William Shirer on corrosive Nazi propaganda

I’m contemplating blogging the chapters of journalist William L. Shirer’s epic 1959 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as part of my authoritarianism series. It’s highly relevant in this moment, and as quick and suspenseful a read as an 1147-page historical tome can be.

For the moment, I’ll quote a passage from pp. 247-8 on the pernicious effects of propaganda, which Hitler cynically deployed both domestically and internationally. A key aspect of Shirer’s history is that he describes, from the perspective of a correspondent in Germany who personally experienced and covered the Nazis’ rise who now has access to millions of documents, meetings, and conversations of which he had been unaware at the time, the major techniques Hitler and Goebbels used to manipulate public opinion and government officials. The failure to recognize these deceptive techniques until it was too late was a significant factor in the failure to confront Hitler effectively.

Here’s how Shirer describes the damage done by systematic propaganda:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

Many of the same approaches are being used today. It’s imperative that we not only appreciate that we’re facing a sophisticated transnational propaganda operation but come to recognize its techniques and tropes – both those adapted from the Nazis and those developed by other authoritarian movements and regimes in the years since and adapted for today’s technologies.

The aggressive neurotic: Trump’s cynical use of language

“I talked to the president prior to this, and he said to quote him very clearly. ‘[The official labor statistics] may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now’.” – Sean Spicer, March 2017

In my previous post, I discussed the moral code of the aggressive neurotic type analyzed by Karen Horney. For this type,

a strong need to exploit others, to outsmart them, to make them of use to himself, is part of the picture. Any situation or relationship is looked at from the standpoint of ‘What can I get out of it?’ – whether it has to do with money, prestige, contacts, or ideas. The person himself is consciously or unconsciously convinced that everyone acts this way, and so what counts is to do it more efficiently than the rest. (Our Inner Conflicts, 65)

This larger analysis bears on the complex question of Trump’s dishonesty. Are the false claims he spews daily in person and on Twitter expressions of his delusions, impulsive outbursts, compulsive lies told for no reason, part of a brilliant political strategy,…?

Trump’s neurotic distortion of reality is so far advanced (and possibly accelerated by neurological degeneration) that he often can’t accept facts that contradict the beliefs his neurosis demands. Some of his false claims do appear to express delusions of this sort; this seems to be the case, for example, with his insistence on the size of the crowd at his inauguration or his Electoral College victory.

I’m not convinced by arguments that Trump’s vicious, dishonest tweets are part of some master strategy to distract from issues he’d rather people not focus on – not because it isn’t in keeping with his neurotic character but because the evidence doesn’t support it: He’s not, fortunately, particularly intelligent or strategic. He’s lashed out in similar ways for decades, long before and beyond his political involvement. He does it when there’s no issue it makes sense to distract from, and indeed when it draws attention away from what he would reasonably like people to be focusing on. And he often creates new problems for himself with these tweets. So I believe these claims are often what they appear: either (semi-)deluded statements or impulsive, spur-of-the-moment attacks.¹

That said, setting aside the false claims rooted entirely in Trump’s desperate delusions – which are of great concern for other reasons – his lies, including even his most impetuous tweets and statements, are in fact calculated in the sense that they’re used to advance his neurotic goals. The key to understanding and responding to Trump’s statements is understanding that he simply doesn’t care what the truth is. What he says and tweets has a purely coincidental relationship to the world of fact and reason. He sees his statements only in terms of their effectiveness or usefulness.

Most of the rashest, most impulsive claims he makes on Twitter seek to achieve a perceived end: to exact revenge on an opponent, to discredit or instill doubt in a critical voice, to neutralize a threat, to incite fear or hatred, to self-promote, to confuse or misdirect, to “work the refs,” to rally his followers, to humiliate or destroy an enemy, and so on. Does Trump now or did he ever believe that Obama was born in Kenya, deliberately booby trapped the ACA, had him wiretapped,…? Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter, nor does it matter that he lashes out at people impulsively or via Twitter. Because even if he knew his impulsively tweeted early-morning assertions to be utterly false when he made them, or took the time to calmly consider his claims’ merits, it wouldn’t have the slightest impact on his decision whether or not to make them.

He’s not constrained by truth in the least – it’s simply not a consideration. That sort of constraint is for suckers. “Smart” - which Trump understands as self-servingly devious - people are not only not bound by the facts² but know how to use language to advance their interests and vanquish their enemies. “Is this true or not?” is utterly irrelevant. The only question is “Is it effective?” - and winning decides.

It’s not the case that Trump’s mistruths stem primarily from an epistemic failure on his part. An oped in the LA Times argues that:

He has made himself the stooge, the mark, for every crazy blogger, political quack, racial theorist, foreign leader or nutcase peddling a story that he might repackage to his benefit as a tweet, an appointment, an executive order or a policy. He is a stranger to the concept of verification, the insistence on evidence and the standards of proof that apply in a courtroom or a medical lab — and that ought to prevail in the White House.

He’s not a stranger to the concept of verification, though. He’s aware of these standards and can deploy them when it suits his purposes, even using hyperskeptical language when he’s attacking an opponent or facing off against claims he sees as threatening. He’s just morally indifferent to them. He feels no obligation to adhere to these standards as such. Does embracing skepticism advance his perceived interests? If so, he’ll embrace it. If credulity seems more useful, that will be his choice (as the writers acknowledge with the phrase “that he might repackage to his benefit,” which suggests, correctly, that his credulity is selective and tactical).³

It’s easy enough to provide evidence of Trump’s cynical approach. As I discussed in the previous post, an interesting aspect of Trump’s case – and one that’s very telling of the state of our culture - is that he explicitly boasts of his neurotic-aggressive moral code. Recognizing that he faces few negative consequences for openly endorsing sociopathic behavior - and often wins praise when it’s seen as toughness, “counterpunching,” and so on - he even offers advice in these terms.

As the appalling quote from Sean Spicer at the beginning of this post suggests, he not only has perfect awareness of what he’s doing but believes that publicly acknowledging it will have no negative repercussions and quite possibly receive a positive response from his followers.

Trump boasted of his instrumental use of truth claims throughout the presidential campaign and after the election. At a rally after Ted Cruz had debased himself to endorse him, Trump had to educate some of his followers who had joined him in detesting “Lyin’ Ted” that his attacks were pure theater:

‘Ted Cruz is no longer a liar, we don’t say Lyin’ Ted anymore’, Trump told the crowd. ‘We love Ted, we love him, right? We love him. Now we don’t want to say Lyin’ Ted. I'd love to pull it out and just use it on lying, crooked Hillary because she is a liar’.

Audiences had to be similarly educated after the election, when Trump declared his campaign rallying cry about jailing his opponent no longer politically useful:

Donald Trump said Friday he doesn't care about prosecuting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, after attendees at his rally chanted ‘lock her up’.

After the chants started at the President-elect's post-election ‘thank you’ rally in Michigan, he responded, ‘That plays great before the election -- now we don't care, right?’⁴

Indeed, he proudly announced on several occasions after his “victory” that his campaign claims had been nothing but cynical devices to gain votes:

As Noah notices, he describes his techniques to those he’s manipulating in the language of grifters and cold readers, explaining how he settles on catchphrases that “play well” and “pulls out” claims to use when convenient. In one post-election appearance, he started to talk about how knowledgeable he is about infrastructure when he interrupted himself to inform his followers that “I don’t need your vote anymore”…but would still try to sell them on the claim that he’s good at infrastructure anyway (noting that he’d need their votes in four more years in any event).

In some moments, Trump presents his use of language as advice or a personal development strategy. In 2011, in an appearance that was vile in innumerable ways, Trump called 2004 Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins onto the stage and told her and the audience, by way of illustration of his moral principle of “get even with people,” that when he’d believed she’d declined to appear to introduce him:

I was actually going to get up and tell you that Jennifer is a beautiful girl on the outside, but she’s not very bright…. But that wouldn’t have been true, but I would have said it anyway.

Nothing could be a better illustration of his attitude toward truth claims. He’s not just openly bragging about his self-serving deception – he believes he’s imparting valuable knowledge.

So how should Trump’s falsehoods be confronted? I argued in the previous post that it’s futile to appeal to Trump on the basis of sympathy, decency, or traditional values. Similarly, there’s little point in attempting to shame him or his minions for their promotion of lies. Trump doesn’t feel shame over lying, or any sort of attachment to facts or logic. As the spectacle he created when pushed to acknowledge his years of birther lies attests, under pressure he’ll simply shift to a different tactical lie.

It’s necessary to continue to publicly call attention to the untruths while pointing to the facts. We should be attuned to those times when Trump appears to be in the grip of delusions, and note the pathological insecurity and danger of this. But most important, we should be fully aware of his absolute indifference to the truth – every statement and tweet can be read in terms of the neurotic delusions to which it caters or the neurotically-driven pursuits it serves. (This basic indifference means that we shouldn’t focus exclusively on outright lies – he’ll make similar use of true claims if he thinks they serve his purposes.)

Over many years of using lies to damage or discredit his “enemies,” Trump has developed an intuitive sense for people’s personal and political vulnerabilities, and his practice has proven successful, which says nothing positive about our society. But there are many important contexts in which his actions have negative consequences, especially given that he’s not very bright.

Much of reality, of course, is resistant to his claims. His handlers seem to be awakening to the fact that in many legal contexts his lying won’t help him and could potentially destroy him. Robert Mueller and his professional team won’t be swayed by Trump’s tweets or other public statements; increasingly, in fact, his claims appear to expose him to more legal and political jeopardy. As the pattern of purely tactical statements comes to be recognized, his capacity to extricate himself and others from suspicion or legal trouble is weakened. Obviously, as we’re seeing over time, he’s destroying his credibility. This matters not only for his personal legal situation and attempts at domestic political alliances but for the global standing of the United States. To the extent that he threatens this, allies could desert him.

¹ There are many insightful articles about authoritarian regimes and how they not only lie to the public but seek to destroy the concept of disinterested truth entirely, leaving people with no concrete basis for resistance. It’s not that I think people in Trump’s inner circle don’t recognize the usefulness of this approach or that Trump’s efforts to undermine truth-seeking institutions like science and journalism don’t advance this goal. But I don’t think this is the most useful understanding of Trump’s actions in light of the fact that he’s operated the same way for virtually his entire life. The most accurate and fruitful approach, in my view, is to understand Trump’s neurotic psychology and then analyze how his thinking and actions play in our political climate.

² Extremely neurotic people like Trump believe something that goes beyond this. Because they’re special, they’re not bound by existing facts and in a sense transcend the mundane reality of ordinary people. This is another element of neurotic grandiosity carried to an extreme.

³ Once again, it’s often difficult to discern the extent of the delusion in any specific case: does he actually convince himself of the truth of some of the claims he finds useful, or attempt to confuse himself as he does others? It’s an interesting psychological question, but again doesn’t change the fact that he would make or repeat any claim he sees as effective regardless of his belief in its truth.

⁴ Despite publicly “retracting” such claims, he’s always ready to revive them whenever he’s feeling threatened or thinks they might be of use.

Quote of the day – on arguing with bigots

“Do not think that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of these answers. They know that their statements are empty and contestable; but it amuses them to make such statements: it is their adversary whose duty it is to choose his words seriously because he believes in words. They have a right to play. They even like to play with speech because while putting forth ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutor; they are enchanted with their unfairness because for them it is not a question of persuading by good argument but of intimidating or disorienting. If you insist too much, they close up, they point out with one superb word that the time to argue has passed. Not that they are afraid of being convinced: their only fear is that they will look ridiculous or that their embarrassment will make a bad impression on a third party whom they want to get on their side. Thus if the antisemite is impervious, as everyone has been able to observe, to reason and experience, it is not because his conviction is so strong, but rather his conviction is strong because he has chosen to be impervious.”

- Jean-Paul Sartre, “Portrait of the Anti-Semite”

Quote of the day – interests and truth

“There are always groups whose interest is furthered by truth, and their representatives have been the pioneers of human thought; there are other groups whose interests are furthered by concealing truth. Only in the latter case does interest prove harmful to the cause of truth. The problem, therefore, is not that there is an interest at stake, but which kind of interest is at stake.”

– Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 248

Quote of the day – Trump reality vs. Trump illusion

“Although Donald’s business career is marked by early successes overshadowed by later, repeated failures, flirtations with personal bankruptcy, sequential corporate bankruptcies, the squandering of billions of dollars, and the safety cushion of a multimillion-dollar inheritance from his wealthy father, he is prime-time TV’s most sought-after and enchanting guru for aspiring entrepreneurs. Donald is the country’s premier embodiment of the self-made man.” – Timothy L. O’Brien, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald (2005)

I highly recommend Chapter 8, “TrumpSpin,” to members of the media.

Quote of the day – Caroline Fourest, Judith Butler, and responsibility

“Yes, thank you very much Delphine to…giving me this opportunity to, to speak about this legendary newspaper of…who was already a legend before the seventh of January, before this drama. For the anti-racist left, I do belong to, it’s not only the newspaper that you know today [is] describe[d] as “Islamophobic” just because they, they dare mock fanatics from all religions, including Islamists. Charlie Hebdo is also mostly known in France as one of the most anti-racist newspapers.

…Between the ‘90s, all the movements against racism, like S.O.S. Racisme, who did fight the anti-Arab racism in France, took their cartoons from Charb, from Honoré, from…from people who are dead today. And not only dead - who are described as Islamophobic and racist after they are dead.

This is incredibly painful. You cannot imagine. It’s even…It’s like if they are dead twice, actually. When I have to explain it again and again, how much those guys were open-minded, were deeply anti-racist, and strongly, strongly open to every culture, and the most brilliant, talented, and funny guys I’ve ever known. And that people can [twist] their intentions, [twist] their cartoons, put them out of their context, to help the propaganda of the killers.

Because this is actually what these people are doing. And I really want to point that out. I really want to…to insist on that. It’s not only unprofessional, for example, as journalists to describe Charlie Hebdo as Islamophobic. It’s not only wrong and false. It is dangerous.

Because this word, “Islamophobia,” who is confusing the secularist intention, the fact that an atheist satirical newspaper wants to be able to laugh about fanatism – whatever it is, fanatics from Islam, fanatism from Judaism, or fanatism from Christianism – describing it as racist against Muslims by calling it Islamophobic is not only wrong and false, it is really, really dangerous. It is putting a target on the head of those journalists, on those cartoonists. It’s already killed those people. It’s maybe going to kill tomorrow the others who are being called Islamophobic still today.

And to answer your question: how is Charlie Hebdo today, how they are living today. They are living like prisoners. They are living in hell. Because they are all under police protection. Riss, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, have been… You know that Charb have been really targeted by Al-Qaeda. Now it’s Riss who’s targeted today. And not only by terrorist groups – also by, for example, a Pakistani very famous politician who said he will pay for everyone who is going to kill Riss.

We are in that crazy situation today. And this is why it’s so important first to stop to call secularist, or atheist, or just, again, anti-racist but secularist cartoonists and journalists “Islamophobic,” when they are just…who they are, which is the opposite. It’s important to…even to stop to use that word, actually. If you want to, if you want to target the real racism, which do exist, and that Charlie Hebdo is denouncing, when it’s fighting against the National Front for example, but not only, then you should say…words or acts “anti-Muslims.” And at least it is clear – it’s not saying phobia against Islam but phobia against Muslims. And phobia against Muslims is really speaking about racism, which is something we all want to fight against.”

It happens, fortuitously, that just after I transcribed these remarks by Caroline Fourest from early in the recent Newseum panel discussion I read the chapter “The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and the Risks of Public Critique” in Judith Butler’s 2004 Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.* (A shorter version of was printed in the London Review of Books where it can still be read: “No, it’s not anti-semitic.”)

The chapter responds to portrayals of criticisms of the Israeli state as anti-Semitic, taking as its starting point a 2002 comment by Lawrence Summers, then still president of Harvard: “Profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Butler’s chapter is as relevant today, in a context of widespread censorious attacks on Palestinian rights activists and the BDS movement, as it was when it was first published. It’s worthwhile for its specific content. But it occurred to me that the response to Charlie Hebdo during the past year has in many ways been analogous to the portrayals and silencing tactics Butler discusses with regard to Israel, and that her arguments about our collective epistemic and political responsibility are also helpful in this context.

Summers’ remarks, Butler suggests, propose a few fundamental claims: first, the insinuation that criticisms of Israel are, or should be assumed to be, anti-Semitic in intent; second, that regardless of the critic’s intent the audience of these criticisms will hear them as anti-Semitic, such that the criticisms unavoidably help to foster and further anti-Semitism; third, that – again, whatever the alleged intentions of the critics themselves - such criticisms are so inherently and easily exploitable by anti-Semites that making them publicly is irresponsible and basically complicit with racism – “effectively” anti-Semitic. Butler contends, rightly, that these sorts of claims lead to a silencing of and self-censorship among those who would be critical of state violence, racism, and injustice. Anti-racists more than anyone fear being charged with racism or with stupidly or callously abetting racists.

She takes issue with the premise of these claims. With regard to intent, she offers:

[W]hereas Summers himself introduces a distinction between intentional and effective anti-Semitism, it would seem that effective anti-Semitism can be understood only by conjuring a seamless world of listeners and readers who take certain statements critical of Israel to be tacitly or overtly intended as anti-Semitic expression. The only way to understand effective anti-Semitism would be to presuppose intentional anti-Semitism. The effective anti-Semitism of any criticism of Israel will turn out to reside in the intention of the speaker as it is retrospectively attributed by the one who receives – listens to or reads – that criticism. The intention of a speech, then, does not belong to the one who speaks, but is attributed to that speaker later by the one who listens. The intention of the speech act is thus determined belatedly by the listener. (105-106; emphasis in original)

And despite making this distinction which ostensibly allows for a nonracist intent, as Butler points out, Summers himself, as listener, assumes, proffers, and models a reading of all criticisms of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic: “[N]ot only, it seems, will Summers regard such criticisms as anti-Semitic, but he is, by his example, and by the normative status of his utterance, recommending that others regard such utterances that way as well” (108). “His understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitic rhetoric,” she argues,

depends upon a very specific and very questionable reading of the field of reception for such speech. He seems, through his statement, to be describing a sociological condition under which speech acts occur and are interpreted, that is, describing the fact that we are living in a world where, for better or worse, criticisms of Israel are simply heard as anti-Semitic. He is, however, also speaking as one who is doing the hearing, and so modeling the very hearing he describes. (108)

In other words, he himself is priming the audience to hear these criticisms in precisely the way he’s arguing they’re inevitably heard. Regarding Summers’ depiction of the audience’s response – which assumes that the audience will naturally understand these criticisms as anti-Semitic or actively use them in promotion of anti-Semitism - Butler argues that “to claim that the only meaning that such criticism can have is to be taken up as negative comments about Jews is to attribute to that particular interpretation an enormous power to monopolize the field of reception for that criticism.” And of course such selective attention has the effect of promoting the interpretation favored by the Israeli government and the Right generally.

Of great importance here is what Butler goes on to argue about responsibility. Note that Summers’ argument places all of the responsibility on the critic of Israel (even for the intent attributed to her!) and, despite the powerful interpretive role he attributes to the audience, none whatsoever on them. You’re left with the impression that while these criticisms are so dangerous that would-be critics are best off refraining from voicing them publicly, potential hearers and interpreters are under no epistemic or political obligation to base their interpretations on facts or to challenge misrepresentations. This is a very convenient situation for those who seek to silence dissent.

As Butler sensibly offers: “According to Summers, there are some forms of anti-Semitism that are characterized retroactively by those who decide upon their status. This means that nothing should be said or done that will be taken to be anti-Semitic by others. But what if the others who are listening are wrong?” (110; emphasis added). It seems so plainly obvious that we have a responsibility to try our best not to be wrong, particularly in situations in which there are reputations and lives at stake, that it never ceases to amaze me how passive and irresponsible audiences are expected and encouraged to be.

Moreover, people in positions of power or influence, those putting forward interpretations for large audiences, have both a “negative” obligation not to promote misreadings and a “positive” one to educate actual and potential audiences. Butler doesn’t deny the very real potential for criticisms of Israel to be misread, misrepresented, or exploited, and argues that critics should be on guard for and seek to counteract such misuse. But that many people can and do misunderstand or misrepresent criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitic isn’t a fact of nature to which critics and other public speakers must resign themselves but a social and political problem everyone needs to address:

[E]ven if one did believe that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-Semitic (by Jews, by anti-Semites, by people who could be described as neither), it would then become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to learn a crucial political distinction between a criticism of Israel, on the one hand, and a hatred of Jews, on the other (106: emphasis added).

Arguments like Summers’ have deleterious consequences:

If the possibility of…exploitation serves as a reason to quell political dissent, then one has effectively given the domain of public discourse over to those who accept and perpetrate the view that anti-Semitism is authorized by criticisms of Israel, including those who seek to perpetuate anti-Semitism through such criticisms and those who seek to quell such criticisms for fear that they perpetuate anti-Semitism…. To remain silent for fear of anti-Semitic appropriation that one deems to be certain is to give up on the possibility of combating anti-Semitism by other means.

This week we’re in the midst of yet another wave of performative outrage and self-righteous denunciations of Charlie Hebdo’s “racist” cartoons. Article after article after article after article after article after article after article after article rushing to join the chorus of condemnation and rebuke and to offer stupidly earnest responses to so-called racist provocations.**

I have no idea what Butler’s views are on Charlie Hebdo. (Of course I also have no idea how knowledgeable she is on the subject and thus of what weight I would give her views.) But it seems to me that the response to the magazine over the past year strongly resembles the sorts of comments Butler is addressing and that her arguments are useful in understanding this phenomenon. We see the same claims of “effective racism” intermingled with insinuations of intentional racism, the same attribution of overwhelming power to a single interpretation, the same refusal to accept responsibility for making claims of racist intent, the same priming of audiences for attributions of racist intent or effect under the guise of mere sociological observation, and the same propensity to encourage self-censorship and hostility toward challenging voices.

I’ve argued for a long while, fairly fruitlessly it appears, for a recognition of our epistemic responsibilities in this context. I and others have repeatedly called on people to refrain from uncritically accepting superficial interpretations, to actively investigate Charlie Hebdo’s history and mission; its primary audience (the French anti-racist, atheist, and secularist Left); its primary targets (political figures and institutions, primarily the Right); the nature of its satire and the history of its form of humor in France; the fact that the cartoons are connected to pages and pages of text which informs their meaning;*** the powerful people and groups who have a strong interest in misrepresenting the magazine and alienating its potential supporters, and the way they’ve altered its cartoons and encouraged others to interpret them as racist; and so on. I’ve called on influential people to work themselves to make, and educate others about, crucial distinctions between satire of powerful people and institutions or mockery of ideologies on the one hand and racism on the other. I’ve asked that at the very least people appreciate their own level of ignorance before making consequential declarations and judgments.

But the journalists and opinionators involved in round after round of ignorant denunciations have willfully ignored any such requests and persisted in misrepresenting Charlie Hebdo and encouraging others to do the same. Maybe the most ironic and galling aspect of these boilerplate condemnations is their preening judgment of the alleged irresponsibility and callousness of the magazine’s cartoonists. These people, whose colleagues and friends have been massacred, work every day under immediate threat of violence and death. They live the responsibility for their actions and choices in the starkest possible terms. Their supposedly sensitive and responsible judges, on the other hand, can’t be bothered to investigate whether their public statements are true or false, whether they’re blithely destroying the reputations of murder victims, whether they’re being used by censorious and authoritarian forces, or whether they’re contributing to an environment of abandonment and hostility toward the magazine which increases the chances of further violence against them and others as well. That is as irresponsible and callous as I can imagine.

* A book which I recommend highly despite its significant flaws (rampant speciesism in particular).

** As usual, there have been a handful of dissenting voices, but far too few.

*** At the panel discussion in New York last spring, Gérard Biard joked that it sometimes felt like people thought that the magazine consisted entirely of cover cartoons; I’m starting to suspect that, with the addition of a few images plucked from inside pages (but often misrepresented as covers), this might actually be the case.

Quote of the day – Why the media blackout on Diagnosisgate?

“Brill goes to great lengths – in 15 chapters published one per day – to document a vast amount of the Risperdal story, so it is perplexing to try to imagine whether he might have missed those crucial pages near the beginning of the Rothman Report or whether something else happened. And if it is the latter, what could it possibly be?”

- Paula Caplan

When I read the otherwise excellent* Steven Brill series “America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker,” I noticed and noted that Brill mentioned the actions associated with Diagnosisgate only very briefly and, even stranger, didn’t name the prominent individuals involved. I share Caplan’s interest in the reasons for this omission. (She notes in the comments at my first link above that she contacted Brill when his series was beginning, but didn’t even receive a reply. What’s going on here?)

* He does uncritically accept the claim that “the drug benefits many people,” presumably those alleged to be suffering from “schizophrenia,” which is unfortunate.

Word of the day

Buckraking.

Coca-Cola and the American Academy of Pediatrics

Via PBS NewsHour:

“America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker”

Steven Brill’s exposé in serial form of Johnson & Johnson’s illegal marketing of Risperdal for vulnerable children and old people.

Sickening.

Two good James O’Brien interviews about Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the US, and the UK

(The second interview begins around the 7-minute mark.)

As Glenn Greenwald argues:

It’s so fun - and so easy - to highlight and protest the bad acts done by the countries declared to be the Bad Ones by your own government. It’s not quite as fun or easy to highlight and protest the bad acts done by your own government itself or its closest allies. Yet as O’Brien pointed out, journalism is far more valuable, and the public interest served far more, by doing the latter rather than the former.

Dear Rachel Maddow,

Hugo Chávez was not a dictator. He was a popular, democratically elected president of Venezuela. You imperil Venezuelan democracy and empower the Right in Venezuela and the US when you repeat such bogus characterizations. There are very real forces working diligently to overthrow South American democracies and to (re)establish US-dominated corporatocracies, real dictatorships, and your carelessness has helped their cause. Millions of lives are at stake. I hope you’ll be more responsible in the future, and correct this error from tonight’s broadcast.

Update: This goes for you, too, Bernie Sanders.

Word of the day

Experimercial.

Peter Doshi’s epic BMJ feature article about Study 329

This report in the Guardian about the reanalysis of the infamous Study 329 links to both the reanalysis itself and an accompanying feature article by BMJ Associate Editor Peter Doshi describing the years of frustrated attempts to get the original article retracted, both of which are open access. Doshi’s piece - “No correction, no retraction, no apology, no comment: paroxetine trial reanalysis raises questions about institutional responsibility” – is a scathing indictment of the institutions involved, specifically the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), whose journal (JAACAP) published the article by Keller et al. in 2001, and Brown University. The feature quotes several experts, including Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch, which posted about the matter yesterday.

In PR and censorship news…

The sleazy, repressive, illegitimate regime in Honduras has hired Ketchum (for more about which, see here, here, here, here, and here) to do its spin. It also helps to silence real journalists.

Quote of the day - a reasonable standard

“In this murky area of standards for retraction, there are some no-brainers – fabrication of data and plagiarism as prime examples. I would propose that journals add another no-brainer. When an article is part of a conviction or settlement for a crime, it is by definition ready for immediate retraction.”

- 1boringoldman, January 10, 2013, referring to Study 329 (see here for more)

Restoring Study 329

“Study 329: The Final Chapter Coming Soon”:

Arguably the most controversial drug study ever, Study 329, published in July 2001:

1. Concluded that paroxetine was a safe and effective medication for treating major depression in adolescents;
2. Is still widely cited in the medical literature, providing physicians with assurance about the usefulness of paroxetine;
3. Was criticized by a few alert and concerned journalists and academics. Their voices were buried by a tsunami of positive marketing and promotion by vested interests;
4. Resulted in a successful New York state fraud lawsuit against GSK;
5. Resulted in 2012 in the biggest fine in corporate history – $3 Billion; and
6. Remains unretracted.

In June, 2013 Peter Doshi and colleagues published “Restoring invisible and abandoned trials: a call for people to publish the findings” in the British Journal of Medicine (BMJ).

They referred to this proposed protocol as RIAT, and described its purpose as follows:

Unpublished and misreported studies make it difficult to determine the true value of a treatment. Peter Doshi and colleagues call for sponsors and investigators of abandoned studies to publish (or republish) and propose a system for independent publishing if sponsors fail to respond.

A team of researchers undertook to re-analyze the original data and publish a new analysis under the RIAT protocol.

In August, 2015, after a year and seven drafts, BMJ notified the team that their submission would be published in September, 2015. This will be the first ever trial with two completely different takes on the same data.

This new study, Restoring Study 329: Efficacy and harms of paroxetine and imipramine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: restoration of a randomised controlled trial, should shock all who care about integrity in drug safety. Find out the inside story when this site goes live.

How does this thing - resulting in a $3 billion fine for GSK, almost invariably referred to with adjectives like “infamous” and “notorious” - remain unretracted?

Some background here:



(Transcript, of sorts, available here.)

Historical quote of the day

“Anti-American activism caused by resentment of U.S. policy is open and pervasive in the Middle East. To improve the climate, Americans need to bypass commercial media and become aware of the core grievances held against U.S. policy. First, the U.S. is held directly responsible for the imposition of oppressive regimes against the wishes of their people. It is unlikely that the Jordanian, Egyptian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Tunisian, and Moroccan regimes would have survived until today if it was not for direct U.S. military, intelligence, and political support. And despite the lofty language of human rights and democracy during Carter’s administration and beyond, the people of the Middle East know better. They understand that the U.S. support is based purely on economic and military considerations, and that those interests are fundamentally at odds with democratization and human rights. So when U.S. officials speak about ‘moderate’ and ‘friendly’ Arab governments, the American public needs to realize the people living under those governments do not find them moderate or friendly. But moderation and friendliness are defined purely in terms of subservience to U.S. interests, not the interests of the country’s civil society.”

…“The U.S. has certainly dominated in the initial military phase of the campaign. But responses are sure to follow, regardless of whether bin Laden is killed or survives. U.S. military actions are certain to produce more angry youths and more clerics and leaders, just as successive Israeli oppression of Palestinians has not succeeded in ending the violent methods of struggle by Palestinians.”

…“The war against terrorism will likely not come to a clear end. It could drag on for years, if not decades.”

- As’ad AbuKhalil, Bin Laden, Islam, and America’s New “War on Terrorism” (2002)

Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!

I just learned of the film from listening to this interesting interview with its director Dean Spade. Here’s the trailer, but you can watch the whole thing – it’s a little under an hour – on Vimeo for free, or at the film site, or right here:

Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back! from Pinkwashing Exposed on Vimeo.

I think Spade did a great job with it. As he describes:

This film is useful, I hope, because it tells a story of what some local activists did to speak truth back to propaganda, and how we made our city confront uncomfortable truths. It doesn’t spare the details of the backlash - and it was ugly - because being prepared for backlash is part of doing work against well-organized opposition. But I think it demonstrates that despite the backlash, our work built a great deal of awareness and relationships and strengthened our resistance network.

For more about pinkwashing (origins), see here.

And because I still love it:



And a live version I just learned of:



“Because there is nothing hot about cruising in an apartheid state.”

Quotes of the day

“If you identify yourself with something for so long, and suddenly you think of yourself as not that thing, it leaves a bit of space.” - Paul Haggis, quoted in Going Clear, p. 362

Truthout features an interview with Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove, authors of the new book Psychiatry under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform (which has recently been added to my list of recommended readings in psychiatry, skepticism, and social justice). Bruce Levine asks the two about the possibilities of reform coming from within psychiatry, in light of the depth of the institutional corruption, the cognitive dissonance it entails, and the tendency among psychiatrists in response to “construct a narrative that protects their self-image.” They both answer that the chances seem slim.

I share their pessimism (which isn’t a general pessimism, I should emphasize, but specifically skepticism about moves for reform coming from within the institution itself – they do believe change can come from outside). The quotes by past presidents of the American Psychiatric Association at annual meetings that Whitaker and Cosgrove provide late in the book struck me as well, especially because I read it around the same time as I read Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013). The quotes all evince an effort to construct a particular narrative and collective self-image, to cast off doubts and criticisms. Two that stood out:

Herbert Pardes in 1990:

Psychiatry in 1990 is at the height of its powers. We have had a spectacular decade… Psychiatry works, psychiatry is respected for it, and we can hold our heads high.

Jeffrey Lieberman in 2014:

We have been waiting, many of us our whole lives, for the chance to change the way the world thinks of psychiatry and the way we think of ourselves as psychiatrists. Let’s use the momentum we have to plunge ahead into the next year with our confidence brimming, our energy renewed, and our sights set high…this is our opportunity to change the practice and perception of psychiatry for the better and as never before. Last year, standing on the stage in San Francisco, I told you that ‘our time has come’. Today, I say to you that our future is now!

These speeches remind me of little as much as the meetings and rallies shown in Alex Gibney’s documentary version of Going Clear. I don’t believe the similarity is entirely superficial, and there’s a tragic element in both cases. How difficult it must be to have dedicated years of your life to an institution; to realize it’s corrupt, built on a harmful mythology, and has led you to act unethically; and to face up to that knowledge. What a struggle not to let yourself continue to be seduced by the self-serving narrative that would put your mind and conscience at ease. And how rare are the people like Haggis who can bring themselves to do it.