In WaPo Gary Sargent muses on the Trump behavior pattern:
To date, Trump has made over 1,600 false or misleading claims as president. Routinely, the lies are demonstrably false, often laughably so. But this actually serves his ends. It is impossible to disentangle this from his constant effort to undermine the news media, seen again in today’s NBC tweet. In many cases the attacks on the media are outlandishly ridiculous, dating back to the tone-setting assertion that the media deliberately diminished his inaugural crowd sizes, even though the evidence was decisive to the contrary. Here again, the absurdity is the whole point: In both the volume and outsize defiance of his lies, Trump is asserting the power to declare the irrelevance of verifiable, contradictory facts, and with them, the legitimate institutional role of the free press, which at its best brings us within striking distance of the truth.
Press critic Jay Rosen has surmised that Trump represents something broader, “an organized campaign to discredit the mainstream press in this country,” which “takes many forms.” To wit: When conservative activist James O’Keefe got busted trying to bait The Post with a false accuser of Moore, to discredit the believable charges against him, O’Keefe skipped over questions about whether he had employed the woman, instead citing laughably meaningless video “evidence” to cast further doubt on The Post’s commitment to reporting the truth. Those who claim O’Keefe is now “on the defensive” miss the point. He isn’t trying to win an argument. The goal is to render fact- and evidence-based inquiry itself a cause for suspicion.
But it’s important to remember this behavior was not born with Trump. The right-wing has been disregarding the great importance of truth, if the steady stream of falsehoods and truth-shading and misleading claims I find in every single piece of conservative email I receive is any indicator – and I believe it is – for years. Trump is simply the leading proponent.
But I’ve now run across an old term in today’s reading twice now, and that’s agitprop. Short for agitational propaganda, it’s a form of propaganda credited to the old Soviet Union, although I suspect it’s much older than that. Its purpose is not to inform the public of important facts so that decisions can be made and etc. The content of agitprop, as determined by those who control its distribution, has little connection to truth, to reality on the ground. Instead, the content is that determined as best for manipulating the consumers of agitprop into doing what those who control the agitprop want them to do.
Source: Wikipedia
It’s basically an intellectual wrist lock that the victim doesn’t notice, even as he’s escorted into the required position; meanwhile, the astute reader can sometimes hardly believe their eyes.
At this point, the unknowing victim of agitprop, on reading this post, will no doubt assert that the “mainstream liberal media” also engages in agitprop, and will cite the occasional inaccurate article as evidence. But there’s a problem with this objection.
The mainstream media knows their audience wants truth, not lies, and so they fact-check and fact-check. When they fall off the wagon, they jump back on. Even in today’s world of reduced revenues, the best ones soldier on, because journalism is an honorable profession with expectations of its practicioners; if they become known as liars, they’ll lose their readership and become another has-been.
But let’s consider the producers of content labeled agitprop today, which would be Trump and O’Keefe, from the article above. Trump, in less than a year of his Administration, has more than 1,600 documented lies. These are not claims and assertions, but documented in the finest sense of the word – his words on tape, in legal documents, uttered at rallies, at press conferences. It’s in black and white, as our grandparents would have said.
And consider his little re-tweet of today. In the finest tradition of agitprop, as noted by The New York Times:
President Trump touched off another racially charged furor on Wednesday by sharing videos from a fringe British ultranationalist group purportedly showing Muslims committing acts of violence, a move that was swiftly condemned by Britain’s prime minister as well as politicians across the spectrum.
The videos Mr. Trump retweeted were titled: “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!” But the assailant in one of them was not a “Muslim migrant” and the other two showed four-year-old events with no explanation.
If you’re a Trump supporter, did you watch those videos? How did they make you feel? All steamed up? Congratulations, you’re a victim of agitprop. Didn’t feel the wrist lock, did you? But you’re not feeling any too friendly towards Muslims right now, I’m guessing.
And now you may be mad at me, because, well, I’ve just insulted your ability to make your own judgments. But before you flip me off, read just a little bit further.
This Thanksgiving I shared with my wife’s family in Michigan, and we know a couple of the family voted for Trump – I can only guess that they are still Trump supporters, as my mother-in-law absolutely forbade political talk during the get-together. But I’ll tell you what, they are really nice people. They have grown up kids that work hard, they go to church, help out at various things, while holding down their own jobs. Probably give their shirts off their back if need be.
And this is no surprise. I like them. They’re good, honest folks.
And that’s their downfall.
See, many people – most people – walk around with a hidden assumption in their brains. It’s a really good one, too. That assumption is that other people are about as honest as I am. And it’s a good assumption to have within our community, because it helps set expectations, predict the behavior of others, and when someone violates that assumption, you can label them as untrustworthy and to be avoided (if they went off the low end), or worthy of leadership positions (if they exceed expectations).
The problem is that Trump is so fucking aberrant (my friends know I rarely swear, so you can take that adjective as a serious word selection) in the honesty department that folks who rely on intuition and how what he says makes them feel are completely mislead. He is totally off their radar screens. Think about it.
From the objective evidence, he has no allegiance to truth.
We’re not talking “liberal opponents,” or “fake news”, or any other convenient misleading statement that makes my conservative reader feel good. We’re talking truth, facts on the ground, invincible documentation. The things that our parents and grandparents would have held in deep respect. Remember that? Remember when you were paddled for lying when you were a kid?
Evidently, Trump never got that paddling. When he told us that we were suffering through a terrible crime wave during the Presidential campaign, someone should have swatted him so hard one of his buttocks would have fallen off and rolled away, because the FBI statistics – the best in the world – show us near a historical low.
But that’s agitprop for you.
And in case you’re the odd person who thinks the “truth” doesn’t matter, let me address that. I could give you a hypothetical situation about how awful it’d be to just shout lies at each other until the Nation collapses, and the importance of recognizing the truth as politically neutral, and how it’s our best tool for determining our way forward, and how we should virtually worship at the alter of truth. And I completely believe that.
But this’ll catch your attention. Imagine you’re following Trump through a jungle. There’s the great leader, hacking his way through the path, machete in hand just to show how macho he is. Whack Whack!
And then he comes to a sign. It’s new & clean, and it says
WARNING: MINEFIELD
You’re going to skirt that field, aren’t you? But wait – Trump has grabbed the sign, he’s tugging away at it, oh it’s out of the ground and tossed aside! And then he snorts and proclaims, “That’s where we’re going. There are no mines here.”
And then he gestures at you to lead the way.
This is why truth is important in life. Lying may seem like a useful shortcut to get what you want, but in the end it just dooms you to disappointment, being shunned, imprisoned. That’s why Trump’s Administration, despite his frantic self-congratulations, has been such a disappointment to both sides of the political spectrum.
