Bending Reality
A false conspiracy narrative becomes official White House doctrine
Hi there, it’s been a while since I appeared in your inbox. I’ll briefly reintroduce myself and this revamped newsletter in a minute.
But first, I want to say a few words about yesterday’s news.
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and saw that NASA announced on its official website that the Apollo 11 moon landing was a government hoax. Imagine further that NASA constructed a web page explaining how televised footage of its astronauts walking on the moon was faked. You might scoff at this analogy. After all, on July 20, 1969, an estimated 600 million television viewers from around the world watched this historic event as it was happening. Then there is the abundant evidence:
From the Apollo Moon missions, there are 8,400 publicly available photos, thousands of hours of video footage, a mountain of scientific data, and full transcripts and audio recordings of all air-to-ground conversations. We even have 382 kilograms of Moon rock that Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth. These rocks have been independently verified as lunar by laboratories around the world, ruling out a US conspiracy.
Sure, this is all ho-hum if you live in an evidence-based world. But most of us—even those with the sharpest critical thinking skills—live in a world framed by narratives. And a small percentage of the public believes in a counter-factual narrative that Neil Armstrong never actually walked on the moon. This conspiracy theory was seeded decades ago in popular culture and amplified in recent years by famous influencers. Today, it’s become one of those demonstrably false narratives that society can’t shake.
Conspiracy narratives tend to be publicly fueled by individuals with monetary, political or ideological motives—sometimes all of the above. (This was the focus of my previous, short-lived newsletter.) Think of people like Alex Jones, Candace Owns, Michael Flynn, Robert Kennedy, Jr. If there was a Crackpot Hall of Fame, they would make it on the first ballot.
But nobody in this era weaponizes conspiracy narratives more consequentially than Donald Trump (and his allies). His relentless promotion of the birther conspiracy theory helped propel him onto the national political stage over a decade ago. Since then, he has a well-documented record of conspiracy mongering. Trump’s spouting and sharing of outlandish conspiracy theories is constant and shameless. He hasn’t just polluted the political discourse and warped reality for millions of his followers; Trump’s conspiracist mindset is now driving public policy for the entire country.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that he is using an official government website to codify his false narrative about the January 6 Capitol riot. It also aligns with his larger, publicized plan to re-write other dark chapters of American history. So let’s be clear about the 2016—2026 trajectory: We have gone from “alternative facts” (wink, wink) to an outright assault on knowledge and Kremlin-like manipulation of the media ecosystem. An example of the latter played out recently with the Trump Administration’s shifting rationales for its lethal (and likely illegal) boat attacks off the coast of Venezuela, followed by its shifting explanations for the American military build-up and intervention. Whether the stream of misinformation was strategic or ad hoc, the effect is Kremlinesque:
Beyond overseeing which stories are released, the Kremlin will often “modify the narrative.” Releasing various, different stories with elements of truth increases the noise in the media environment. Thus, the audience faces not only an overwhelming amount of messages but also many different versions of the same story without knowing which one is correct.
This is akin to waging psychological warfare on your own people, and it seems similar to what Trump does on a regular basis. By contrast, however, Trump’s ability to undermine the demonstrably true version of the January 6 Capitol riot is constrained by the visceral images we all saw that day on television. Still, it’s remarkable that he has bent reality to the extent he has. This was lamented by Capitol police officers (more than 140 were injured) in a recent AP article:
Several officers who fought the rioters told The Associated Press that the hardest thing to deal with has been the effort by many to play down the violence, despite a massive trove of video and photographic evidence documenting the carnage.
Trump has called the rioters he pardoned, including those who were most violent toward the police, “patriots” and “hostages.” He called their convictions for harming the officers and breaking into the building “a grave national injustice.”
On the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, USA Today wrote that the Trump White House and Democrats battled “over the narrative around the event.” This was curious framing. Can you imagine a similar phrase if the federal government under Trump had argued on an official website that the 1969 moon landing was a Deep State hoax? USA Today might have said: “Trump and scientists battled over the moon landing narrative.”
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Those familiar with my work know that I have long been interested in narratives that shape the news, public attitudes and personal beliefs. When scrutinizing such narratives, I have often alternated between reported articles and media criticism. This revamped newsletter will continue in that fashion. More to come on this in the next post.
It’s like the world has gone mental recently. Used that as a starting point in my two novels.