There's a really great article in Politico that I encourage you to read.
The article is by Zach Stanton, and it's called The problem isn't just one insurrection, it's
mass radicalization.
And in this article, Zach writes that, quote, Experts say the attack, meaning January 6th
riot, is hugely worrying for reasons beyond what the Senate is debating, unlike other
recent spasms of American violence.
This was not the work of a lone wolf nor of a small cell of radicals.
The pathway to an attempted government overthrow unfolded in public out loud on the Internet
in a process that experts call mass radicalization.
We've been talking about how do you mass deprogram people?
Zach Stanton is accurately talking about how there has been a mass radicalization that
has taken place.
I would argue that Trump winning the Republican primary was already an example of that back
in 2016 about the degree to which the Republican Party had been deemed intellectualized and
mass radicalized.
Arzak goes on to say, the protest was largely just the tip of the iceberg.
No one knows how many Americans, tens of thousands more would willingly have joined them if they'd
been in Washington that day.
It's a new challenge for America and a serious one at times and places when large groups
of people have been inspired to embrace violence, it often leads to long term unrest, if not
outright civil war.
And right now, experts think it's happening faster than ever.
We talked about this almost verbatim.
Michael Jensen, an expert on extremism, said historically mass radicalization took time,
but that's not our reality anymore.
Jenson's research has found that over the roughly 15 past years, the average time span
of radicalization in the US has shrunk from 18 months to seven months, largely because
of how our lives have shifted online.
This research goes to exactly what I fear when I get a phone call from someone who says
my cousin, my friend, my girlfriend in some cases have been radicalized merely by the
videos recommended on YouTube and the things shared by their crazy aunts and uncles on
Facebook and in the past that used to take longer to have such a shift in ideology.
It's now happening really, really quickly.
And one of the real questions is the radicalization is happening faster and faster.
The deprogramming, I don't know that can really happen any faster.
And I've said before this shift in the right started, I would argue, with the Reagan era
in the 80s, welfare queens over overregulated, relatively benign compared to the things we're
seeing now.
That was the start.
We're talking about a 40 year radicalization process societally, individually.
Now the process is down to seven months for many individuals.
How do you undo that?
And it's something we've been studying and thinking about for a very long time.
We are still seeing I mean, listen, you know, at the micro level, I still see Trump 20,
20 flags.
It's twenty twenty one.
It's over the Trump twenty twenty flags are still flying.
And you could even argue in a sense that that these are kind of new Confederate flags.
More and more of society considers Confederate flags to be unacceptable.
So now there's this new item to represent the ideology in some way.
It's sort of like it's almost a dog whistle in a sense.
It's like when we hear thugs used by certain folks to trigger the idea of black men and
the racialization of that word.
These are the Trump twenty twenty flag in twenty twenty one has almost become a defiant
code in some sense.
And until we really deal with I mean, listen, we need to deal with education.
We need to deal with culture, we need to deal with the sources of misinformation, things
really aren't going to change until we do that.
40 percent of the country still believes that the election was stolen and the percentage
of Republicans is higher.
So there is a real I mean, it's an information war.
And I fear that truth is losing the information war.
And we've also talked about the psychological aspects, magical thinking, war like mentality.
We're going to take losses in war.
We have to do things in war that we wouldn't ordinarily do during peace times.
These are the sort of ideologies and ideas that are infecting many of these people.
And this is, you know, religious fundamentalism.
Yes.
What we are seeing with Trump ism is a pseudo religious fundamentalism where they do see
Trump as the leader, as in some sense is a religious figure, almost a deity, pseudo deity.
Some might just call them a an emotional leader, a spiritual leader of some kind.
The common theme of all of these different things is authoritarianism.
It's accomplished with a very similar trajectory, fear which Donald Trump started inciting in
others in 2015 and even earlier talking about China, immigrants, etc., fear Democrats even
you should fear them then indoctrination into a more authoritarian set of solutions for
those fears that you've generated.
And then, of course, I alone can fix it.
Trump claiming that literally during his campaign, telling you you can't even believe what you're
being told elsewhere.
I'm the only person who tells you the truth, maybe Newsmax and OEI and tell you the truth
as well.
All of those elements are here.
And this is unfortunately, yes.
The fact that Trump was able to coalesce enough people to do what they did on January 6th.
Horrible.
He got impeached over it.
It's not insignificant.
It's not trivial.
But the mass radicalization that led to that being possible over a lie that the election
was stolen should raise many, many red flags.
And it certainly it certainly has.
We're going to continue talking about it as we go forward.
We'll take a quick break and be back after this.
The David Pakman Show at David Pakman Dotcom.