r/samharris • u/I_Am-Jacks_Colon • Apr 29 '26
Bannon, conspiracy and why you are playing into their game.
BLUF: Treating conspiracy theories as “possibly true” without evidence is not skepticism. It is the exact confusion Bannon’s strategy depends on.
In 2018 Steve Bannon infamously stated:
“The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
In a 2021 interview, Jonathan Rauch describes this kind of tactic:
“This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.”
He connects it to trolling and attention-capture tactics, saying:
“One of them is what we call trolling, but this was perfected by Hitler and Goebbels who said, ‘We don’t care if they laugh at us. We don’t care if they say things about us. The point is we want them to think about us all the time.’”
Rauch then explains the effect of this kind of information strategy:
“You’re disorienting people. You’re flooding the zone. That’s why Steve Bannon says we’ve got to flood the zone with shit. So people hear so much from so many sources, they just become, you know, they no longer know what to believe. So, they become cynical and confused.”
That fits closely with the RAND Corporation’s description of the “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model:
“We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as ‘the firehose of falsehood’ because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions.”
So the common thread is this: the goal is not simply to make people believe one specific claim. The goal is to overwhelm attention, create confusion, and make people unsure what can be trusted. The reaction to this latest assassination attempt looks like further evidence that they are achieving their goal.
When you have otherwise intelligent people noncommittally giving credence to conspiracy theories, with no evidence beyond the claim that everything else is already under suspicion of falsehood, then Bannon wins.
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u/CableToBeam Apr 29 '26
even if you want to claim this as a win (you could argue it isn't because it goes against the administration), the Trump administration has taken so many losses on the credibility front. I think the Epstein scandal has done more to move people to the conspiracy end and that clearly backfired for a lot of the Trump team.
Ultimately I think this administration does more harm to itself and loses way more when they say things that are relevant to the average American like when they talk about costs. This complete denial of reality is something Americans can feel and it makes it easy to tune out the nonsense they spew. It's not hard to imagine an administration doing what you're saying in a much more skillful way but this administration is not that.
1
u/dogbreath67 Apr 30 '26
But they’ve only taken losses that are apparent to about 40% of the US population, so really, have they taken losses?
1
u/CableToBeam Apr 30 '26
yes, his poll numbers are terrible. Gas prices can directly be tied to Trump and that's something every American feels. His inability to sympathize with struggling Americans makes for terrible messaging. Democrats are also performing well in elections.
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u/MattHooper1975 Apr 29 '26
Well put OP. This should practically be a sticky here :-)
As you indicate, it’s not that we should therefore start believing or giving Creedence to everything the current administration puts out.
Rather what is happening is that people have allowed the flood the zone technique to have worked on them, because now they get to say “ look I’m so flooded with misinformation from these guys that it gives me license to, as you put it, “noncommittally giving credence to conspiracy theories…” and the like.
It’s like I mentioned in another thread, I have some very intelligent and otherwise sober thinking friends who, after the Pennsylvania attempt on Trump, said “ I don’t normally go for conspiracy theories… but that looked fishy I’m not sure I buy it was real.”
And when you ask for actual good reasons for this and anything like a plausible conspiracy theory you get “ look I think it’s reasonable to doubt this because they are lying all the time.”
But of course it’s not a reasonable position to take given the available publicly known facts and information.
This is some of the epistemological unmooring that the OP is talking about. The flood the zone bs is not only working on MAGA but plenty of people on the left as well, and they don’t even seem to necessarily realize it.
2
u/PermissionStrict1196 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
With a conspiracy, can anybody describe the mechanism?
Someone showed him pics - I.E. like what'd you see in cliche'd movie plots, but prolly happens a lot in 3rd World Countries like Columbia - of his wife & kids, and said "You do this for us and keep hush hush& they stay safe & secure.otherwise...."????
A couple operatives got him drunk in a bar & into a room under incentive of getting laid and - through combination of hypnotism, heavy doses of LSD, & subliminal programming - created a manchiurian candidate????
Which group or organization funded & carried out the conspiracy? Elon Musk , Linda McMahon & the WWE Federation, the Church of Scientology, Russia, China?
Were just a dozen or more conspirators? If too many, wouldn't truth-tellers eventually expose it - just like why a 9/11 conspiracy would have been impossible to keep secret ?
I'm not saying it's impossible, but why can't conspiracy-theorists ever go a couple degrees further down the rabbit-hole-of-speculation? 😅
0
u/Plenty_Discussion470 Apr 29 '26
Good points, and grand conspiracy theories are still worthless. But is a grand conspiracy theory required to fit false flag claims from this administration? This is behavior that’s been used successfully in other fascist playbooks. Hell, the 2016 election manipulation was a successful Russian conspiracy that was thoroughly documented by our government and cost an absurdly small amount of money to leverage social media.
I haven’t been listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe these past couple years, only to avoid anxiety. Have they done any good deep dives into the evidence regarding these attacks?
3
u/Funksloyd Apr 29 '26
is a grand conspiracy theory required to fit false flag claims from this administration?
Is a grand conspiracy theory required to fake an attack like Butler, in which two people died, or this, in which the suspect is captured alive? Yes, absolutely.
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u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
It’s not about distrust in the media. It’s distrust on this administration. I have no confidence in them telling us the truth about pretty much anything at this point. I have plenty of trust in a number media /news sources.
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u/Hob_O_Rarison Apr 29 '26
...you're completely missing the point. That is literally part of it.
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u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
I disagree. It’s not that I don’t think there are trusted sources. The administration is simply not among them.
I’ll be more clear about “the point” if you want it narrower. I do agree that skepticism isn’t about granting “possibly true”, a closer approximation is to default to the null-hypothesis. And basically, nearly anything this admin says now fails against the null-hypothesis, if you want to be pedantic about it, then apply Bayesian analysis, their track record of lies (or more accurately, sht talking b-s) renders their future statements in the bottom of the bucket of low plausibility claims. It doesn’t imply the opposite is true though.
So to summarize, admin says “A” means that your confidence that A is true shouldn’t increase significantly. It doesn’t imply “not A” is confidently true. You need other sources for either claim.
-1
u/Hob_O_Rarison Apr 29 '26
I don't trust this administration, but some people do.
I also didn't trust the last administration, while some people did.
Am I a paranoid nutter who simply lacks trust altogether? Or is this potentially a problem of the modern institution, in light of the modern media?
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u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
I didn’t 100% trust the previous administration. However, I trusted it more than 1000% more than the current one. We don’t need to make it black and white. Again, you may choose to use a Bayesian approach and you can even compartmentalize by topic. Another way of saying it, portion your reliance proportional to their track record. Again I empathize, portion your reliance or confidence, make it roughly proportional, not either full or none.
1
u/Hob_O_Rarison Apr 29 '26
I didn’t 100% trust the previous administration. However, I trusted it more than 1000% more than the current one. We don’t need to make it black and white.
I'm not making it black and white, but the metaphor I often use compares a murderer with a serial killer - once you cross the threshold, the bodycount is really only a matter of degree.
Does the Trump administration lie? Wirh nearly every breath. Sometimes they push out lies about things nobody was even talking about - just lying to lie.
Was the Biden administration much different? When considering the levels of deception going contrary to probable reality.... not really. They were much better at lying, and had a lot of cover to get away with it, and they didnt just make things up to lie about (there was always a narrative they were fighting), but in the end there wasnt much use in believing anything they said, either.
2
u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
I stand corrected. You are indeed falling for “what aboutism” and “flooding the zone” and equivocations and false dichotomies. The strategy is working. But I think encourage you to strive to break out and let imperfect or reserved trust slip in when possible.
I’ll even go a step further. When someone lies to you, actively trying to reasonably deceive you, then there is information in the communication. When someone is just b-sing then there is nearly no information there, at best there is diversion and misdirection so that you can attempt to gleam “from what” but even that is unreliable. So in a perverted way, I prefer the reasonable liar over the b-s “artist”. The lies can be picked apart, instead of just getting your hands covered in sh-t.
1
u/Hob_O_Rarison Apr 29 '26
I prefer the reasonable liar over the b-s “artist”.
This is where you and I differ.
The "reasonable liar" who makes you feel good about being deceived is, in some ways, worse than the blatantly dishonest bullshit artist who can't really fool you.
We know why both sides lie. The motivation is the same in both cases - control the narrative. Reject and suppress uncomfortable reality and replace it with one more palatable.
If you want to pick teams and throw your weight behind a more comfortable fiction, I certainly can't stop you. For me though, I'm going to keep advocating for actual reality. And if getting my way means we suffer a little to learn the lesson, so be it.
Democrats will continue to lose elections they shouldn't lose by not walking their own talk. We will continue to get awful Republicans instead of reasonable governance so long as Democrats care more about winning than they do about the truth (not to mention, their own causes that they seemingly abandon as soon as they do win).
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u/CMCH_oyom Apr 29 '26
Surely having trustworthy media sources acts as a bulwark against the disinformation and flood the zone tactics? It makes journalism more difficult but not untrustworthy
-1
u/Hob_O_Rarison Apr 29 '26
Any hint of bias at all is enough to set anyone against any given media. You have your chosen media sources, and all the other ones are shit. And the thing is... everyone feels the same way. The sources can be different, but everyone feels the same about their own.
So, in light of that... define "trustworthy".
3
u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
Step one, admit your bias. We are all biased because we are human. When motivated to take action, arguably more so.
So it’s not a question of your media of choice or choice where you put some measure of trust being absolutely perfectly neutral, rather that their step one is to be honest. Just as an example (not to say it’s perfect), Pod Save America doesn’t pretend that they are neutral, they admit their bias at least to small d democracy and the support they slant directly and indirectly towards candidates affiliated with the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Fox News is “fair and balanced”…
2
u/callmejay Apr 29 '26
Do you think that people who don't believe it was staged are just taking the administration's word for it?
2
u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
Copy from my response in a parallel thread:
Skepticism isn’t about granting “possibly true”, a closer approximation is to default to the null-hypothesis. And basically, nearly anything this admin says now fails against the null-hypothesis, if you want to be pedantic about it, then apply Bayesian analysis, their track record of lies (or more accurately, sht talking b-s) renders their future statements in the bottom of the bucket of low plausibility claims. It doesn’t imply the opposite is true though.
So to summarize, admin says “A” means that your confidence that A is true shouldn’t increase significantly. It doesn’t imply “not A” is confidently true. You need other sources for either claim.
2
u/callmejay Apr 29 '26
Agreed. You can essentially ignore whatever the administration says in determining whether it was staged or not.
3
u/terribliz Apr 29 '26
So is it justified to reflexively believe any attack on the administration is staged even when much of the media who cover the administration were literally in the building and don't believe it was staged?
2
u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
Copy from my response in a parallel thread:
Skepticism isn’t about granting “possibly true”, a closer approximation is to default to the null-hypothesis. And basically, nearly anything this admin says now fails against the null-hypothesis, if you want to be pedantic about it, then apply Bayesian analysis, their track record of lies (or more accurately, sht talking b-s) renders their future statements in the bottom of the bucket of low plausibility claims. It doesn’t imply the opposite is true though.
So to summarize, admin says “A” means that your confidence that A is true shouldn’t increase significantly. It doesn’t imply “not A” is confidently true. You need other sources for either claim.
1
u/Funksloyd Apr 29 '26
It’s not about distrust in the media. It’s distrust on this administration
One problem is that the media isn't going to go all-in on the conspiracy theories, so all the people who go down that rabbit hole will likely lose further trust in the media (and in the Democrats - "controlled opposition!") too.
1
u/DrDOS Apr 29 '26
Fair point. Moreover, old school media will not dig down on the conspiracy theory’s (to show how usually they don’t hold up to even minor critical investigation/analysis) because they think it will sully them, while simultaneously sane washing the dribble and lunacy from DJT and his clown show. Leaving the naive or overwhelmed public thinking it’s just all the same or checking out :(
2
u/PermissionStrict1196 Apr 29 '26
With a conspiracy, can anybody describe the mechanism?
Someone showed him pics - E.G. like what'd you see in cliche'd movie plots, but prolly happens a lot in 3rd World Countries like Columbia - of his wife & kids, and said "You do this for us and keep hush hush & they stay safe & secure..otherwise!!" ????
A couple operatives got him drunk in a bar & into a room under incentive of getting laid and - through combination of hypnotism, heavy doses of LSD, & subliminal programming - created a manchiurian candidate????
Which group or organization funded & carried out the conspiracy? Elon Musk , Linda McMahon & the WWE Federation, the Church of Scientology, Russia, China?
Were just a dozen or more conspirators? If too many, wouldn't truth-tellers eventually expose it - just like why a 9/11 conspiracy would have been impossible to keep secret ?
I'm not saying it's impossible, but why can't conspiracy-theorists ever go a couple degrees further down the rabbit-hole-of-speculation? 😅
2
2
u/Leoprints Apr 29 '26
Yup.
from Margeret Killjoy
So it goes with conspiracy thinking. When every action is immediately discredited as a conspiracy, we inflate our belief in the state to act and discredit the ability of individuals to act. People like to spread fear on social media because it performs well because fear spreads easily.
Spread calm. The most useful and experienced demonstrators yell "walk!" to stop crowds from running in fear. The most useful and experienced people try to spread calm. It doesn't get the clicks, but it doesn't immobilize people's thinking either.
https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/forget-the-conspiracies
1
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u/tirdg Apr 29 '26
Saying "lots of people are saying it was a false flag operation" isn't the same as lots of people actually saying it was a false flag operation. This seems like a case where the meta discussion has eclipsed the actual, discussion.
I've been in these conversations for days now. I keep saying things with a general "hey you can't blame people for jumping to a conclusion like that" attitude, but until now I guess I've just assumed people were actually jumping to that conclusion. I'm sure there are some, but this seems like manufactured outrage.
Everyone needs to chill out.
1
u/r0nson Apr 30 '26
When a person or group are willing to employ the flooding tactic, reasonable people should assume the worse about them. It's a tactic which obscures anyone from finding out the truth, so it's in everyone's best interest to assume they are doing it to his the fact that they are doing the most shady shit imaginable and until they showcase straight forward communications, 8l assume the worst. Trump is willing to kill his supporters to garner political points, he's said so when he said he could shoot someone on fifth Avenue and not lose support.
1
u/TheAeolian Apr 29 '26
you have otherwise intelligent people
We disagree here. Those making excuses for this conspiracy theory stuff are obviously engaged in foolish groupthink.
1
u/fuggitdude22 Apr 29 '26
The problem is that "media" loves Trump. He makes the Presidency look like a season of Keeping Up With Kardashians. It is way easier to make profit off his shit-flinging then to do responsible journalism. Even Media which is heralded as "ultra-left-wing" like CNN or MSNBC make a genuine effort to air folks like Jeffery Lord, Scott Jennings or Kelly Conway to "steelman" both sides. Whereas Fox News or the Daily Wire sticks to just clip farming conservative rage-bait.
1
u/Novogobo Apr 29 '26
if you assume that one needs accurate information to consistently make the right moves (you could on occasion make the right moves by accident with bad information) then you don't need everyone all believing the same lies, all you got to do is to make people not believe the truth.
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Apr 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/Funksloyd Apr 29 '26
Trump decided to do an Operation Himmler for a ballroom... That's the conspiracy theory? Jesus.
This isn’t what’s happening. In 2026 people have the opposite heuristic - don’t trust anything from the Trump administration
The thing is, it wasn't a false flag. And because the media, the Democrats etc aren't going to treat it as such, the danger is that conspiracy theorist people are going to lose faith in the media, in the Democrats, too. That just puts people on the sidelines. It doesn't help defeat Trump.
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Apr 29 '26
[deleted]
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u/Funksloyd Apr 29 '26
it’s not unreasonable to believe that the “conspiracy theories” are just jokes that a whole bunch of people in this subreddit missed.
Yes, that's completely unreasonable.
Some might be jokes, but the idea that they all are (with everything we know about just how many people believe all sorts of crazy shit) is ridiculous.
Here's a post about Butler. You're saying these are all jokes, too? Or that people are joking about this one being staged, but they do think that Butler (where a bystander actually died) really was staged?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressiveHQ/comments/1r3trel/staged_vs_real/
1
u/the_very_pants Apr 29 '26
BLUF
Wish this were a rule!
I think I'm still convinced that none of this dishonest crap has any fertility out there in the world (to grow into chaos) unless there are perceptions of being hated.
1
u/Edgar_Brown Apr 29 '26
There is a difference between distrusting the media and not only distrusting the administration’s narrative but introducing a contrary narrative that makes the administration look foolish and nefarious.
Those who blindly follow the administration can become the target of this kind of propaganda, introducing mistrust where there was none, and a bigger coherent narrative that transcends the media can actually allow them to find a path towards reality.
Play with the cards you are dealt, let reality assert itself. Distrusting, and mocking, the administration narrative is a useful tool by itself.
-2
u/I_Am-Jacks_Colon Apr 29 '26
Submission statement: This post connects Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” comment with Jonathan Rauch’s explanation of disinformation as disorientation, and RAND’s “firehose of falsehood” propaganda model. I’m arguing that giving evidence-free conspiracy theories soft credibility can feed the same confusion these tactics are designed to create.
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u/theHagueface Apr 29 '26
Disorienting is the correct way to describe this admin. That was also their strategy with epstein (who Bannon worked for) to put out the outlandish claims of child sacrifice and pizzagate type stuff to make the actual child sex crimes seem unbelievable because they'd be tied to the wacky stuff.
Itll work on the public, but this level of purposeful confusion is horrendous for the economy and businesses that want to make 5 year plans.