To the Editor:
As we struggle to make sense of the political predicament we find ourselves in, though baffled and bewildered as to how it came to this, I thought Masha Gessen’s recent observation following the so-called “debate” between the two major party vice presidential candidates helpfully illuminating.
Gessen, a noted writer and authority on Russia, the Soviet Union, and authoritarianism, observed that “when you place lies and facts on an equal footing, it basically creates a political sphere in which there is no fact-based reality. That’s a pre-totalitarian condition.” I took this as the warning she no doubt intended. What she means by that is what authoritarians and dictators have long understood, and Putin knows all too well, control the media, and lies become facts.
I have been fortunate to have served in post-communist states and to have heard the stories of those who have lived through the violence and conflict that can result when “lies and facts are given equal footing.” One need only go back to the Bolsheviks, and then Hitler, to see the results of what happens when, to cite the cliché, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a good person to do nothing.”
As the gulags expanded, and the Jews of central Europe were rounded up to exterminate, there were no doubt many in the Soviet Union and Germany who wondered, how did it come to this? In Croatia, where I served after the breakup of Yugoslavia, I recall a young human rights activist tell me how surprised she was when two families on her street disappeared overnight, only later to learn they were Bosnian Muslims, which she had not even known.
James Fallows, in his insightful book “More like Us,” analyzed what makes for successful societies. The key factor he found is that the “us” group is big, for people don’t care about those they define as “them,” rather, they care about “us.” Having the notion of “us” be perceived as broadly inclusive of all is highly correlated with successful societies. Likewise, the opposite is associated with failed states and dysfunctional societies. I served in Somalia for a number of years, and there is an old adage among Somalis: me against my cousin, my cousin and I against our neighbor, and on it went through the Somali clan structure where each “us” group is extremely small.
In the post truth world in which we now live, we no longer need Dictators and Authoritarians to shut down independent media so that lies and disinformation can spread and take hold among us, for we have “social media” and “news” that is nothing short of propaganda, all accorded equal footing to facts and the truth. If repeated enough, and presented as if reality, people are going to believe, and then base their actions upon that which they then have come to accept as fact despite what is objectively and rationally true.
So it has me concerned in our closed two-party system when one of the major party candidates is constantly working to make the “us” group smaller, when that candidate refers to others as “vermin,” openly talks about rooting out and exterminating the “enemy within,” and is urging supporters to “fight, fight, fight.” It has me thinking back to Croatia, and the young woman whose neighbor felt they had to flee – as she stated, they were her neighbors, not “them,” rather, a part of “us.”
And so yes, hard to imagine, difficult even to contemplate, but given the lies and disinformation, and a well-armed population that has been implored to “fight, fight, fight,” and the campaign signage now identifying “them,” are we going to wake to violent militias marching up the street to exterminate the “vermin” and the “enemy within?” So hard to imagine such a scenario in our lovely community, so difficult even to think about, but, with lies and facts on an equal footing with the clear intent to divide us, is this what we’ve now come to?
Mitch Benedict
Bethel