Two things I need to share as followups to previous comments and both can be linked to the article Jack shared. The first is about subtle facts that get slipped into conversations and alter what we believe is true. Here is a link that I think clarifies the differences between socialism communism racism and capitalism in a ways that is both clever and easy to remember.
The second is a followup to actions I promised to make regarding a meeting with my district candidate for the US house of representatives. I hand delivered two items directly to the candidate, one was my views and recommendations with respect to his platform items posted on his campaign website and the second on how he can deal with the fear that the current administration is causing by threatening, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the mid term elections, in the hopes of keeping people away from the polls. He promised to read both. I gave him my contact information and encouraged him to have a member of his campaign staff contact me for any clarifications they needed. We'll see what happens. More later.
File the date. A newsletter that has spent months chronicling the week’s atrocities turns, for a second time, to something more fundamental than the news itself: the machinery underneath it. This is what serious writers do when they conclude the emergency is not a single actor but a set of techniques, reusable across decades and regimes.
Note which claim opens the report. Not “here is what is true,” but “here is what is being done to you.” That inversion is the entire discipline of reading propaganda. Historians who study the twentieth century’s authoritarian episodes will recognize every play in Part Two by another name — the firehose is what Arendt called the destruction of the factual world through sheer volume; the Big Lie needs no citation, since the term comes from the century’s ledger of horrors; gaslighting and DARVO are simply the interpersonal versions of a state denying what it has just done in full view of witnesses. Jack is correct that none of these are new. What changes is only the speed of delivery.
Note which principle carries the most weight for a citizen rather than a historian: the illusory truth effect. A society that mistakes repetition for verification is a society already halfway captured, because the capture requires no violence — only volume, and time. This is the quiet mechanism behind every slogan that outlives its evidence.
Part Three is the harder discipline, and the more useful one. Tactics can be memorized. Character has to be read, patiently, in the moments nobody is grading. Jack is correct again here — the accountability test, the two seconds after a direct question, tells you more than a hundred hours of stage-managed appearances. Authoritarian figures are rarely undone by their critics. They are undone by the accumulating record of small, unwatched choices, because that record cannot be edited after the fact the way a speech can.
What the report does not say, and does not need to — because a reader who has followed this far will complete the thought — is that clarity of this kind is not a private virtue. A citizen who cannot be confused cannot be governed by confusion. That is the whole of what these ten plays are built to prevent, and the whole of why naming them, one at a time, in daylight, matters.
Two things to hold onto, without softening: the tactic dies when it is named, and the discipline of clear sight is a defense that has to be practiced, not merely possessed.
Thank you. We are a nation of naive people, because this has not happened here before? Or because we failed to educate adequately? Or because we've been distracted too long by sports, Netflix, consumerism, careers that leave no time for reading, the media were deregulated and big money took over the news? Or we've been comfortable too long, got lazy?
This is today's read. I can't wait. You've already taught me so much Jack. I came on in the last 2 yrs following everything you wrote. I'm a lot more empowered. Everyone else, SUBSCRIBE!
Thank you for this critical information. It is so hard to break through to people- the reality we're experiencing- the potential death of our country, the urgency of climbing the learning curve, and being prepared to vote smart, and resist when autocracy tries to crush dissent.
Maybe this piece will help us be more effective in reaching others. No one likes to be psychologically manipulated, aka gaslighting. It's so subtle and insulting and evil.
Very clear, readable and succinct.
As useful to me in the UK as anywhere else.
My main personal takeaway - convert horror into purposeful action.
Thank you Jack.
Two things I need to share as followups to previous comments and both can be linked to the article Jack shared. The first is about subtle facts that get slipped into conversations and alter what we believe is true. Here is a link that I think clarifies the differences between socialism communism racism and capitalism in a ways that is both clever and easy to remember.
https://stevenerick.substack.com/p/a-view-from-the-cheap-seats-eab
The second is a followup to actions I promised to make regarding a meeting with my district candidate for the US house of representatives. I hand delivered two items directly to the candidate, one was my views and recommendations with respect to his platform items posted on his campaign website and the second on how he can deal with the fear that the current administration is causing by threatening, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the mid term elections, in the hopes of keeping people away from the polls. He promised to read both. I gave him my contact information and encouraged him to have a member of his campaign staff contact me for any clarifications they needed. We'll see what happens. More later.
File the date. A newsletter that has spent months chronicling the week’s atrocities turns, for a second time, to something more fundamental than the news itself: the machinery underneath it. This is what serious writers do when they conclude the emergency is not a single actor but a set of techniques, reusable across decades and regimes.
Note which claim opens the report. Not “here is what is true,” but “here is what is being done to you.” That inversion is the entire discipline of reading propaganda. Historians who study the twentieth century’s authoritarian episodes will recognize every play in Part Two by another name — the firehose is what Arendt called the destruction of the factual world through sheer volume; the Big Lie needs no citation, since the term comes from the century’s ledger of horrors; gaslighting and DARVO are simply the interpersonal versions of a state denying what it has just done in full view of witnesses. Jack is correct that none of these are new. What changes is only the speed of delivery.
Note which principle carries the most weight for a citizen rather than a historian: the illusory truth effect. A society that mistakes repetition for verification is a society already halfway captured, because the capture requires no violence — only volume, and time. This is the quiet mechanism behind every slogan that outlives its evidence.
Part Three is the harder discipline, and the more useful one. Tactics can be memorized. Character has to be read, patiently, in the moments nobody is grading. Jack is correct again here — the accountability test, the two seconds after a direct question, tells you more than a hundred hours of stage-managed appearances. Authoritarian figures are rarely undone by their critics. They are undone by the accumulating record of small, unwatched choices, because that record cannot be edited after the fact the way a speech can.
What the report does not say, and does not need to — because a reader who has followed this far will complete the thought — is that clarity of this kind is not a private virtue. A citizen who cannot be confused cannot be governed by confusion. That is the whole of what these ten plays are built to prevent, and the whole of why naming them, one at a time, in daylight, matters.
Two things to hold onto, without softening: the tactic dies when it is named, and the discipline of clear sight is a defense that has to be practiced, not merely possessed.
#HOLDFAST
Thank you. We are a nation of naive people, because this has not happened here before? Or because we failed to educate adequately? Or because we've been distracted too long by sports, Netflix, consumerism, careers that leave no time for reading, the media were deregulated and big money took over the news? Or we've been comfortable too long, got lazy?
Thank you, Jack. Will read it and decide who best to share it with.
With all this useful information I need to get more organized to use it all in the best way possible. I’ll get to work on that ASAP.
#Holdfast
~Susan
This is today's read. I can't wait. You've already taught me so much Jack. I came on in the last 2 yrs following everything you wrote. I'm a lot more empowered. Everyone else, SUBSCRIBE!
Thank you for this critical information. It is so hard to break through to people- the reality we're experiencing- the potential death of our country, the urgency of climbing the learning curve, and being prepared to vote smart, and resist when autocracy tries to crush dissent.
Maybe this piece will help us be more effective in reaching others. No one likes to be psychologically manipulated, aka gaslighting. It's so subtle and insulting and evil.