Reading the Republican convention coverage this morning, I noticed one reporter after another expressing bewilderment at the GOP strategy of taking all the worst vulnerabilities of the Trump record, and meeting them head-on by asserting the opposite: Trump saved America from the pandemic, is the immigrants’ best friend, battles for the rights of women and minorities, has restored respect for America in the eyes of the world, etc. Those reporters need to study their history.
Spinning and rationalizing are the stuff of normal politics, and even public lies are in the traditional toolbox in circumstances where the politician is unlikely to get caught. But the distinctive break from prior norms – amply evident in Trump’s 2016 campaign and from the first days of his administration – is the continual assertion of the opposite of easily verifiable facts (e.g., calling the embarrassingly thin inauguration turnout the biggest in history, calling the GOP’s walloping in the 2018 midterms a “big victory,” etc., etc.).
This shift from manipulative spin to aggressive assertion of the direct inverse of easily verifiable facts has long been understood to be a clear symptom of the transition to authoritarianism:
“O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended. 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘Four.’ ‘And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?'” (George Orwell, 1984, Part 3, Chapter 2)
In 1984, authoritarianism requires a citizen to “reject the evidence of [his] eyes and ears” and makes common sense itself “[t]he heresy of heresies.” Slogans are all unabashed inversions: War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! At rallies, people chant inversions over and over. Inversions stream 24/7 from “telescreens,” as they do now into millions of households via Fox. Orwell was doing nothing more than fictionalizing the shifts to authoritarian rule he had observed during his own life and projecting how the rise of technology would increase, rather than mitigate, the risk.
So here we are. Fox News, conceived by Roger Ailes as an ideological propaganda juggernaut, is “fair and balanced.” The Mexicans, who of course oppose the wall, will “pay for it.” When world leaders shake their heads in disbelief and horror at Trump’s latest blunder, he says they all called “to congratulate me.” When North Korea becomes more aggressive following the rogue regime’s legitimization by the US, Trump has “brought peace to the Korean peninsula.” Trump not only bungled, but exacerbated, the pandemic, and convention viewers are told he has been the “one leader” who “was right” about the virus and did an “incredible job.”
Inversions both train and test loyalty, the quality most valued by Trump. Inversions, which make no sense, train the brain to reach its conclusions based on the authority of the source and one’s membership in the group. Your capacity for empirical observation and independent judgment withers. Faith in the party (or strongman, in this case) and loyalty become the only virtues. And enthusiastic acceptance of the core inversions becomes the essential test of loyalty.
On November 3, we will find out how many million Americans, looking at four fingers, will answer, “five.”