How My Ultra-Liberal Friend Got Brainwashed By Radical Right-Wing Propaganda — 'Full-On, Foam-At-The-Mouth MAGA'
Propaganda is the most dangerous drug epidemic in American history.
Michael Kessel | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
Ragan was the exact opposite of what you’d expect from a Republican voter.
I first met Ragan when he was stark naked, covered in glitter and body paint, a rave — not even a music festival. He was promptly ushered out of the warehouse, into the street, for not having any clothes on.
It was 2008. So, I think he got popped for indecent exposure. People didn’t take to nudity very well back then in New York. I don’t know what happened to him that night, but it’s safe to assume it wasn’t nice.
The next time I met him, he was waving tinsel in the air, wearing a hoodie and a pajama set. He explained to me that it was to help “make the air more beautiful so that world peace can show up,” and then quickly talked about the importance of veganism.
Ragan was the epitome of hippiedom: vegan, long-haired, bellbottom-wearing, anti-war, and pro-civil-rights. Sometime around 2016, we started to notice something odd about him. He was quieter, angrier, and not as unclothed as before.
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By 2020, Ragan had gone full-on, foam-at-the-mouth MAGA. Most of us couldn’t figure out what went on from 2008 to 2020, however, a quick postmortem revealed how he got radicalized.
In the 2000s and 2010s, radical right-wing hate speech was an “edgelord” comedy pick.
Do you remember how common it was for “geeks” to choose edgy humor that involved hate speech back in the day? (I mean, it’s still a thing, but it was overkill and seen as an “edgelord phase” back in the day.)
I do. I was one of them for a while.
I grew up and learned the hard way how harmful that stuff is, and now I’m doing my best to help warn others not to fall into that rabbit hole. But, I digress.
Back in the day, one of the things nerds would do is make fun of right-wing talking heads and hate-watch them. Some of them were able to do it in small doses and walk away with no harm done to their brains.
Others were not so lucky. Much like putting down the straw after a couple of hits of cocaine or speed, some can do it; others can’t. Others become addicted and irritable — acting like the typical tweakers of the neighborhood.
Remember Ragan? That carefree hippie who liked nothing more but to dance the night away? Well, Ragan changed by this time and not in a good way. I watched Ragan turn into an irritable, twitchy, hateful, angry, and paranoid person. Even the smallest mention of Hillary Clinton or a round earth became enough to set him off.
We noticed odd behavior from him. He hit the gym. He started muttering about “pure foods.” His once-strong friendship with our cross-dressing friend Julian* wilted. Julian mentioned he felt scared of Ragan’s aggression.
After a while, my friends started to ask him if he was tweaking. Surprisingly, he said no. We couldn’t piece it together. Why was he so angry all the time?
No matter what we asked, he kept saying he wasn’t doing anything anymore. He had quit drugs to “be pure,” and we just didn’t know what to do anymore.
Eventually, it turned into Ragan ranting about how the government lied about the world being round so that the lizard people could get their way. He was gone.
So, we broke ties with him and told him if he changed back to old Ragan, we’d be here. It was like watching Requiem for a Dream in real life. But for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out what his drug of choice was. Little did we realize it was there in front of us all along.
Yes, there’s a reason I mentioned drugs in that explanation.
Yuri Andropov, former Chairman of the KGB, once said, “Disinformation is like cocaine — sniff once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it every day, though, it will make you an addict — a different man.”
He, of all people, would know. Russia’s KGB spearheaded research into some of the most powerful disinformation techniques known to man. And if Andropov says it turns you into an addict, you better believe him!
The funny thing about hate-watching or rage-watching conservative media is that it does affect what you think. Even if you don’t start off believing what they say, it does start to sink in. You get angrier and angrier, and you can’t figure out why.
Eventually, you’re hooked on right-wing media, it’s changed you into an angry, bitter person, and you can’t even remember why you hated those talking heads in the first place. You become a changed person — an addict high on hate. Hate is addictive.
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Hate tends to light up the same parts of the brain as anger: cortisol, adrenaline, and parts of your mind associated with threats. It readies you to attack a threat.
If you’ve ever been on the verge of a fight, you know that you get a rush from getting ready to spar. Whether people realize it or not, the rush you get from rage and hate can be addictive. The same can be said of the cathartic dopamine flow you get from actually expressing that hate.
Hate, just like anger, can be addictive — even when the feeling itself is unpleasant. Your brain slowly but surely gets rewired toward violence, rage, and dehumanizing the “other.”
While you get addicted, your brain starts rewarding your hate. Why? Because hating one group automatically makes you feel like you’re in another group, hence the “us versus them” mentality you see so often with Trumpers.
There’s a reason why so many Trump rallies involve dog whistles, hate speech, and cries for violence against others. The GOP knows hate junkies vote for them. They’re giving their audience a fix and keeping them hooked for more.
Hate also makes you dumber and more susceptible to scams.
But, what about Ragan’s change in personality? To a point, Ragan’s shift could have been from long-term drug use. However, that doesn’t fully explain his shift in behavior or how oddly gullible he became.
You have to remember, that some of the greatest minds in history have been long-term drug users: Freud, Edgar Allen Poe, Jack Kerouac, Truman Capote…It’s possible to be a drug user who still maintains their cognitive abilities.
So, what gives? Well, rage and hate have unusual, unique traits as far as addictions go. As it turns out, your brain on hate binges doesn’t look as good as a typical pothead’s brain.
Part of the addiction process that happens when you become a rage and hate addict involves brain alterations. Studies show that prolonged repeated exposure to hate speech decreases cognitive brain function.
In other words, it actively makes you dumber. The hormones and chemicals that are released by hate and rage (cortisol and adrenaline, for example) are only meant to be in your system short-term. Long-term? Your ability to reason and think straight starts to suffer.
Because of the way it works in your brain, hate wears you down, slowly making you more susceptible to scams, quack science, and conspiracy theories. This is why so many Q-Anoners start falling for scams and conspiracies that seem laughable to us.
To them, it’s real. To them, that “scam” seems perfectly plausible. Their cognitive abilities are shot because the propaganda fried out their brains. This is why so many Reddit QAnonCasualties users notice a pointed cognitive decline in their Q-following loved ones.
Propaganda — the type that Ragan fell into — is the most dangerous drug epidemic in American history.
We’re always talking about the heroin epidemic or the meth epidemic. It’s true. Those drug epidemics destroy families and communities. However, they don’t hold a candle to the absolute devastation propaganda is doing to our society.
The onslaught of right-wing propaganda has been linked to family annihilation, murders, a government insurrection, as well as a cult involving a woman calling herself the Queen of Canada. It also permanently damaged the dating lives of several generations.
If you look at how many families have been ripped apart by propaganda’s grips, the damage is nothing short of horrific. I’m not even going to touch what it did to our country’s government. That’s another article in and of itself!
What’s so insidious about this is that magazines and newspapers are actively pushing the drug. Just look at what Breitbart and FOX News are doing. They’re not just covering up the damage; they’re encouraging its use.
To avoid this drug, you have to actively work to inoculate yourself against propaganda. And that means that you have to work to block it as soon as you get a whiff of it.
If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, there are resources to get help.
The process of recovery is not linear, but the first step to getting better is asking for help. For more information, referrals to local treatment facilities and support groups, and relevant links, visit SAMHSA’s website. If you’d like to join a recovery support group, you can locate the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings near you. Or you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-799-7233, which is a free 24/7 confidential information service in both English and Spanish. For TTY, or if you’re unable to speak safely, call 1-800-487-4889.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.