Under a Spell

The power of lies, and how we can break it

Over the last week, I kept hearing a line from a particular book over and over in my mind. And I saw many people echoing it in social media posts and in public statements. People have brought it up in conversations repeatedly. You’ve probably heard it, too. And as the week went on, it only seemed to become more relevant the more it was repeated.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

This week we saw the party in power blatantly, repeatedly, shamelessly lie. They lied like they breathed. They lied about the events of Trump supporters’ attempted coup on January 6, 2021, saying that Democrats had “reversed reality” about the events of that day, that “it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection,” and that Donald Trump had “corrected a historic wrong” when he pardoned convicted January 6th rioters. They called these pardoned criminals “patriotic citizens who had been viciously overcharged, denied due process, and held as political hostages by a vengeful regime.” They openly lied, knowing that there is copious publicly available video and photo evidence of the attempted coup, evidence that shows millions of dollars in damage, rioters assaulting police officers, and a mob shouting that they would hang Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. But according to the regime, these were just peaceful, patriotic victims of lying Democrats.

And then Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. And before her name had even been released to the public, Donald Trump and his goon squad had begun lying about the incident. Trump said that Ms. Good ran over the ICE agent with her car and he was lucky to be alive. Video footage of the incident clearly shows the agent was not run over–in fact, it is questionable whether the car even touched him. Vice President JD Vance and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said “that woman” was committing “domestic terrorism” by blocking the road and, in their version of events, trying to run over agents. Ms. Good was no domestic terrorist. She had no criminal history, and her only encounter with law enforcement in her entire life prior to the incident was receiving one traffic ticket. And at least one car can be seen driving around her with room to spare in video footage of the shooting. In the video, Ms Good even appears to be waving to the agents to drive around her vehicle before they get out of their truck and approach her. The video also shows that her car’s tires were pointed away from the agents as her vehicle started to move, indicating that she was not necessarily trying to run them over, and may even have been trying to avoid hitting them. Law enforcement experts questioned the tactics of the ICE agent who killed Ms. Good, saying he may have put himself at unnecessary risk by walking in front of her car instead of staying to the side of it, where he was originally positioned. They also said he could have endangered bystanders by firing his weapon at a moving vehicle, and by causing its driver to lose control when he shot her in the face. But none of this mattered to the regime. Before video of the incident was reviewed, before any investigation had been completed, before Renee Good’s name was even known, they had begun to insist that her death was her own fault, that she was a domestic terrorist, and that she was the real criminal.

There are other lies that the regime has told this week that have gotten lost in the chaos they created. They continued to call the Jeffrey Epstein files and the case surrounding them a “Democrat hoax.” They lied about their invasion and bombing of Venezuela, calling it a “law enforcement” action instead of a military action to try to avoid explaining how they can be justified in invading a country the United States is not at war with, and where Congress has not authorized any military action. Their answers about who is in charge of the country, what the United States’ role in running Venezuelan affairs will be, and when the people of Venezuela will be able to hold a free election keep changing depending on the day and the person who’s asked. And while the red hat regime claims that Venezuela is better off without dictator Nicolas Maduro in power, his vice president and immediate successor is currently acting as president, leaving Maduro’s government and its supporters still in power. Whether this relatively minor change in leadership will lead to any serious or lasting reforms in Venezuela remains to be seen.

The party is telling us to reject the evidence that we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears, and to instead believe the grossly false mythologies they’re trying to spin around events that are inconvenient for their agenda.

Why? Why is the regime so insistent on spreading these lies and convincing people to believe them? Why does it need us to believe its version of events instead of the truth that we can all see for ourselves?

Because the lies are what keep them in power. The lies are how they paint a thin veneer of legitimacy over their behavior. It’s how they convince loyalists and apathetic observers that they are a legitimate government, instead of an authoritarian fascist movement that is rapidly waning and desperate to cling to power. They know that the midterm elections will be held in less than 10 months, and the odds–and the polls–are not in their favor. They also know that, in 2028, no matter how they spin tales of his physical prowess and astonishing vigor, Donald Trump cannot run for president again. He will either be too feeble or too politically weak to have any real chance at running for an unconstitutional third term in office. They will have to pick someone else. And right now, they have no clear heir to the MAGA throne, no figurehead with enough public popularity to stand any serious chance at winning. JD Vance has about as much charisma as a damp washcloth. The various factions within the MAGA movement are too busy fighting each other to choose and unite behind a single candidate (just look at the political food fight that was Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference last month). There’s no good way out of the mess they’ve made for themselves. Their only hope now is to convince enough Americans that the state of our country isn’t as bad as we can clearly see that it is, with our grocery and gas prices still too high for our wages to keep up, our international relationships turned to ash, and our country in an even deeper cultural and political crisis than we were before they took over. Their only chance to hold onto power, or to have any hope of regaining some of it in the future, is to convince enough Americans to reject the evidence of their own eyes and ears and the needling of their own consciences. So they lie.

To a point, the lies are effective. They demand that MAGA loyalists and ordinary citizens reject the evidence in front of them, keeping them too focused on trying to understand or believe the regime’s pseudo-reality to think about what they’re really seeing. They attempt to terminate or discredit any investigation before it starts, telling everyone what the official version of events will be before the evidence can be examined, and then locking out anyone who could potentially contradict their foregone conclusions. Their lies play on people’s need to feel that they are good people, to feel patriotic, to be part of the group in power, and to avoid unfamiliar and scary people or ideas. These lies make people feel good, like they’re part of a wonderful secret others just don’t understand. This in turn reinforces group-think and rewards loyalty to the leader of the movement, and to the movement itself.

If this all sounds like some sort of insane hypnotic dark wizard’s cult, then you’re not far off. The lies act like a spell, keeping us focused on the leaders and their visions of glory, keeping us from seeing the truth. The more we listen, the harder it is to stop listening, and the harder it is to know what’s real. Soon, if we listen to enough lies, we stop being able to distinguish that there is such a thing as truth. At that point, truth no longer exists, because it no longer matters. The only thing that matters, the only thing that’s “true,” is the repeated chant telling you what to see, what to hear, what to believe. Soon that becomes the only thing you can see, and the only thing you believe. Then truth ceases to exist, because no one knows what it is, and no one cares.

So what can we do? How do we keep ourselves from falling under that spell? And what about the people who’ve already fallen for it? Can it be broken?

It can be broken, but it’s hard. And frankly, that’s not my area of expertise. Survivors of cults and other high-control groups have researched what leads people to join and leave these groups. They’ve written about how they broke the spells they were under in these groups, and how they escaped and rebuilt their lives. If you’re trying to leave MAGA, or you know someone you’re trying to bring back from its hold, read up on the experiences and work of these survivors. Listen to people who were once deep into MAGA culture and have since woken up to reality. Listen to their stories and learn what helped them, and other cult survivors, break the spell. They can tell you better than I could.

I will tell you what you can do to protect yourself, based on what’s worked for me and for people I know who are fighting back against the regime and its lies. One of the most important things you can do to protect yourself from the lies and from the dark spell they’re trying to cast is to stop listening. Unless you are required to read or listen to the speeches and propaganda of regime figureheads as part of your professional work or role in the resistance movement (for example, if you are a journalist, historian, or political scientist), don’t. You don’t have to subject yourself to the lies. You don’t have to endanger yourself by letting them cast their spell over you. So stop listening. You can read summaries or excerpts from reputable journalists to learn what most people actually need to know.

Another thing you can do is refuse to engage in debate with bad actors about objective reality. Imagine if someone came up to you on the street with a camera and a microphone and told you that the earth was flat, that you should prove them wrong, and that if you didn’t then that meant you were admitting that they were right and the earth is flat. We know the earth is round–we don’t need to argue about that, and we shouldn’t. Nobody with any intellectual honesty would argue that a fact as basic as “the earth is round” is something that should be debated. If someone actually demanded that you debate this fact with them, and that if you refused or lost then you must admit that the earth is flat, you would roll your eyes and walk away.

This is how we should respond to demands for debate and arguments over objective truth–just don’t. We can debate opinions or solutions to problems; we do not debate facts. One of the facts that we should not debate with anyone is that all human beings, regardless of who they are, have rights that they enjoy by virtue of being human, and that no other human being has the right to take away from them. This includes, and is not limited to, the right to free speech, the right to freedom of religion (and the right to choose not to practice one), the right to be safe from unreasonable searches and arrests by law enforcement, the right to not be deprived of your life or freedom or property without due process, the right to be treated with basic dignity and decency, etc. Just because a person is different from you does not mean that they have more or less rights than you do. And if someone treats another person in a way that violates these rights, that person ought to be held accountable for their behavior and face appropriate consequences for it. These rights are the bedrock of a functional democracy. They are not up for debate, so we must refuse to debate them. Known historical facts, such as “the riot at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 was a violent attempted coup by Trump supporters egged on by Donald Trump,” are also not up for debate. We do not debate whether facts are facts.

If you are tempted to argue or debate with someone over objective truths like this, or you encounter someone who demands that you debate them, don’t. The moment you start getting bogged down in their arguments over semantics, word games, logic puzzles, analogies, or demands to argue whether reality is real, you’ve already lost the argument. Cults and high-control groups, including extremist political movements, are designed to confuse people with these types of arguments. Their end goal, no matter how courteous or reasonable they make themselves and their ideas sound at first, is to seize as much control over people as they can and keep them too confused and caught up in their spell to fight back, in order to benefit the people at the top of their hierarchy. And they are experts on their own in-group lingo, prepared arguments, analogies, and emotional traps. The moment you engage with these arguments, you’ve already lost. So don’t engage. Walk away from the conversation. It’s not your job to convince someone who refuses to acknowledge reality that reality is real. Your job is to protect your own sanity. Your job is to know the truth and hold onto it. Don’t put yourself in a position where you will eventually lose your grip on reality.

Finally, the most important thing you can do, besides refusing to engage with lies and propaganda and debate traps, is to tell the truth. Loudly, and as often as possible. The truth is true no matter how it makes people feel, and no matter how loudly powerful people try to deny it. The evidence of our own eyes and ears doesn’t change depending on the day or the weather or how people feel about it. So trust that evidence. Reject the regime’s lies. Read books, read print news, and seek out experts’ research and informed opinions on complex subjects like science, medicine, and history. Then tell the truth, to the best of your ability and as loudly as possible. How and where and when you do that is up to you. You know what talents and skills and abilities you have, and who your audience will be. But tell the truth. Do not let them silence you.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. But you know better than that. You know that they’re lying. And now you know what to do about it. Don’t let them gaslight you. Don’t let them get away with their lies. Reject the lies, and tell the truth. Resist the lies, and eventually, the spell will break. They may be loud and powerful, and they are dangerous. But there are more of us who believe in the truth and reject the lies. So let’s stick together and keep telling the truth. We’ll outlast them. It’s the best hope we have.