Consider This from NPR - The Growing Threat Of Disinformation And How To 'Deprogram' People Who Believe It

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Disinformation isn't new. But in the last decade, the growth of social media has made it easier than ever to spread. That coincided with the political rise of Donald Trump, who rose to power on a wave of disinformation and exited the White House in similar fashion. NPR's Tovia Smith reports on the growing threat of disinformation — and how expert deprogrammers work with people who believe it.Other reporting on disinformation in this episode comes from NPR correspondents Joel Rose and Sarah McCammon. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org In Northern California, a typical meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors used to run around two or three hours. This is a scandemic. It's a pandemic. And it's a damnemic. We're sick of it. Now it's sometimes closer to six hours. It's a fraud.

The numbers of PCR testing. Shasta County is rural, mostly white and very Republican. People there are angry about the local coronavirus response. Some claim that rules to enforce social distancing could lead to civil war and violent resistance. And many of these beliefs are fueled by false conspiracy theories that people found online. There's no constructive criticism. It's just trying to disrupt the meeting and disrupt county business.

County Supervisor Leonard Moti worries that reasonable people won't feel safe coming to meetings, let alone running for public office. The extremists aren't the majority at this point, so business can still be done, but it's much more difficult. In some parts of the country, the threats against public health workers have gotten so bad that officials are resigning. And the disinformation is not only about the pandemic. It's also about things like voting. In many places, those conspiracy theories are actually leading to some big policy changes. A controversial election bill clears another hurdle at the state capitol. It would add

voting restrictions to upcoming elections. Republicans in Georgia are pushing a new law that would make it harder to vote in a bunch of ways. Less early voting, a shorter absentee voting window, a new ID requirement. And all of this comes as Donald Trump repeats false claims that he only lost the state because of election fraud. Lies that he repeated this week. At least 40 states are considering similar bills. In Georgia, Andra Gillespie of Emory University says the voting bill would disproportionately hurt lower-income voters, people of color, and Democrats. What does it mean when you see legislators responding with legislative and

policy proposals that would be aimed to address a problem that in fact didn't exist in the first place. Consider this. Disinformation has moved from far corners of the internet into mainstream politics. We'll go inside the practice of deprogramming people who believe it. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, March 2nd. Support for NPR and the following message come from Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates, who sets out a plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster is available now wherever books are sold. This message comes from NPR sponsor Dispatch Coffee. Sourcing,

roasting, and delivering quality and traceable coffee at a fair price. Try their flexible monthly subscription. Shipping is free. Go to dispatchcoffee.ca slash consider to get 50% off your first order. We are still in the middle of this pandemic. And right now, having science news you can trust from variants to vaccines is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday, listen and subscribe to Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. Disinformation is not new. What's changing now is how fast and how far it can spread. Social media tends to drive the fringe to the mainstream. Joan Donovan is a researcher at Harvard Kennedy's Shorenstein Center, and she says the truth is often kind of boring

and doesn't play well on social media. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand? There are so many conspiracy theories on the internet. We've come to start to think about it as an attack on the supply chain of information. Former President Trump has led that attack on the truth on an unprecedented scale. This election was rigged, and the Supreme Court and other courts didn't want to do anything about it. Of course, that's false. But an Ipsos poll taken after the attack on January 6th found that only 27 percent of Republicans believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidential election. Joan Donovan at Harvard says these false beliefs motivated the insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

What's dangerous is when people mobilize based on misinformation. It doesn't just put communities in danger, it puts law enforcement in danger as well. So the question is, when someone buys into disinformation or conspiracy theories, how do you help them back out? NPR's Tovia Smith took a look inside the practice of deprogramming. Michelle Queen, a 46-year-old from Texas, is one of a quarter of Americans, according to a recent Ipsos poll, who believe the baseless claim that Trump won the election and President Biden did not. No way. It was rigged. Everything was rigged. Queen is also among the 20 percent who believe that those who broke into the Capitol in January

were actually undercover members of the left-wing Antifa, even though most of those arrested have been affiliated with right-wing groups. That's who they said they arrested. They didn't tell you all the others. You know, the news ain't going to give you the whole thing. While Queen does not consider herself part of QAnon, she also believes some of its most outlandish tenets, for example, that Satan-worshipping elites in a secret pedophile cabal are killing babies and drinking their blood. When you are evil, you're evil. It goes deep. The Ipsos poll shows a close correlation between those who believe in conspiracies

and those who get most their news from conservative news sources, social media, or apps like Parler and Telegram that have become disinformation super-spreaders. Experts see it as a public health emergency, threatening democracy, straining family relationships, and now also straining an industry of folks trying to help. I've probably got almost 100 requests in my inbox. Diane Benskoder has been helping people untangle from extremist ideologies since the 80s, after she was extricated from the Unification Church,

commonly known as the Moonies. She recently founded a non-profit called Antidote to run Al-Anon-style recovery groups for those caught up in disinformation and their loved ones. Anyone can be drawn in, she says, as cultic groups all tend to fill some psychological void. It establishes this camaraderie and this feeling of righteousness and this cause for your life. And that feels very invigorating and almost addictive. You feel like you are fighting the battle for goodness. And all of a sudden you feel like you are the hero. In other cases, the draw is what Ben Skoder calls easy answers to life's hard questions. That's what got 32-year-old Jay Gilley, a pizza delivery guy from Alabama who spent three years caught up in QAnon. It started when he questioned the Black Lives Matter movement

and got criticized online. One click led to another, and he wound up deep into dark conspiracies and hate speech dressed up as dogma, which to Gilly felt like validation. Just having someone tell you you're right and don't listen to people just leads you down that path so fast. You want to be right so bad. You didn't want to be drugged back into that confusion. Eventually, thanks to a patient friend, Gilly came to understand how he, a left-leaning Obama supporter, allowed himself, as he puts it, to he, a left-leaning Obama supporter, allowed himself, as he puts it, to fall down a far-right rabbit hole. Looking back at it now, it's terrifying. Like, this is like a war on thought. Like, are we just going to start fighting for just thought control? For all the psyops used to suck people into a cultic group, experts say it takes just

as much savvy and precision to help them out. Pat Ryan, another former cult member turned deprogrammer or exit counselor, says when a family hires him to meet with a loved one, his first step is to do a kind of intervention on the family. He implores them to change their tone, to be less adversarial or less mocking. It's not only because that's counterproductive, Ryan says, but also if he gets the family to back off a bit, he scores instant points with the loved one he's ultimately trying to reach. It's strategic. No, absolutely. We're talking strategy because if I can get a family to do something meaningful, then I have credibility. And so then we have a path to go on. Of course, it's much

easier said than done. Many are adamant, like Michelle Queen, that no one could change their mind. But Queen was willing to sit down with Ben Skoder just to hear her out. Hi, Michelle. Hello. Ben Skoder begins gently asking how Queen's faring in the aftermath of last month's Texas snowstorm. Are you okay as far as electricity or anything like that? Right now we're good. Oh, good. Then Ben Skoder walks a fine line, being totally upfront that she wants Queen to consider that she's caught in a web of disinformation while insisting that she's not trying to turn Queen

into a Democrat, for example. That is not what I'm about, even a little. And then Ben Skoder carefully starts making the case that anyone can be duped, offering up herself as Exhibit A and explaining how she, as a Mooney, thought she was following the Messiah. You know, that sounds outrageous, but, you know, I wasn't stupid. And one thing led to another, and it kind of fed into some fears I had. Queen listens quietly as Ben Skoder continues explaining how the indoctrination tactics worked on her. I started believing that all information from regular news sources is just wrong. And they became like the enemy.

But a few minutes in, Queen starts to push back. I pray on everything. I'm not in a cult. It'd be the first of many times that Ben Skoder would back off and pivot in search of even the tiniest patch of common ground. Yeah. Well, one thing that I think is so sad right now is that the country has been so divided and people almost are like spitting at each other. And that's just not what this country should be, I don't think. Right. That's right. Before long, they find more they can agree on, that January's violence at the U.S. Capitol was wrong, and so is hurting children, even though they disagree on

what's actually happening. Some of the things that are being spread about, you know, babies being eaten and things, I don't think those things are true personally. I do. I know you do, and I think we need to get to the bottom of that, though. How would we do that? Ben Skoder talks about the reputable nonprofits fighting human trafficking and suggests Queen get involved. It's all about planting seeds of doubt and building rapport. I think now is the time to start building bridges. That's right. And sturdy bridges, not nothing that's going to fall apart. Yes, I'm with you there. By the end, they agree to keep talking, just what Ben Skoder was

hoping for. It may seem like you're being tricky or crafty, but really what you're doing is respecting the fact that this is not going to be an easy process for them to get out of this with their dignity. It's a tedious and time-intensive process, too, that can't keep up with disinformation spreading virally online. Ben Skoder says the only viable strategy is prevention, and she's helping develop a public awareness campaign to keep people from falling down the rabbit hole in the first place. I think it's really important to try to help people inoculate, to try to create herd immunity to psychological manipulation, and to hit that tipping point in society where more people understand how these tactics work

and those who try to use them will be less successful using them because they're easily spotted now. Other experts liken the threat of disinformation to secondhand smoke. We used to think smokers were only harming themselves. When we started to know better, we started doing more to combat it. NPR's Topia Smith. That story is part of a big new reporting project here at NPR all about disinformation. In this episode, you heard some additional reporting from that project that came from correspondents Joel Rose and Sarah McCammon.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.