TapdancingMutantBoy

Someone responded to say that this is NOT normal and that no normal person believes these things. I responded, and wanted to post it here just so that I have easy access to it:

I agree that it's abhorrent and that people who are buying into these conspiracy theories should be held accountable and we should recognise their thought processes and behaviour as being conspiracy theorist, hateful and bigoted.

But no one is immune to propaganda, so 'normal people' absolutely can be influenced and can buy in to conspiracy theories. That's what makes them so dangerous. To have influence over people, the influencer has to understand how human nature works. It's easier and quicker to work WITH human nature than against it. Conspiracy theories DO rely on pre-existing prejudices much of the time (and if you read any book on conspiracy theories it will be noted that Jews have always been the perfect 'Other' for people to distrust) so most of these people were prejudiced even if they didn't recognise it and even if it only showed in ways that seemed fairly innocuous and easy to let go of ('Jews are tight with money. No, I'm not antisemitic! I LIKE Jews! It's not a bad thing! Being tight with money is one of the reasons they're so successful!')...

BUT there's also lots of other influence involved which is creating this perfect storm for antisemitism to grow and spread and also to silence anyone who recognises it and is uncomfortable with it (but too scared to speak up). You just need to know what things influence people/what things people use to make those shortcuts instead of thinking it out for themselves.

Appeal to emotions via rage bait and upsetting content and claims. Conspiracy theories are based on intuitive/emotional thinking rather than logical.

Authority. Get the right kind of people to say the right kinds of things (professors, well liked celebrities, political figures, news outlets) and people who trust them and/or are usually aligned with those peoples/organisations stance will believe them.

People tend to go with the majority: get others parroting the propaganda and others will take the mental shortcut into thinking, 'Well if everyone else thinks it, it must be true, so I should think that, too!' Creating a majority or the illusion of a majority thinking/saying/doing something often persuades others to think/say/do the same things.

Create an 'Other' to blame everything on (typical cult/conspiracy theorist tactic) and create an 'us vs them' to prevent the indoctrinated from doubting and to convince people who haven't taken a side that they need to (because we do like to take sides and pick teams, and even when it's something as ultimately meaningless as 'cats vs dogs' or 'coke vs pepsi' people tend to become very tribal and passionate about it).

Weaponise language by introducing new language or changing the meanings of words to control communication, obfuscate situations, and shut down discussions with 'non-believers' (to prevent people accessing the truth or even just a different perspective in good faith).

Use chants and mottos and introduce a uniform of sorts and unifying imagery to create a feeling of belonging amongst the indoctrinated.

All these things make people feel good about themselves and make them feel more committed to and trusting of other people who use the same language and the same symbols (and distrustful of those that don't).

And! It's easier to create a majority if your 'Other' is a minority and Jews are a particularly tiny minority! If people are taking sides and your side is already bigger, you have an advantage! It's also less likely that people will know Jews or understand Jewish culture to be able to see through the libels. Interestingly, having already been struck by the similarity between anti-Jewish propaganda and anti-trans propaganda, just today I saw someone I know had shared a post that said anti-trans reporting in the media has been grossly disproportionate considering how tiny a demographic trans people are, which is EXACTLY the situation with Israel which has a disproportionate amount of coverage (even before October 7th, a journalist described how the news outlet he worked for had a hugely disproportionate number of staff dedicated to covering Israel compared to other countries, and the news was also disproportionately negative because they weren't allowed to report anything that might seem positive).

Introduce consequences for outsiders (or any indoctrinated who start to doubt the doctrine). For social creatures, just being excommunicated or thought poorly of by the group is enough to alter our behaviour much of the time. If voicing any dissent will get you labelled a genocide supporter and will mean your community will excommunicate you, it's easier to just continue to go along with it (or to at the very least to be silent - so all those people who haven't parroted propaganda but have been suspiciously silent about violence against Jews (when they're the kind of people you'd have expected to speak up) are likely aware that any support for Jews would cause some backlash from their professional or social crowd - and instead of deciding to do the right thing anyway, they're complicit through omission to speak out against it.

The reason I think it's important to recognise that ordinary people can be influenced in this way, and can even be brainwashed into thinking and behaving in ways that they ordinarily wouldn't, is that recognising we are all vulnerable to influence does go some way to protecting us. Whereas believing ourselves immune (whether we think we're too intelligent to be suckered in, or too empathetic to ever become hateful towards a minority) makes us even more vulnerable. If more people were able to recognise this, perhaps they would be better at reflecting and recognising how they've been influenced and would work on finding ways to de-programme themselves.

She was speaking about betrayal trauma (and her belief that the murder occurred because the murderer had been used, then gaslit, and was let down by the professionals she sought assistance from).

Her description of betrayal trauma:

This isn't heartbreak. This is a profound psychological injury that happens when someone you deeply trust or depend on for emotional or physical survival violates your trust. It is deeply dysregulating and traumatising because it really shatters your reality and it stops your ability to trust. This is what can happen if you discover that the institutions and people you thought you can trust, you can't. And what the untreated psychological torment and betrayal trauma can do to somebody if their pain isn't witnessed. Because if the pain doesn't have anywhere to go it goes inward and starts to metastasise and eats away at everything good in you.

And some of that seemed to kind of describe what Jews experienced on and after October 7th. Lots of betrayal, lots of gaslighting, a feeling that society has been lying to us about everything it is and everything it believes in, friends have lied about who they are. All the pain of seeing our people massacred, losing friends and family members, and then the repeated pains of all those betrayals has not really been witnessed (because we keep getting gaslit).

Some descriptions of betrayal trauma specify that the harm to cause betrayal trauma would come from significant betrayal by someone close to you, that you rely on, and obviously what I'm describing isn't quite as intimate. But it also describes institutional betrayal: When organizations, workplaces, or religious institutions cover up harm or fail to protect members. And, in a lot of ways, the betrayal is coming from an... entity?... we rely on to survive. If society turns against us, or doesn't adequately protect us, our safety and our lives can be at stake. And hasn't that been the most shocking thing? Even more so than friends. Individual people proving themselves to be easily influenced or secretly prejudiced is disappointing, sometimes bitterly so, but we assume that the organisations we rely on and trust are more robust and less likely to fail so spectacularly. Seeing how organisations that are trusted, even beloved by people, are not only letting Jews down but are actively causing harm? Extreme mindfuck.

And the amount of betrayal is what really sets it apart. This one issue (how they reacted (or didn't) to a massacre, then how they reacted (or didn't) to attacks on Jews in the diaspora. Seeing these horrific things happen to our people, and the world either ignoring it or celebrating it or denying it or justifying it. Everything we thought we knew about people was rocked. Almost everybody let us down. Friends, social groups, but also communities we belonged to or felt a part of, organisations and political parties we supported (so the betrayal felt more personal), but also organisations we might not have had any personal relationship with but had assumed had some level of decency and drive to do the right thing by everyone that could be relied on.

It was bad enough in the immediate aftermath, but we've had two and a half years of repeated, incessant betrayals.

Alongside the initial betrayal, there was probably some hope (or betrayal denial, I guess) and we gave too many chances, which just meant being disappointed again and again.

'They aren't speaking because they don't know, but when they realise, they'll speak up. They're scared to upset their pro-Palestine friends if they seem to be supporting Israel which is why they won't speak up for Israeli Jews, but they'll speak up for diaspora Jews getting hurt if it comes to it. Okay, they didn't speak up for those diaspora Jews being attacked but maybe they don't know about it and it's in a different country. They didn't speak up for those Jews being pogrommed but I'm sure if anything happens here they'll speak up...' On neighbourhood apps or groups, the people who would reliably step in if someone posted any prejudiced comments against other groups were nowhere to be seen when derogatory and hateful comments were made about Jews. Workplaces that celebrate various religious and cultural events chose to ignore Jewish events. All those 'punch a nazi' people suddenly turning a blind eye when the people throwing up nazi salutes and frothing about how they want to kill Jews are wearing keffiyehs.

Things continued to escalate both in severity and in spread. It's like wildfire, and all the friends, communities, organisations, we thought would put it out have just stood by and watched, fanned the flames, or even thrown on accelerant. We were even told, for a long time, by a lot of people, that there is no fire. We're making it up. Even as we watched it consuming Jewish establishments and Jewish lives.

Same goyish internet acquaintance: Shares ‘anti-zionist Jewish authors’ post on insta. Ugh.