The Daily Beast Podcast - Scientific Proof Hannity Can Make Republicans More Liberal

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

On this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Majority Minority author Justin Guest, a George Mason University professor, breaks down a sociological experiment he conducted to see if Hannity could make his viewers liberal with surprising results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today.

clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have a super fun show. Justin Guest, who wrote this awesome new book called Majority Minority, is going to be our guest, and he's going to talk to us about a really fun experiment he did, where he had a bunch of conservative voters, listened to a voice that sounded like Sean Hannity, changed its opinions on things and then he'll tell us what those voters did next. But first, let's have some fun.

Andy Levy, Molly Jug Fast. You guys ready to listen to some clips? Hell yeah, let's do it. Never, but... All right. Mixed response. Why the fuck not? Let's do it. Your favorite president, former president.

It's not my favorite president. He has a message for Putin. Something while I'm on your show, as long as Putin, now is not exactly a fan of our country. Let him explain where did, because Chris Wallace wouldn't let me ask the question, why did the mayor of Moscow's wife give the Bidens, both of them, $3.5 million for them. That's a lot of money. She gave him $3.5 million.

So now I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it. I think we should know that answer. He just made that up, right? There's nothing to that, right? Yes. So now, from now on, now until 2024, we're going to hear the mayor of Moscow gave Hunter Biden $3.5 million, right? Yeah. It's now, quote, unquote, truth, because they just keep saying it. Yeah.

Like, I'm still on Hillary's health. Is she okay? Is that a body double? I'm still on the fact that we have a former president. of the United States asking someone who is on the opposite side of a war from us, not that we are officially at war, but it's obviously clear we are on Ukraine side here. So he is basically asking the head of an invasion that we oppose. He's asking him for dirt on the president of the United States. But my favorite part of that whole story is that, in fact, this is not the first time he's done it.

Right. Actually, the second time. It's just a very weird time to be doing it. Yeah. Well, wait, the first time he did it was before he was president, right? Right. If you can find Harry Clinton's missing emails. Right, exactly.

And that followed by I love WikiLeaks. Right. Yeah. But I don't know. I'm sure that one had nothing to do with the other. I mean, that was some amazing stuff where he was like, so basically he was like hack my opponent's emails and release them. and then WikiLeaks had the DNC emails and release them.

And people were like he was kidding and there's no connection. That's what he does. Nothing matters to him except, you know, I guess now he just wants to get back in power. So it just, he has no floor, I think is what I'm trying to say. Right. No, like Madison Cawthorn, except he doesn't lie about orgies, so no one cares. Right. And also Madison Cawthorne is telling the truth.

You're allowed to lie about your political. opponents, but not about orgies, right. Madison Cawthorne is telling the truth about Newt Gingrich. I'm not saying Newt Gingrich holds orgies, but I'm not not saying that either. Okay. I can't believe I'm going to use Josh Hawley as a pallet cleanser from that. So if I asked you two, what leading voices would you like to hear discuss feminism? I imagine you two would both say Josh Hawley and Sean Hannity, correct? Oh, yeah. They're feminist icons. Okay, well, let's listen to them do that. Here's the bottom line. This is ridiculous. These attacks on Justice Thomas.

And the idea that Jenny Thomas's wife is supposed to sign off on her texts and on her work with her husband as if he's in charge of her in some way. Isn't that misogyny? Isn't that exactly what the Democrats are always saying that they're against? So I'd like to answer that question and the answer is no. So I'm hoping that that clears things up for Senator Holly, who I know is a very, very consistent listener to the new Aboriginal podcast. Oh, yeah, very consistent. And I feel like he was actually asking us that question. And so I think we can do a public service. This is my public service for the week.

My court ordered public service for the week. I am answering Senator Holly's question. The answer is no, this is not misogyny. and this is not what Democrats always claim to be in favor of. And he knows that. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a shit. But also this is the classic.

This is what the right wing does. They weaponize terms until they've lost all original meaning, which they've done with woke, which they've done with critical race theory. And that's what they do. And unfortunately, they do it well enough to be at least nominally successful, if not very successful. and like nobody uses the word woke now except Republicans. And also Max. My teenage son.

No, that's good. You're woke because he's your woke teenage son, so sure. That's understandable. Yeah. It's always a lesson for the kids. Don't brand yourself anything that's going to go out of style soon that a Republican may start using soon. Well, it'll be a fascinating experiment here. Well, Molly, speaking of your children, I know one of them shares a name with Charles Darwin and Lara Logan, former Fox News personality and former of respectable news outlets.

She has some thoughts on Darwin. So now you've gone from being a farmer who may not be able to farm efficiently, who may not be able to feed as many people. But guess what? He could feed, he could grow food year after year after year. because who created seeds that are renewable? Like, who created life that is truly renewable? What is the only thing on earth that is actually renewable? It's life.

And they can, you know, go back to the Big Bang Theory at Darwin. I mean, when I found out, does anyone know who employed Darwin, where Darwin is and comes from? Go ahead. Well, I mean, you know, look it up. The Rothschilds. It goes right back to 10 Downing Street. All the way. And the same people who employed Darwin.

And that's when Darwin, you know, wrote his theory of evolution and so on and so on. And I'm not saying that none of that is true. I'm just saying Darwin was hired by someone to come up with a theory. Correct. Based on evidence. Okay, fine. But. Okay.

Darwin was on the take. Has everyone ever mentioned the Ross Child's without sounding crazy? the last 10 years? No. It is a pretty good sign that you're a lunatic. The last 10 years? The last 200 years.

Yeah. Oh, I love it so much, though. Who was Darwin working for? They don't care who funded the Federalist, but they'll... They want to tell you who funded Darwin. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Very stupid. It's just unbelievable. It's hard to believe. She worked for, like... CB... Is it CBS? It was CBS. She did, it was a 60 Minutes report that got discredited.

But Mick Mulvaney works for CBS too. That's just great. She said, thank God she was dumped by Fox this week. Well, I think they think the same. I'm not sure why Fox dumped her. They should take her back. She doesn't sound that much worse than the people on Fox. No.

I guess she just didn't rate. It's got to be a rating thing. Well, she also said that Fauci shit is worse, was worse than Joseph Mangala. That was the thing that was a pretty too far. I guess you're not allowed to malign Mangala. Don't malign Mangola. It sounds like a really good language demonic.

Right. You're not allowed to do that on Fox, but I'm sure they're fine with Fauci. Oh, that was amazing. Justin Guest is the author of Majority Minority. Welcome to New Abnormal, Jessica. Thanks so much, Molly. This feels strangely normal so far. Well, just get ready.

First, we got to talk about Sean Hannity, and then we can talk about more substantive, though this is actually quite substantive. Explain to our listeners what it is you did with one, Sean Hannity. I am a researcher. I'm a political scientist, and I was interested in studying this hypothesis, this idea that when someone who, you co-identify with, someone who you trust and like and think of as like yourself, tells you something that is counterintuitive, that is initially prima facie disagreeable, that you are actually more likely to be persuaded than if you were to be proposed the same kind of ideas otherwise. So imagine if you are a progressive, and you're a progressive who likes Barack Obama, and he were to tell you that what this world needs right now,

is more trade wars. And you may be averse to this and that may sound trumpist to you. Your ears are going to be opened when someone you like or trust says something. That's the idea. That's the hypothesis. We want to test this on a set of beliefs and political attitudes that are really rigid. And that relates to immigration attitudes. These are some of the hardest views to change in America because they are hardwired. They are so emotionally driven in many ways and so consumed by intergroup relations. that people don't change their minds about immigration very much, which is one of the reasons why we find ourselves in this political stalemate related to immigration. So to test this theory, we needed to find someone who white conservatives, Republicans were going to respect and like and trust to try to

persuade them otherwise. And so after studying a variety of different people, we found that Sean Hannity was the celebrity Republican who white conservatives liked and trusted the most. Right. And so, So in order to make of this work, we had to persuade people that Sean Hannity actually believed that we needed to moderate our immigration policy. We needed to actually provide a sense of belonging and citizenship to newcomers in the United States and give them an equal chance at the American dream. The problem is Sean Hannity was unlikely to cooperate with us. We went for what is called, or at least what I'm calling, a shallow fake. You may have heard of deep fakes where remarkable progress in computer technology, is allowing computer scientists to create videos of real live celebrities or anyone

and make them talk the way they do by using AI to predict the way people move and look and sound. In fact, actually, it was done with President Obama himself. Well, we don't have that kind of budget. So what we did was a poor man's deep fake, which was a shallow fake of a photo of Sean Hannity and a really good voice actor impersonating him. And tell us what you learned from your shallow fake of Sean Hannity and a very good voice actor impersonating him. What we learned is that Sean Hannity is in fact persuasive. So he can actually move hardwired Republican attitudes about immigration, marginally, but nevertheless moves them in a statistically significant way. And that is remarkable because of how ossified we know those attitudes to be. But here's the real kicker, the one that's, really exciting. You might be thinking to yourself, okay, Justin, Bravo, you know, you managed to nudge

Republican attitudes ever so marginally with Sean Hannity. What is the consequence of this? You know, you're relying on Sean Hannity to move people. And if Sean Hannity's not going to suddenly embrace immigration, which, by the way, he did in 2012 and 2013, around the last time comprehensive immigration reform was considered by Congress. But if he's not going to do that again, then you're screwed. You're not going to actually be able to move public. opinion otherwise. Well, as it turns out, when we were running this experiment, we had a control. We had another impersonation that ran under the name John Wagner. And we said that John Wagner was actually the chairman of the Republican Party. And of course, John Wagner's not the

chairman of the Republican Party. The chairman of the Republican Party is actually the chairwoman. It's Ronna Romney McDaniel. Right. I think she dropped the Romney. But yes. Okay. So Ms. McDaniel, but most people don't know who the chairperson is of the party. And so we were able to fool people into thinking that this was, in fact, the chairperson, the chairman himself, John Wagner. And John Wagner used the exact same words as Sean Hannity and was actually able to move people even more meaningfully, even more significantly. So the magnitude of the effect grew.

And so what that means is, actually, that almost any old Republican will do as long as there's someone who people can co-identify with and trust. And the key is in how they actually approach. the issue too, not just who they are, but in the messaging of what they said, they emphasize at the beginning, I'm a conservative Republican. I have been my whole life, and I'm worried about the way this country governs migration. And that concern and co-identification with other Republicans and also conceivably and implicitly white men was really impactful. How do you know it was impactful? So after we exposed people to these treatments, to these impersonations, to these shallow fakes,

We then measured their attitudes towards immigration against a control group that had not been exposed to either Wagner or Hannity. And what happened? And the folks who had seen Hannity moved in a liberal direction. And the Republicans who saw Wagner were actually more likely to move and more significantly in a liberal direction than even the folks who are exposed to Hannity. And you might be wondering, you know, well, what is it about Wagner or what is it about Hannity that makes Wagner even more effective as a messenger, given that he's anonymous? And I think it is actually, you know, we don't know for sure. But my hunch is that it's the fact that he isn't known. It's the fact that he is anonymous, the fact that he doesn't have any baggage.

You know, there may be lots of things someone likes about Sean Hannity if you're a white Republican, but there might be also things that you find annoying about him or that, you know, when you feel like he betrayed you, like maybe that one time when, you know, he supported something that you didn't support. So John Wagner doesn't have that problem because John Wagner doesn't exist. Right. That's totally fascinating. What can you glean from this? Well, what this means is something that a lot of progressives may not want to hear, and that is it's important that they cultivate conservative messengers, that they cultivate conservative partners in their pursuits to show that not all Republicans are against these things. And that some of these agendas, some of these movements, you know, like immigrant rights or citizenship for the undocumented, they're not just democratic goals or progressive goals.

that they may even be national goals. And so far, we rely so much on the sort of signaling of partisanship that it's really actually creating this gridlock and a stalemate. The way to break through is not to reject the other side, ignore them, and vilify them, but actually maybe to embrace them. Okay. Also, it shows the power of propaganda. So I think it shows the power of propaganda when it's being spoken by a trusted source,

especially when you have a subject matter about which there is low information. So people have pretty good amount of information about some American political issues, particularly those that are so-called kitchen table issues, the things that Americans deal with on a day-to-day basis. Even I would say health care access, taxes in some cases, when it has to do with personal income tax. Americans don't know a whole lot about corporate income tax necessarily because they may not be a corporate accountant or working for a corporation or, you know, invested in one.

They may know less about, say, trade wars, which we were mentioning earlier. And what's the best sort of international commercial policy to be taking? When you have political issues without a lot of information, then people are more likely to be persuaded and therefore propaganda can be more effective when it is, in fact, misinformation. So interesting. There's a lot of other interesting stuff you hit on in your book, majority, minority. Explain to us what this book is. and how you came to write it? Sure.

So majority minority asks a simple question. How do societies respond to great demographic change? In many ways, I think that our identity politics, our culture wars in the United States, our bitter polarization is driven by the specter of the country's demographic change and our pathway towards a majority minority demographic milestone, which is where the original, or native ethnic or religious majority loses its numerical advantage to one or more minority groups. And that is expected to happen in the United States by 2044 or 2045. And the shadow of that possibility

happening has some Americans enthralled and greatly anticipating that shift and others absolutely terrified and discomforted. And others are trapped in between and uncertain, of course. In many ways, I think that that view of the future, one of nostalgia and fear or great anticipation, really encapsulates the differences between our political parties right now and a lot of Americans' outlooks, their worldviews on life right now. And so having studied white working class politics for a long time and immigration politics for a long time. Before this, I was very sensitive to how much the specter of demographic change was warping

political behavior and public opinion. And so I wanted to study it more carefully. Now, most Americans think of the majority minority milestone as just part of American exceptionalism. First time it's ever happened in the world. We are such a unicorn of a country. You know, what are we going to do? But in fact, actually, it is a rare milestone, but it's not unique to the United States. And I found that there's almost a dozen countries on earth that have actually already reached a majority minority milestone driven by immigration like us in the same way before. And so I went out and studied six of these societies to better anticipate the U.S. social future. I think that the primary takeaway from anyone who reads the book is that so much of the way we think of demographic politics is about

racism and prejudice. And we think to ourselves, if only we can eradicate racism, if only we could eradicate prejudice, we could actually cope with demographic change so much better. But in my experience and research, none of these countries have ever eradicated prejudice or racism. It's ever present. Certainly, it's more intense certain periods of time among certain groups of people, but it never really goes away. And yet some places manage to pivot their politics towards coexistence instead of conflict. And the question is, how? So I think of racism and prejudice, not as a good thing, obviously, but it's something that we kind of have to take for granted. It's like the turf upon which change must take place. It's the ground we must work off of.

And so despite prejudice, how are we going to get over this? And what I find is that a lot of it actually hinges on good leadership, good rhetorical leadership, and good institution building. So in other words, democratic change must be governed. So give us a few examples of that. Okay. So let me give you two examples. of sort of polar opposite societies. So one of my cases is Bahrain. Bahrain is an island off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is ostensibly a majority Shia country. It's the only majority Shia country in the Arabian Peninsula. And it has a Sunni royal court that has felt

very vulnerable because they are a member of the religious minority in the country. Bahrain is doubly majority minority in that it is actually, if you look at its population overall, it is majority foreigners. So 57% of the country's population are immigrants, none of which almost have access to citizenship. And so they work off of a system of temporary labor contracts. And they outnumber everyone, but they don't have any civil or political rights. It's also a majority minority country, though, because the Sunni royal court has steadily, year by year chipped away at the Shia majority by strategically naturalizing, granting citizenship to select Sunni Muslims from the Middle East. And they give them jobs inside of the state police

and security services so that they're very loyal. And this is also altering the majority status of Shia among nationals. So they both have, they have a double majority minority milestone coming. In the course of the politics, this is an autocratic country, a kingdom, a monarchy, there is second-class status given not only to migrants, but also in many ways that I detail to Shia inside the country, too, despite the fact that there are citizens. In many ways, they are suppressing demographic change and actually ginning up more demographic change into their favor, into the favor of the ruling family. That is a pretty stark example of just how bad things can get when you're a non-democracy, and demographic change is a tool for you

to manipulate nor to stand the power. On the flip side, there's Hawaii. And some of your listeners may be saying, wait a second, I've been there. It's not its own country. I was actually saying that. I was like, wait a second. It's a really nice place. And it feels like a different country. It's nice, but it is our country. Yes, it's America. But it is still part of the United States. That is true. But it was actually its own country, independent and sovereign, until 1893, when the United States forcibly annexed it and made it part of the United States, colonial style. And before that milestone in 1893,

Hawaii was actually a majority-minority country. And it was through immigration, just like in Bahrain or the United States. The state did it deliberately, bringing in a lot of people from places like Japan, China, the Philippines, even as far away as Puerto Rico or Portugal. They all came to Hawaii

and they were there mostly to be working on the sugar plantations, but also some in the whaling industry, pineapples, etc. And their response to demographic change was different. Yes, there was a lot of nativism. There was some nativism at times. As I said, prejudice and nativism, nationalism, it's ever present everywhere. But the Hawaiians took a different view. They actually encouraged, in some cases, actually incentivized intermarriage between immigrants and native Hawaiians, and their understanding of what it meant to be Hawaiian evolved over. over time. And it was really about how people took guardianship over the land, over the culture,

over their society. And that is fundamentally different from what happens elsewhere. Elsewhere, we are so concerned and so obsessed with ethnicity, race, religion, that we don't actually think about behavior, you know, loyalty, contributions, civic norms of reciprocity to understand what someone builds, you know, builds into the country, the labor that they invest into it. And so for a lot of Hawaiians, the immigrants' contributions to Hawaii and their guardianship of their precious land qualified them as to be Kanaka, to be native Hawaiian, even if it's almost in a tongue-in-cheek kind of sense. So they shifted their identity, which was one that was very ethnically oriented, you know, Polynesian in orientation, to one that was very civic. And that's an inspiration, I think, for everyone. And now, obviously these cases are more complicated, but hey, that's where you read the book.

Yes. This was really interesting. Everyone needs to buy the book. Thank you for coming on. Anytime. And if folks are interested in more, they can check me out on Twitter. I'm at at underscore Justin Guest. Or they can look at me at my stuff at justengest.com.

On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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