Many of us have thrown up our hands and screamed “WTH!” after reading or watching a news story where an elected official or voter has uttered something outrageously unbelievable, something we know is completely false. Yet, the experience repeats itself in the coming days, weeks and months, to where we now see the same falsity repeated daily. As it becomes the accepted truth for many, our rage intensifies.
What’s commonly called the false narrative has come to dominate the public lexicon, in nearly all issues in the daily news cycle. While many recognize it, we often fail to understand how it came about, or worse, its danger and effectiveness.
In its simplest form, the false narrative is the conveyance of a label or event that is mostly or clearly false, but becomes widely accepted as the truth, which is the critical part, AND the most dangerous.
To be clear, false narratives have been used for generations, are used in a variety of situations, including commercial advertising. Cigarette ads from the 20th century are a good example. But for simplicity’s sake, let’s keep this discussion focused on the most dangerous application – the arena of politics and public policy. And in fairness, both sides of the political spectrum have used false narratives ad nauseam. One side, however, has elevated the use and the boldness of false narratives to unimaginable heights over the last 20 years.
The sheer success of false narratives may best be demonstrated with an issue most are familiar with: climate change. The issue first gained national headlines in 1988 when then-director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies, Dr. James Hansen testified on the dangers from climate change to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
For the first decade or so, the issue was mostly taken seriously with little political debate. While the science of climate change has greatly expanded since then with absolute clear evidence of the phenomenon, combined with real time evidence that something has run amok in our weather patterns, Congress has done little to address the issue. This is largely due to public opinion that has been heavily influenced by disinformation campaigns financed in part by the fossil fuels industries.
This space doesn’t allow the mention of all of the various false narratives and tactics used over the years to delay climate action, but the intent was clear early on. Sow doubt in the American voter’s mind with claims of “global warming hoax” to “the climate has always been changing” to “there is no scientific consensus.” While all have been proven completely false, one still sees such claims today on right wing social media sites, along with more refined and modern narratives designed to do one thing, falsify public opinion in order to give cover to policy makers who want to prevent action policies because it’s in the interest of donors to do so.1
Another good example of a successful false narrative that has been used for more than 20 years is the frequently used “death tax,” referring to the estate tax on property transferred to another person after the owner dies. This often-used label is used heavily in anti-tax and conservative circles, conveying the mostly false idea that any estate, no matter the size, would be taxed so heavily that it wouldn’t pay to transfer ownership to other family members. This has played especially well in the farming community. Never mind that the overwhelming majority of estates in the U.S. will never meet the threshold on which an estate is subject to the tax, which up until 2017 was $5.5 million per individual (or $11 million per couple). That exemption was effectively doubled with the 2017 U.S. tax law changes, to where the estate tax now affects fewer than 1 in 1,000 estates in the U.S. But that doesn’t stop some from still screaming “Repeal the death tax!” even in 2021.
To help understand how a false narrative is effective, I like to use the visual of a football game, with the football itself representing the current public narrative on a given issue. If the 50-yard line represents the truth and if it is believed by a majority of voters, the ball would rarely leave that position. In reality, however, if a concocted false narrative designed to mislead voters comes along, and more voters believe it, the football (the public narrative) moves up and down the field, depending on who has the loudest megaphone. When one team is able to convince more of the public of a false narrative vs the true narrative, their cheering will become louder, and the ball (public narrative) responds accordingly.
Using the example of the “death tax,” and considering how well the anti-tax crowd has successfully used it to dramatically reduce the tax over the years, it would appear that in spite of the phrase being largely false in most cases, it has become the accepted narrative by many Americans who vote, hence the winner.
How does such a false narrative start? Many ways, including someone uttering something outrageous but filled with anger while being interviewed on FOX News, to a member of Congress with a really smart communications team, to paying a professional media consultant an exorbitant fee to come up with something that plays into our fears.
Enter Frank Luntz. Luntz is a longtime communications and political consultant who, among other things, has mastered the art and business of focus groups with ordinary Americans, and converting the results into a talking points memo for corporate clients or politicians (nearly always Republican) looking to advance or defeat proposed legislation. Luntz has had major influence on numerous mega-issues in the U.S., including climate change and healthcare.
Who doesn’t recall the feisty public hearings and debates when the Affordable Care Act was being proposed in the early years of the Obama administration? Suddenly, a measure to make private healthcare more affordable and accessible to more Americans was branded as a “big government takeover of healthcare.” The chaos ensued. Thank Frank Luntz for that one, which garnered him the 2010 Politifact Lie of the Year. It worked, however, and was a driving factor in stopping the ACA from including a public option, something contained in the original bill. Eleven years later and imagine what America’s healthcare system could look like if we had a public option for health insurance. 2
No matter how the narrative starts, once it gets into the right media circles and is heard by millions of potential voters, the echo chamber goes into “MAXIMUM” mode. At that point, it doesn’t matter who said it first. It just becomes repeated … by the echo. “I heard so and so on Tucker last night say blah blah blah. He was spot on!” “Damn straight, pal!” And on it goes to where it becomes accepted as fact, no matter how ridiculously false it is.
Which brings us to the present. I believe 2021 will be defined by three prominent false narratives, all now broadcast relentlessly by FOX News and other rightwing media outlets. And not only are they wildly false, they are very dangerous. Starting with –
#3. “Mask and vaccine mandates are a violation of my rights.” Most know how this false narrative has inflicted horrible wounds on about every facet of American life, all so certain politicians could make us believe that they are the White Knight coming to save us from that big evil bureaucrat who wants to take away our rights. Remember. The 2022 midterms are just around the corner.
#2. “The vaccines haven’t been proven safe” or some other variation within the anti-vaccine platform, such as “I don’t know what’s in it” or “There are other treatments that are safer and more effective” or “I’m healthy and don’t need it” or … you get the picture. Like #3, mega long-term wounds to society, education, our healthcare system, the economy, … and death. 800,000 and counting, and many preventable.
#1. (Drum roll, please.) “Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.” What has now been accurately dubbed “the big lie” is not a lie to millions of us. A Public Religion Research Institute poll taken in November showed that 68% of Republican voters now believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is when most of us start screaming, “What the hell?!”
That number has steadily crept up over the last year, as more and more state legislatures used the same narrative or similar false narratives about election fraud to pass a myriad of new election laws that essentially make it harder for certain sectors of society to vote. In other words, the most basic tenet of American democracy on which this country was founded 245 years ago – free and fair elections – is slated for the butcher block in 2022, all enabled by a simple but specifically designed false narrative that has spun out of control.
Regardless of one’s political leanings, a healthy democracy works for all. A sick one only works for a few. Words matter. But truth matters more. And the clock is running out on the latter.
What can you do? Stand up. Be heard. We live in modern America. Take nothing for granted.
1. A couple of good reads on how the public was duped early on over the issue of climate change: Climate Cover-Up: the Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan, or Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes.
2. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the healthcare wars: Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans by Wendell Potter.
