" if they say that Biden will be inaugurated or that the Supreme Court won't overturn the election results or that Pence won't unilaterally throw out electoral votes. It may well be that part of the story of Trumpist extremism is that as he lost the election and lost all his subsequent court challenges, as he has incited a mob and condemned the mob and allowed the transition to a new administration, some people walked away while fervor rose among those who remained. The ones who remained were also enthusiastically committed to it enough to wreak havoc, having built a bubble in which even a large number of Trump voters are unwelcome. If combating extremism is one of the big governance challenges of the 21st century, and it looks as though it likely is, then we need to figure out what can be done to stop movements on the trajectory from "political movement" to "violent mob." What drives extremism is a complicated thing, and extremism has changed dramatically since the 20th-century religious movements and cults that When Prophecy Fails documented. Not everyone accepts disappointment after disappointment with doubling down and greater fervor. Some of them change their minds and walk away. Many of them may have walked away last night when Trump admitted the election was over. But in the forums where the president's supporters trade desperate schemes to carry on Trump's grand mission, the ones who walked away can no longer be heard. —Kelsey Piper, @kelseytuoc | 
No comments:
Post a Comment