“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” —Voltaire
Difficult truths uttered here. Truths that must be grappled with. Graham Linehan is correct. He sees it for what it is. We must learn again to see what we see. This requires rejection of the blindness of belief in belief. If you can’t see it, then your cognitive frame is warped.
Imagine trying to argue the pro side of Nazism and the Holocaust—the ghastly experiments and all the rest of it. The difficulty in doing so is thanks to denazification (Entnazifizierung) and the passage of time.
At one time, in Germany, a democratically-advanced scientifically-literate society, millions of people believed in Nazism and were involved in carrying out atrocities against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and others. There were some eight million members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), and many millions of Germans who had belonged to one or another Nazi organization.
In the end (at points using illiberal action), the presence of Nazism was diminished. But that doesn’t mean the lesson was learned.
When people are in ideology’s bubble, when their livelihoods and reputations depend on toeing the line, even finding their identity and status in it, especially when the line has been drawn by hegemonic discursive formation such that it has become the social logic, the day’s common sense impression, it is very difficult to see things for what they are. Morality and justice are redefined: what is perceived as good and just become evil and destructive. You have to make the effort to put thing in the right position. You have to have the skills to know how.
But you also have to know what to look for. It might seem obvious to you and me that when doctors are experimenting on children it’s happening again. But when ideology tells you that it’s a good thing, you stop knowing what to look for.
This phenomenon is part of a cognitive error known as “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual experiences psychological discomfort or tension due to holding conflicting beliefs. In an effort to reduce this discomfort, people rationalize their conflicting beliefs or behaviors to align them more coherently.
For example, asked whether he thinks illegal aliens should vote in local elections, a Democrat says that this is a myth, that illegal aliens are not voting in local elections. Confronted with evidence that they are, the Democrat says that it’s a good thing they are because illegal aliens should have political representation.
The individual initially denies that aliens are voting in local elections because it contradicts his core belief that this shouldn’t happen. However, when confronted with evidence that contradicts his initial belief, he justifies the situation by adopting the belief that it’s a good thing because it aligns with his broader perspective on political representation. This behavior is a common way for individuals to maintain consistency in their beliefs and attitudes, even when faced with evidence that challenges them.
Above is a good example of cognitive dissonance from one of Billboard Chris’ street interviews (note that he is wearing a mask). This is one of many he has accumulated over several years. The individuals who do this are in denial. Deep down they are horrified that doctors are experimenting on children. They also believe in the cause of gender ideology and know that medical experiments involving children discredits the movement. So they deny it is happening. When they learn it is happening, they choose gender ideology over human rights.
How we make progress is not merely contradicting the individual’s claims; we use these moments to show his rationalization of contradiction to a larger audience, causing them to examine their own cognitive style to see if and when and where they engage in cognitive dissonance. People are often reluctant to change their opinion when directly confronted with it. But when they can see what that looks like from the third person perspective, it can influence them to work out their own position.
One tragic aspect of these moments—tragic because we are compassionate and humanist—is that the perpetrators of atrocities and the bystanders who support them, or fail to notice them for their evil and destructive character, will, even after the regime of horror is overthrown, feel compelled to believe they were doing good in whatever they were doing; the horror of their thoughts and behaviors now revealed for its truth is a terrible truth is to admit. How do people live with themselves when they have committed such evil? Yet they do.
The best we can accomplish with projects like denazification is make the thoughts and deeds of the Nazis and their analogs so shameful that those who wind out their remaining mortal coil will at least not continue their evil. After all, we can’t hang them all. (Maybe we shouldn’t hang any.)
That’s the best we can accomplish on that front. But there is a bigger front. This is something like the difference between specific versus general deterrence that you may have learned about in your criminal justice courses: preventing these moments from happening in the first place by socializing Enlightenment values: civil rights, humanism, individualism, liberalism (and that includes modern conservatism with respect for secularism), rationalism, and scientific materialism. These are the values and practices that reduce the problem of cognitive dissonance because they deter people from lying to themselves in a way that allows them to become caught up in harmful social movements.
I leave you with a panel discussion by people who used Enlightenment values and practices to learn to see what they see.
freedom and reason 