Guest post: A rotten apple or two among the king’s counsellors
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Hand it over or else.
I remember from history classes that during hard times in absolutist monarchies, it was common, for those petitioning for the redress of grievances, to blame harmful conditions and bad policies on a rotten apple or two among the king’s counsellors, rather than the king himself, as complaining about the former was, sometimes, somewhat less dangerous than the latter.
Same in Mao’s China where the disastrous effects of things like the “Great Leap Forward” were always blamed on unfaithful underlings who abused the chairman’s trust and good intentions for their own self-serving ends. The more people were made to suffer as a direct consequence of the chairman’s policies, the more that very same suffering would be blamed on a failure to realize those very same policies fully enough. On the same note, when several leading members of the People’s Temple defected, a few years before the infamous Jonestown massacre, most of them still couldn’t bring themselves to identify Jim Jones himself as the main source of the horrific abuses going on inside the cult, but blamed everything on the self-serving actions of unfaithful, mostly female, staff-members who were actually among the saddest victims of Jones’ reign of terror.
As we can read In Peter Pomerantsev’s biography of British propagandist Sefton Delmer, Joseph Goebbels’ main rival during WW2, there are some practical lessons to be learned from all this. Delmer dismissed the prevailing approach of trying to appeal to the better angels of the German people’s nature as preaching to the choir and a waste of time. Rather than seeing the Nazis as innocent victims brainwashed by propaganda, Delmer thought propaganda was effective because people actually enjoyed it and wanted it – because it gave them permission to be their worst selves as well as (you know what’s coming), an identity (ugh!), a community (double-ugh!) to belong to etc. Instead of appealing to any higher ideals, Delmer’s focus was on driving a wedge between the Nazi party (“Die Parteikommune”) and the individual (especially in the military). While “Der Führer” himself was already treated as a sacred figure and pretty much untouchable at this point, the local party officials, the SS, the Gestapo etc., could be attacked and portrayed as corrupt and decadent traitors engaging in a life of luxury and outrageous sexual depravity while the heroic soldiers were fighting and dying for the Fatherland on the front. To make the attacks appear to come from the inside the German army, Delmer created the character known as “Der Chef” (supposedly a disgruntled military officer; in reality a pre-internet “sock-puppet” and a “troll”) who was hosting one of Germany’s most popular radio stations (actually broadcast from London) at the time.
Interestingly, Delmer’s goal was not to make Germans outraged by the corruption but to encourage them to be corrupt themselves, neglect their duties, sabotage military equipment, feign illness to escape combat etc. People were supposed to think “If our leaders can be that corrupt and self-serving, why not me?”. Incidentally, Russian corruption has been exceptionally useful to the Ukrainians in the current war, diverting vast amounts of money and resources away from the War effort and into the pockets of unfaithful servants.
To bring it back to Trump, it has been suggested that Marjorie Taylor Green’s defection has been more devastating to the MAGA movement than anything Democrats could possibly have said or done, precisely because she was able to attack Trump in MAGA terms, as not being MAGA enough. Realistically though, hardcore MAGA-supporters are probably not going to start abandoning Trump in droves for any reason at this point. Like Hitler, he is already close to untouchable. But Trump is not going to live forever, and Vance, Miller, Hegseth, Bondi etc. may still be vulnerable. Sefton Delmer may have a thing or two teach us in this respect.
Of course Der Chef’s station “Gustav Siegfried 1” was eventually exposed, but Delmer had another trick up his sleeve. His new radio station, “Soldatensender Calais” – also disguised as a Nazi station aimed at soldiers on the front – was serving a mixture of (accurate!) news stories (with a special emphasis on German losses and setbacks to weaken the morale), music, gossip, greetings to individual soldiers*, and the occasional speech by Hitler or Goebbels for credibility.
But this is where it gets interesting: This time the listeners were actually meant to figure out that they were listening to a British station. By providing the listeners with accurate and useful (from a purely self-interested perspective) information – more useful, in fact, than what they were getting from the German media – The Soldatensender was able to earn the trust of its German listeners, but if questioned by the Gestapo, the listeners could plausibly claim that they honestly believed the station was German. Again, the goal was to encourage the listeners to act in their own best interest rather than in the interest of the Nazi regime.
By (among other things) secretly recording the conversations of German prisoners of war, Delmer’s team was able to study their jargon, learn about the latest rumors and gossip, the soldiers’ frustrations with their superiors etc. and then feed it back to the German listeners. Delmer thought that people were never truly “brainwashed” but were always to some degree engaging in roleplay. By showing the Germans that British propagandists were able to play the Nazi role as convincingly as the Nazis themselves, he was able to draw attention to the fake nature of the roleplay, thus giving the listeners permission to start thinking for themselves again.
There are also some important warnings to be derived from Delmer’s story: In order to drive a wedge between the German military and the Nazi party, Delmer put a lot of effort into planting the idea of a powerful anti-Nazi faction inside the military. This effort would later backfire, when, to Delmer’s horror, several war criminals were able to use the myth of this anti-Nazi faction to get off the hook after the war. The book is called How to Win an Information War – The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler. I recommend it for what it’s worth.
*The captain of one German submarine allegedly defected with his crew after the Soldatensender sent him a greeting congratulating him on the birth of his baby. By then the captain had not met his wife for over a year.
So how does all this apply to our current situation? Here are some thoughts. When working to motivate those who already care about democracy and liberal values to get off their asses and fight back against the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda, it is perfectly legitimate to go after Trump himself with everything we’ve got. When dealing with die-hard MAGA supporters, however, it is probably more useful (in terms of effectiveness) to blame “a rotten apple or two” among his counselors, or Fox News, DOGE, the local leaders of ICE etc. When talking to those who share our concerns, it is vital to emphasize the importance of democracy, liberal values, human rights, the rule of law etc., but if our goal is to influence those who don’t already agree with us, we are probably going to achieve more by appealing to their particular beliefs and values, however deranged: When dealing with the Q-Anon conspiracy theorist wing, call out Pam Bondi and Kash Patel for their complicity in the Epstein coverup; when dealing with the isolationist “America First” wing, call out the war-mongering and internationalism of Marco Rubio; when dealing with the pro-Israel faction, call out the horrific Antisemitism of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, and, by extension, their apologists and enablers like Tucker Carlson and JD Vance etc. etc.
Since I have already mentioned Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, I also think there are some valuable lessons to be learned by studying the work of professional cult deprogrammers, especially when dealing with family members who have drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid. The first rule of deprogramming is to not put the subject on the defensive. Don’t argue with them or tell them why they’re wrong, but act curious and interested, ask questions, and give the subject plenty of time to answer*. One further tip for avoiding an adversarial “debate” situation – i.e. for not making it a matter of “winning” or “losing” – might be to say something like “The other day a colleague at work asked me a question I couldn’t quite answer: [Insert your question here]. What would you say to something like that?”. That way you don’t come across as an hostile interrogator trying to put the subject on the hot seat (in fact, you may have been trying to defend the cult, but need the subject’s help to figure out what to say). Stay focused on any line of inquiry that seems to get the subject questioning the cult’s teachings. It might not be the thing that you consider the most compelling argument for leaving. Remember: It’s not about you. The goal is to get the subject back into the habit of thinking for themselves, not to do their thinking for them.
* One common mistake if the subject doesn’t answer a question right away is to move right on to the next one. This is one of those situations in which a long and awkward silence is actually a good thing!
“Delmer thought that people were never truly “brainwashed” but were always to some degree engaging in roleplay.” That’s very interesting – not just on this subject but in general.
And it’s roleplaying all the way up. Hitler, Goring, Himmler, and Goebels weren’t themselves exemplars of the Aryan ideal they extolled. Trump is not the vigorous, mucsular cowboy/astronaut/superhero he’s pictured as on his NFTs. These tyrants claim to be doing everything for “the people” (narrowly and elastically defined, so as to exclude critics, opponents, and enemies, who are simultaneously running scared, and yet dangerously powerful), but are really in it for themselves.