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Poll shows US public support for LGBTQ+ protections falling for first time since 2015
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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There's a psychological phenomenon, a cascade effect, that causes people's perceptions to flip if enough people around them also change their minds.
It's not nefarious, or a sign of stupidity or ignorance, it's part of how social primates like humans work. And it's something that the Right knows to work, and is exploiting.
It's how we got LGBTQ rights, and it's how we'll lose them if we, and especially the media, don't stop giving these troglodytes and their ideas oxygen.
Anyone who tells you that if we just educate people it'll make a difference ( it won't, cf the Backfire Effect) and that "sunshine is the best disinfectant" is either woefully ignorant of how humans work, or is actively disingenuous.
Tl;dr radical centrists are paving stones on the path to He'll.
I agree it works in the opposite direction too. My boys both LGBTQ ask me about gays when I was teenager and I had to admit I never met any and if I ever thought about gay people it was not in a positive light.
Keep in mind I grew up in Southern Baptist environment were my dad was a racist. But when I grew up got away my prospective change when I got around more left wing individuals and exposed to gay people.
My daughter is queer and it is to my shame that when I was around her age (13), I used "gay" and "fag" as insults. This was Indiana in the late 1980s. That's not an excuse for my behavior, just an explanation for why I thought it was okay.
And the really bad thing is my much older brother's best friend is gay and I had known him since I was 5 or 6 but I did that anyway.
I was guilty of that kind of behavior too. We're social creatures and will repeat what those around us say, sometimes without considering how that might be received - especially when we were young and dumb.
Things have changed culturally since then. It took brave people in marginalized groups to stand up and bring awareness that they did not appreciate having their identities used as pejoratives before a lot of us realized that we were being jerks unintentionally.
We can't change the past, but we can do better for the future. The fact that you realized that you needed to do better and did is about all one can reasonably expect from a human being.
Thanks, I agree. And it didn't take me more than a year or two after that to realize it thankfully.
Phil Ochs knew that all the way back in 1966. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azdlpIy7oaQ
Edit: Unfortunately, that song slurs lesbians. Oh well.
Reminds me of Edward Berneys, nephew of Sigmund Freud and "father of public relations".
– Propaganda (1928) pp. 9–10 Source
Cool documentary The Century of the Self for anyone who wants to learn more about this goon
We need to educate the people who have not made up their minds. The internet is an excellent place to engage people who are sitting on the fence on a whole host of issues. We are in an information race, to reach as many people as possible. Not participating is how the fascists win. edit: typo
That's actually my point: educating them doesn't really work, and the failure of the information deficit hypothesis (and the ensuing understanding of the Backfire Effect) has pretty much proven it.
We need to pivot from trying to inform people and focus on changing their minds.
Fascists don't bother with facts, because they don't really work. They've realized that people's brains aren't computers, they're rationalization engines that are just trying to make sense of the world and align it with ones precepts and social groups.
What would go a long was is coming down on the media and how it frames issues as having two sides, with equal validity. That'll at least prevent the more toxic ideas from getting an audience, and thusly credibility.
This is a contradiction. People's minds will only change with new information. In the long term, some minds can be changed. In the short term, such as between now and the general election, the Backfire Effect is a huge problem. We need to get true information to people first, before fascists get out their false information. Educating is essential, because so many people are uniformed on issues. Most people are going to tune in to the election between now and election day, so these next few months are crucial.
If we try to change the minds of fascists, in the short term we will be disappointed. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try though. People have demonstrated that it is possible to help people out of the MAGA cult, but this has been done on a case by case basis. Meanwhile, Fox News and conservative media in general blasts the airwaves with fascist propaganda. Mainstream news get it right occasionally, but a lot of the time they are still both-siding fascism. We are going to have to pick up the slack and get the word out to people on political issues. Fascists know they just have to trick people in the short term to win. We have to spread the truth to people who are sleep walking into fascism.