September 17, 2024 • 24 mins
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Emmy-award-winning producer/director Dan Partland discusses his new documentary, "#UNTRUTH: The Psychology of Trumpism." It is the #1 documentary streaming in the US! Currently, it is streaming on Apple TV and all other leading on-demand services.
In #UNTRUTH, political conservatives, psychologists, and historians share an eye-opening analysis of how false narratives, online virality, and profit-driven news media lead to anger, conspiracism, and political violence. The film reveals how politicians in pursuit of power, foreign state actors, and international oligarchs are exploiting disinformation to promote an authoritarian future that threatens the very survival of American Democracy and democracies around the world.
Emmy-award-winning producer/director Dan Partland discusses his new documentary, "#UNTRUTH: The Psychology of Trumpism." It is the #1 documentary streaming in the US! Currently, it is streaming on Apple TV and all other leading on-demand services.
In #UNTRUTH, political conservatives, psychologists, and historians share an eye-opening analysis of how false narratives, online virality, and profit-driven news media lead to anger, conspiracism, and political violence. The film reveals how politicians in pursuit of power, foreign state actors, and international oligarchs are exploiting disinformation to promote an authoritarian future that threatens the very survival of American Democracy and democracies around the world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Jam Price Show all about movies.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You're listening to The Jam Price Show and today my
guest is Dan Partlan, and we're going to be talking
about his brand new documentary entitled Untruth, which is very timely,
very very timely. Welcome to the show. Dan, it's good
to have you here. You are an award winning documentary filmmaker,
and by the way, you've done quite a few wonderful documentaries.
(00:26):
Let's talk about Untruth and it's number one right now,
which is fabulous.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thank you for having me, Jam, it's good to be
good to be here. And thanks for all those kind
words in your introduction.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, you're very welcome. I meant them all truthfully. So
so let's tell the audience what Untruth is about so
they'll know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, it's Untruth. The Psychology of Trump is In twenty
twenty and the lead up to the twenty twenty election,
I did a film called Unfit The Psychology of Donald Trump,
and the idea to that film was that we were
all endlessly consumed with the twenty four hour news cycle,
the scandal of the day. The effort was how do
you I found myself that I was consuming endless amounts
(01:08):
of news and getting very little insight from it, and
yet there was a There were always new scandals, there
were always new crises, but there was a sameness to them.
And in trying to understand the sameness, what I could
see was that the sameness was really emanating from the
psychology of Trump himself. So we went down this road
and interviewed a lot of wonderful scholars, psychologists and mental
(01:28):
health experts, because turns out they really had a lot
of great insight into Donald Trump. And once you understand
the personality type, then it became much much easier to
anticipate what was going to happen next. The new cycle
stopped feeling like, you know, an endless series of surprises
and started to feel very very predictable, up to and
including not leaving office peacefully on January sixth, sadly. So
(01:51):
the problem is that, you know, I think I felt,
and a lot of people involved in the film felt
that if Trump was defeated in twenty twenty, then he
would go the way of other defeated presidential candidates, that
he would quickly disappear into the woodwork and become a
chapter in history, not a footnote in history, but stop
having tremendous influence over our politics. And this is where
(02:12):
we were really all wrong. And so the effort with
Untruth was to try to not understand the psychology of
Trump himself, but the psychology that is at work in
the culture, the psychology behind what makes Trump so so
very attractive to some people and so distasteful to so
many others, I think those who are never Trumpers. Of course,
(02:36):
it's unimaginable that people would be drawn in. He seems
like such an unapologetic liar and a phony. I mean,
that's been demonstrated over and over again, but it seems
that his following I don't think they question that he's
a liar. Maybe some do, but it's more that it
doesn't matter, and trying to understand why it doesn't matter,
and why they've made such a firm bond with him
(02:58):
was really the goal of the film.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh we shake our heads. We shake our heads, and
just so our audience knows, we are recording this the
day after the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and
Donald Trump, and there are a lot of There has
been criticism because David Muir and Oh Gosh, I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
The other the woman's name. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Lindsay Davis, thank you so much. Did that checking fact
checking last night with just ties right into this documentary,
and I was happy because it didn't happen in the
first debate, and I was happy that they did. And
somebody pointed out to me, you know, he's saying this
morning that he won, he actually won by big numbers,
(03:42):
but that it was biased because they were fact checking him,
and which is just interesting that he had an extra
six minutes. We were a bunch of us were texting
each other last night and going, do you believe that?
But that mic on him, turn off the mic because
he went on so much with his lies, and so
(04:02):
it's hard to believe that people. I mean, and then
I've read this statistic just right before we did this interview.
The twenty five percent of the Republicans think he should
even if he loses the election, he should take over
the office.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I mean, that's just shocking. Well, what the film gets
into very quickly and trying to understand all this is
it goes back to a lot of the work that
was done in the wake of World War Two, the
rise of fascism around Europe, and this work really centered
around what the psychology of authoritarianism, what draws people to
an authoritarian How does authoritarianism work? And I think, you know,
(04:38):
I think actually it's it's kind of an incomplete bit
of science. I think it was studied a lot in
the immediate aftermath to World War Two, but I think
very quickly the world felt that they could move on
from fascism, that the world had spoken and spoken decisively.
It took a World war, but fascism was defeated and
fascism became a bad work around the world. So that
(05:00):
in twenty twenty, when we were making Unfit and it
had all the Maga movement, had all the marks of
a facistic movement, we were cautioned by scholars and historians
alike to be very very careful and not certain you
should use that word. That word has really been demonized.
It's not really you know, is it fair? I think
in the four years since, I think everybody's become very
(05:20):
comfortable calling it exactly that. It is fascism. It's a
new kind of fascism, It's American fascism. It of course
differs from versions that happened in Europe in the twenties
and thirties and into the forties. But I think it's
an incomplete science, the study of authoritarianism, and part of
the reason is because it was so soundly defeated. I
think we've taught it wrong. We've taught this history wrong.
(05:42):
I think in the era that I grew up, I
think it was presented as a phase that the world
went through, that was over, that we had learned from,
and that was now eradicated from the globe, when obviously
I think future generations should study fascism as a cyclical pattern.
I think that there is a lot of indicator. The
film goes into this in some detail that fascism is.
(06:04):
There's a lot of ways that it fits into human
psychology in a comfortable way that with the right set
of circumstances, an authoritarian leader can really get hold. And
let's just look at that for a second. The question is,
you know, Trump is not that unique or unusual. There
have been people like Trump throughout the ages. The question
(06:24):
is why at this moment in history was the ground
fertile or his kind of a movement to take route?
And it is a question of something that's going on
around the world, because it's not unique to the United States.
These kind of right wing authoritarian movements are on the
rise all over the globe. So Trump is, you know,
it's been said, you know, Trump is both a symptom
(06:47):
that then became a very important cause. He began as
a kind of symptom you have to look at as
a symptom that people have suddenly taken an interest in
this kind of angry, divisive, nationalistic, ethnocentric kind of politics.
But then it became an amplifier. So authoritarian leaders that
were already in power, like you know, were already on
(07:08):
the rise, like Bolsonaro in Brazil, then began to really
copy from Trump's playbook, just as just as Hitler copied
from Mussolini and then topped him. Is that there was
a sharing. There's been a tremendous sharing of authoritarian practices
up to and including the fact that when Bolsonaro was
defeated in Brazil, he also had a I think it
(07:29):
was a January seventh uprising, is what he planned, where
he was going to not relinquish power. So these things
are in the water for sure, but then they also
catch and they can amplify each other. The basic idea
I think that psychologists can share with us in political
scientists is that authoritarianism is likely. It's properly seen as
(07:49):
a trait that exists in all of us and can
be activated by the right set of circumstances. And so
the example I would give to this is like the Trump,
I think the authoritarians offer something that is very valuable emotionally,
even if it's not that valuable practically. It's speaking to
people's emotional need, and I think the emotional need. For instance,
(08:11):
after a nightclub is shot up in San Bernardino by
a Muslim person, Trump came out and he said, you
know that we needed to block all Muslims from entering
the country. And I think this just made a lot
of emotional sense to people as a response to something
horrible had happened. It was a Muslim person. Let's ban
all Muslims from entering the country. The problem is it's
(08:34):
not actually a thoughtful response to the action, because we're
sadly we have actions of mass violence in this country
on a literally on a daily basis. The vast majority,
ninety nine plus percent are home grown, you know, Native
America native to not Native Americans, but our natively born
(08:56):
American citizens. So it made emotional sense, it didn't make
practical sense, but it really had another goal as well,
which is to divide people, and as a divisive tactic,
it was very smart because, of course, the percentage of
Muslims voting in this election is very, very small right
(09:17):
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So it's.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
A kind of instinct. I don't think there's much even
intentionality to or thoughtfulness on Trump's part, but it's an
instinct to always double down on a kind of nativism
version of a white America of your when things were
better in his imagination, and when people are in a
period where they really feel like their material existence right
(09:47):
now is very, very challenging. That message is very reassuring
that there's going to be somebody who sees it clearly,
who isn't going to be caught up in some over think,
who is going to solve the problem. And Trump delivers
that message. He delivers it effectively to a certain portion
of the population, and he's continuing to to until today.
(10:09):
I think that this debate that happened last night, who
knows if that will be influential on the electorate, but
it's it's very unlikely that Trump will lose any significant
following because he really he has consistently had a very
low ceiling of support, because there's a lot of people
who just would never vote for Donald Trump, but also
(10:30):
a very very high floor of support. And so I
think the danger in this election is that, depending on
how the winds are blowing in the actual weeks while
people are casting votes, that margin could tip in his
favor or tip just just as easily tip for him
as tip against him, depending on circumstances on the ground.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's you know, your film, when you watch it, you oh,
oh gosh, you know it's not hopeful.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well look, I hope it's a little bit helpful. It's
certainly scary.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's inspiring, but go ahead and go ahead.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And the goal is to be inspired, I think. And
the goal is also to I think, you know, it's
a tough balance because there's no point in making films
that are just going to be depressing and just discouraging.
But at the same time, we can't shy, we can't
pull our punches, we can't shy away from a clear
eyed view at the current circumstances. And so what the
(11:27):
film really was attending to do was to talk about
this complicated I don't know, you know how it's sort
of will never live up to my ambition because it's
such a complicated picture to try to put together. But
about the complicated interplay between actual difficulties, material problems on
the ground where people are feeling that life has become
(11:49):
too hard and unpredictable, changing too fast, and the relief
of an authoritarian and the exploitation of disinformation, and how
all of these kind of swirl together to lead to
a complex mess of conspiracism and acts of violence, this
(12:13):
escalating you know, as it's said very brilliantly in the
film by one of our experts, Denver Riggleman, who gave
a lot of you know, he's a former Freedom Caucus
Republican from military intelligence, but a lot of time he
became the chief forensic investigator into January sixth, and he
really illustrates how the cascading effect of crazy really leads
(12:38):
to political violence, because the whole goal of all of
these different conspiracies founded on disinformation is to create a
moral paradigm where that justifies almost anything, right, if there
is a moral problem going on, that is so horrific
(12:59):
that know, going back to Pizzagate, that children are being
you know that there's a vast conspiracy, a QAnon, a
vast conspiracy from liberals and Blacks and Jews to abduct
America's children and squeeze the adrenochrome out of them as
an elixir of life, and you know, have them tied
(13:19):
up in basements of pizza parlors of the United States Capital.
Of course, if you can actually get people to believe that,
what wouldn't be justifiable to end this terrible scourge. The
problem is, the scourge is completely untrue, and it's been
the mainstream of the culture, and the national press apparatus
has been completely ineffectual at being able to burst the
(13:42):
bubble and show that some of these things are just
plain on truths.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And that's the part that is scary because obviously there's
lots of different media, and some of them that lean
a certain direction keep perpetuating those lies and disinformation, and
there's a large segment of our American population that tunes
(14:09):
in to that or reads, you know, those particular periodicals,
and that just keeps perpetuating itself, you know, just and
it just surprises me that people can believe some of
these things, it just you know, buggles my brain.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well it's surprising every day, but you know it's this
is this is another psychological principle. You know, that's the
power of these information silos that you know, people are
able now with the complexity of you know, our information systems,
they are able to curate their own sources. And when
(14:50):
you curate the sources that are going to reinforce your
worldview and your community is also reinforcing that worldview. This silo, oh,
you know, people lose their bearings in terms of the
baseline touch with reality. Right. The reality testing that all
(15:13):
of us do to get a check on ourselves and
see if we're on the right track, is to check
in with other people in our community who are like minded,
who we trust, who we know are trusted news sources,
et cetera. And if all of those sources are saying
the same thing, then we can really we're willing to
go quite far. It really can move the you know,
(15:33):
sometimes we call it the Overton window. You can move
your your reality field. It really that's really what it is.
So I think one of the things the film tries
to look at and diagnosing how that has happened is like,
what's new and different that's going on right now? And
I think some things are just systemic. You know, we
(15:53):
do what you're talking about. We have a profit driven
news media. There's a lot of things that are good
about that. But in the current moment, what's driving profits,
what's driving engagement is really is fomenting grievance. Fomenting grievance
(16:16):
is a very very attractive thing. I mean, the news
always you know, somebody once asked me, how come the
news that there's not more happy news? Well, people don't
tune into the happy news, you know, people don't want
It's not that they don't want to see it, it's
that we're evolutionarily wired to be more interested in the problem.
(16:37):
Something happy that's going on is great, but I'm busy.
I got stuff to do. If there's a danger, I'm
going to tune into that. And so our profit driven
news media really lean into this. And then we have
the addition of the Internet and social media in general,
a very very powerful tool at the moment, very very
(16:59):
poor or the regulated, and so when you have that
many voices who really don't have any they don't necessarily
have any credibility. They don't necessarily have any liability business wise.
These businesses, unlike a newspaper, unlike a publisher who has liability,
has a responsibility to say true things. You have so
(17:23):
many voices out there that are really untethered from that responsibility.
And we believe very firmly in free speech, and so
our sort of free speech absolutism is causing us to
really defend the rights of people to go out there
and say untrue things that turn out to be quite
dangerous to the society. And I think that's a new
(17:44):
wrinkle that we really have to deal with. And I
just want to say one more point on the free
speech absolutism. We all want to be free speech absolutists
because we believe it it's important people. We don't want
to suppress voices. But the problem is that people really
aren't aware that we've never been free speech absolutists. In
(18:05):
the United States, free speech has a number of checks
on it. The original check, of course, is that you know,
the number one check is that you cannot advocate the
overthrow of the United States. How about that. I love
Trump jump did that one all by himself.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
He's making all the rules.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You also can't you can't cite violence, you can't you know,
threaten people. You can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater.
Commerce has tons and tons of checks on free speech,
truth and advertising. You know, We've as each one of
these new challenges has come up, we've realized that as
(18:46):
much as we want to be free speech absolutists, there
are some checks that are needed to keep society running
in a healthy way. And that's only fair to people.
And I think we're going to need a correction of
that nature on the social media side, because I've got
to control and it's destabilizing democracies around the world.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, it is, it is. And yeah, and young people
that's where they're getting their news and these little snippets.
And you talk to young because they're busy with their
lives and with children and everything else. I don't have
the luxury that some of us do now to watch
news more and see what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It's too much work. It's too much work to expect
everyone to be a full time fact checker of what's
coming in on their social media feed. And so they
they believe it or they don't believe it. Or they
go with their gut, and going with your gut, you know,
it has its place in certain in certain arenas, but
not on facts. On facts, facts need to be established
(19:44):
by evidence.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I agree, and you've get to be able to have
a few more minutes. But I when I was watching
this film, I said, the people who need to see
this film are not going to be the ones who
get to go who will see it probably, Well.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That's always that's always a criticism of political films is
that they've preached to the converted and that the people
who should see it aren't going to see it. And
you know, what's the point. I don't I think that
that's a I think that that's it's a tired argument
that doesn't it doesn't really apply. I think there's a
lot of reasons for a film like this.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Oh, I think there's wonderful reasons for the film. And
you have some wonder people that I really love listening to,
like George Conway and Michael Steele and many others that
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Only trusted legitimate conservative Republicans, yes speaking speaking hard truths.
But I think I think that a film like this
is very good for a few different things. One is it.
It lays out a case, It makes an argument, hopefully
in a way that's digestible to a lot of people,
and a framework for talking about some of these things
(20:52):
that hopefully it activates the people who see it and
gives them language and framework for talking about these problems
and addressing them, you know, whether it's at the dinner
table or in their own media creations or whatever it is.
But I do think it also. I do think it
has the potential to reach people. I think in our
polarized society, it reaches few people, but I think it
(21:15):
does have the potential to reach people who are on
the bubble, who are wobbling, who are considering, who've had misgivings.
This is really who it was aimed at, as people
who have misgivings about Trump, but they just love Republican
politics and so they're willing to hold their nose and
vote for them and their ideas. Really just to make
the case that like it is not worth that.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that surprises me. I
had a friend and we had lunch. This is before
Biden left the race, this is before the first debate,
and we talked and she at least listened to me
and she said, you know, I'm from Texas, I'm a Republican.
I always vote Republican. It's like, okay, you know, I
(21:59):
mean I've voted. I've voted for both parties, you know,
different elections. You know, throughout my lifetime. You vote for
the candidate, you know. But you know, the one good
thing is I mean, I do want people to see
this and I have sped the word. I have spent
any text message and emails everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You must see this movie.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And everybody should see this movie, no matter what your
belief system is, because it is eye opening and there's
lots of wonderful things and I think it's yeah, it's
it's definitely people should be seeing it, especially now before
the election. So having said that, Dan, where can people
see Untruth?
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You know, people can see it pretty much anywhere where
you can get videos on demand. It's i'll tell you
right now. It's on Apple, It's on iTunes, It's on
Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, Direct TV, Fandangle, at Home, Infinity, Fio, Spectrum, Cox, Comcast, Shaw, Bell,
and Dish. It's everywhere. It's everything everywhere. It's everywhere, and
(22:58):
people say, oh, it on Netflix it's not on Netflix,
it's on it in order to reach with literally the
plan is to be available to one hundred percent of
the audience in the United States. The way to do that
and not only be available to Netflix subscribers or Disney
subscribers is to put it on all of these other
platforms because and I think that's great. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Everybody seek out Untruth. It's it's a really well done documentary.
We'll open your eyes, you'll learn a lot, and it's
a great, great, great documentary. Dan, Thank you so much
for this enlightening conversation. It's been very much a pleasure
to have you on this show today, and I wish
you much success with Untruth, and I look forward to
(23:42):
your next documentary.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Thank you so much. John, great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
You're so welcome to all my wonderful loyal listeners. Your
love of film allows me to do what I do.
If you want to support me, the best way to
do that is to hit the subscribe button on the
iHeart Podcast Network, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
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(24:07):
Subscribing matters if you are feeling really compelled, I want
to hear from you. Have a burning question, comment or review.
Drop me an email at the Jamprice Show dot com.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The Jam Price Show All about movies.
The Jam Price Show all about movies.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
You're listening to The Jam Price Show and today my
guest is Dan Partlan, and we're going to be talking
about his brand new documentary entitled Untruth, which is very timely,
very very timely. Welcome to the show. Dan, it's good
to have you here. You are an award winning documentary filmmaker,
and by the way, you've done quite a few wonderful documentaries.
(00:26):
Let's talk about Untruth and it's number one right now,
which is fabulous.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thank you for having me, Jam, it's good to be
good to be here. And thanks for all those kind
words in your introduction.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, you're very welcome. I meant them all truthfully. So
so let's tell the audience what Untruth is about so
they'll know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, it's Untruth. The Psychology of Trump is In twenty
twenty and the lead up to the twenty twenty election,
I did a film called Unfit The Psychology of Donald Trump,
and the idea to that film was that we were
all endlessly consumed with the twenty four hour news cycle,
the scandal of the day. The effort was how do
you I found myself that I was consuming endless amounts
(01:08):
of news and getting very little insight from it, and
yet there was a There were always new scandals, there
were always new crises, but there was a sameness to them.
And in trying to understand the sameness, what I could
see was that the sameness was really emanating from the
psychology of Trump himself. So we went down this road
and interviewed a lot of wonderful scholars, psychologists and mental
(01:28):
health experts, because turns out they really had a lot
of great insight into Donald Trump. And once you understand
the personality type, then it became much much easier to
anticipate what was going to happen next. The new cycle
stopped feeling like, you know, an endless series of surprises
and started to feel very very predictable, up to and
including not leaving office peacefully on January sixth, sadly. So
(01:51):
the problem is that, you know, I think I felt,
and a lot of people involved in the film felt
that if Trump was defeated in twenty twenty, then he
would go the way of other defeated presidential candidates, that
he would quickly disappear into the woodwork and become a
chapter in history, not a footnote in history, but stop
having tremendous influence over our politics. And this is where
(02:12):
we were really all wrong. And so the effort with
Untruth was to try to not understand the psychology of
Trump himself, but the psychology that is at work in
the culture, the psychology behind what makes Trump so so
very attractive to some people and so distasteful to so
many others, I think those who are never Trumpers. Of course,
(02:36):
it's unimaginable that people would be drawn in. He seems
like such an unapologetic liar and a phony. I mean,
that's been demonstrated over and over again, but it seems
that his following I don't think they question that he's
a liar. Maybe some do, but it's more that it
doesn't matter, and trying to understand why it doesn't matter,
and why they've made such a firm bond with him
(02:58):
was really the goal of the film.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh we shake our heads. We shake our heads, and
just so our audience knows, we are recording this the
day after the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and
Donald Trump, and there are a lot of There has
been criticism because David Muir and Oh Gosh, I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
The other the woman's name. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Lindsay Davis, thank you so much. Did that checking fact
checking last night with just ties right into this documentary,
and I was happy because it didn't happen in the
first debate, and I was happy that they did. And
somebody pointed out to me, you know, he's saying this
morning that he won, he actually won by big numbers,
(03:42):
but that it was biased because they were fact checking him,
and which is just interesting that he had an extra
six minutes. We were a bunch of us were texting
each other last night and going, do you believe that?
But that mic on him, turn off the mic because
he went on so much with his lies, and so
(04:02):
it's hard to believe that people. I mean, and then
I've read this statistic just right before we did this interview.
The twenty five percent of the Republicans think he should
even if he loses the election, he should take over
the office.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I mean, that's just shocking. Well, what the film gets
into very quickly and trying to understand all this is
it goes back to a lot of the work that
was done in the wake of World War Two, the
rise of fascism around Europe, and this work really centered
around what the psychology of authoritarianism, what draws people to
an authoritarian How does authoritarianism work? And I think, you know,
(04:38):
I think actually it's it's kind of an incomplete bit
of science. I think it was studied a lot in
the immediate aftermath to World War Two, but I think
very quickly the world felt that they could move on
from fascism, that the world had spoken and spoken decisively.
It took a World war, but fascism was defeated and
fascism became a bad work around the world. So that
(05:00):
in twenty twenty, when we were making Unfit and it
had all the Maga movement, had all the marks of
a facistic movement, we were cautioned by scholars and historians
alike to be very very careful and not certain you
should use that word. That word has really been demonized.
It's not really you know, is it fair? I think
in the four years since, I think everybody's become very
(05:20):
comfortable calling it exactly that. It is fascism. It's a
new kind of fascism, It's American fascism. It of course
differs from versions that happened in Europe in the twenties
and thirties and into the forties. But I think it's
an incomplete science, the study of authoritarianism, and part of
the reason is because it was so soundly defeated. I
think we've taught it wrong. We've taught this history wrong.
(05:42):
I think in the era that I grew up, I
think it was presented as a phase that the world
went through, that was over, that we had learned from,
and that was now eradicated from the globe, when obviously
I think future generations should study fascism as a cyclical pattern.
I think that there is a lot of indicator. The
film goes into this in some detail that fascism is.
(06:04):
There's a lot of ways that it fits into human
psychology in a comfortable way that with the right set
of circumstances, an authoritarian leader can really get hold. And
let's just look at that for a second. The question is,
you know, Trump is not that unique or unusual. There
have been people like Trump throughout the ages. The question
(06:24):
is why at this moment in history was the ground
fertile or his kind of a movement to take route?
And it is a question of something that's going on
around the world, because it's not unique to the United States.
These kind of right wing authoritarian movements are on the
rise all over the globe. So Trump is, you know,
it's been said, you know, Trump is both a symptom
(06:47):
that then became a very important cause. He began as
a kind of symptom you have to look at as
a symptom that people have suddenly taken an interest in
this kind of angry, divisive, nationalistic, ethnocentric kind of politics.
But then it became an amplifier. So authoritarian leaders that
were already in power, like you know, were already on
(07:08):
the rise, like Bolsonaro in Brazil, then began to really
copy from Trump's playbook, just as just as Hitler copied
from Mussolini and then topped him. Is that there was
a sharing. There's been a tremendous sharing of authoritarian practices
up to and including the fact that when Bolsonaro was
defeated in Brazil, he also had a I think it
(07:29):
was a January seventh uprising, is what he planned, where
he was going to not relinquish power. So these things
are in the water for sure, but then they also
catch and they can amplify each other. The basic idea
I think that psychologists can share with us in political
scientists is that authoritarianism is likely. It's properly seen as
(07:49):
a trait that exists in all of us and can
be activated by the right set of circumstances. And so
the example I would give to this is like the Trump,
I think the authoritarians offer something that is very valuable emotionally,
even if it's not that valuable practically. It's speaking to
people's emotional need, and I think the emotional need. For instance,
(08:11):
after a nightclub is shot up in San Bernardino by
a Muslim person, Trump came out and he said, you
know that we needed to block all Muslims from entering
the country. And I think this just made a lot
of emotional sense to people as a response to something
horrible had happened. It was a Muslim person. Let's ban
all Muslims from entering the country. The problem is it's
(08:34):
not actually a thoughtful response to the action, because we're
sadly we have actions of mass violence in this country
on a literally on a daily basis. The vast majority,
ninety nine plus percent are home grown, you know, Native
America native to not Native Americans, but our natively born
(08:56):
American citizens. So it made emotional sense, it didn't make
practical sense, but it really had another goal as well,
which is to divide people, and as a divisive tactic,
it was very smart because, of course, the percentage of
Muslims voting in this election is very, very small right
(09:17):
in the United States.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So it's.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
A kind of instinct. I don't think there's much even
intentionality to or thoughtfulness on Trump's part, but it's an
instinct to always double down on a kind of nativism
version of a white America of your when things were
better in his imagination, and when people are in a
period where they really feel like their material existence right
(09:47):
now is very, very challenging. That message is very reassuring
that there's going to be somebody who sees it clearly,
who isn't going to be caught up in some over think,
who is going to solve the problem. And Trump delivers
that message. He delivers it effectively to a certain portion
of the population, and he's continuing to to until today.
(10:09):
I think that this debate that happened last night, who
knows if that will be influential on the electorate, but
it's it's very unlikely that Trump will lose any significant
following because he really he has consistently had a very
low ceiling of support, because there's a lot of people
who just would never vote for Donald Trump, but also
(10:30):
a very very high floor of support. And so I
think the danger in this election is that, depending on
how the winds are blowing in the actual weeks while
people are casting votes, that margin could tip in his
favor or tip just just as easily tip for him
as tip against him, depending on circumstances on the ground.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's you know, your film, when you watch it, you oh,
oh gosh, you know it's not hopeful.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well look, I hope it's a little bit helpful. It's
certainly scary.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
It's inspiring, but go ahead and go ahead.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And the goal is to be inspired, I think. And
the goal is also to I think, you know, it's
a tough balance because there's no point in making films
that are just going to be depressing and just discouraging.
But at the same time, we can't shy, we can't
pull our punches, we can't shy away from a clear
eyed view at the current circumstances. And so what the
(11:27):
film really was attending to do was to talk about
this complicated I don't know, you know how it's sort
of will never live up to my ambition because it's
such a complicated picture to try to put together. But
about the complicated interplay between actual difficulties, material problems on
the ground where people are feeling that life has become
(11:49):
too hard and unpredictable, changing too fast, and the relief
of an authoritarian and the exploitation of disinformation, and how
all of these kind of swirl together to lead to
a complex mess of conspiracism and acts of violence, this
(12:13):
escalating you know, as it's said very brilliantly in the
film by one of our experts, Denver Riggleman, who gave
a lot of you know, he's a former Freedom Caucus
Republican from military intelligence, but a lot of time he
became the chief forensic investigator into January sixth, and he
really illustrates how the cascading effect of crazy really leads
(12:38):
to political violence, because the whole goal of all of
these different conspiracies founded on disinformation is to create a
moral paradigm where that justifies almost anything, right, if there
is a moral problem going on, that is so horrific
(12:59):
that know, going back to Pizzagate, that children are being
you know that there's a vast conspiracy, a QAnon, a
vast conspiracy from liberals and Blacks and Jews to abduct
America's children and squeeze the adrenochrome out of them as
an elixir of life, and you know, have them tied
(13:19):
up in basements of pizza parlors of the United States Capital.
Of course, if you can actually get people to believe that,
what wouldn't be justifiable to end this terrible scourge. The
problem is, the scourge is completely untrue, and it's been
the mainstream of the culture, and the national press apparatus
has been completely ineffectual at being able to burst the
(13:42):
bubble and show that some of these things are just
plain on truths.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And that's the part that is scary because obviously there's
lots of different media, and some of them that lean
a certain direction keep perpetuating those lies and disinformation, and
there's a large segment of our American population that tunes
(14:09):
in to that or reads, you know, those particular periodicals,
and that just keeps perpetuating itself, you know, just and
it just surprises me that people can believe some of
these things, it just you know, buggles my brain.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Well it's surprising every day, but you know it's this
is this is another psychological principle. You know, that's the
power of these information silos that you know, people are
able now with the complexity of you know, our information systems,
they are able to curate their own sources. And when
(14:50):
you curate the sources that are going to reinforce your
worldview and your community is also reinforcing that worldview. This silo, oh,
you know, people lose their bearings in terms of the
baseline touch with reality. Right. The reality testing that all
(15:13):
of us do to get a check on ourselves and
see if we're on the right track, is to check
in with other people in our community who are like minded,
who we trust, who we know are trusted news sources,
et cetera. And if all of those sources are saying
the same thing, then we can really we're willing to
go quite far. It really can move the you know,
(15:33):
sometimes we call it the Overton window. You can move
your your reality field. It really that's really what it is.
So I think one of the things the film tries
to look at and diagnosing how that has happened is like,
what's new and different that's going on right now? And
I think some things are just systemic. You know, we
(15:53):
do what you're talking about. We have a profit driven
news media. There's a lot of things that are good
about that. But in the current moment, what's driving profits,
what's driving engagement is really is fomenting grievance. Fomenting grievance
(16:16):
is a very very attractive thing. I mean, the news
always you know, somebody once asked me, how come the
news that there's not more happy news? Well, people don't
tune into the happy news, you know, people don't want
It's not that they don't want to see it, it's
that we're evolutionarily wired to be more interested in the problem.
(16:37):
Something happy that's going on is great, but I'm busy.
I got stuff to do. If there's a danger, I'm
going to tune into that. And so our profit driven
news media really lean into this. And then we have
the addition of the Internet and social media in general,
a very very powerful tool at the moment, very very
(16:59):
poor or the regulated, and so when you have that
many voices who really don't have any they don't necessarily
have any credibility. They don't necessarily have any liability business wise.
These businesses, unlike a newspaper, unlike a publisher who has liability,
has a responsibility to say true things. You have so
(17:23):
many voices out there that are really untethered from that responsibility.
And we believe very firmly in free speech, and so
our sort of free speech absolutism is causing us to
really defend the rights of people to go out there
and say untrue things that turn out to be quite
dangerous to the society. And I think that's a new
(17:44):
wrinkle that we really have to deal with. And I
just want to say one more point on the free
speech absolutism. We all want to be free speech absolutists
because we believe it it's important people. We don't want
to suppress voices. But the problem is that people really
aren't aware that we've never been free speech absolutists. In
(18:05):
the United States, free speech has a number of checks
on it. The original check, of course, is that you know,
the number one check is that you cannot advocate the
overthrow of the United States. How about that. I love
Trump jump did that one all by himself.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
He's making all the rules.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You also can't you can't cite violence, you can't you know,
threaten people. You can't yell fire in a crowded movie theater.
Commerce has tons and tons of checks on free speech,
truth and advertising. You know, We've as each one of
these new challenges has come up, we've realized that as
(18:46):
much as we want to be free speech absolutists, there
are some checks that are needed to keep society running
in a healthy way. And that's only fair to people.
And I think we're going to need a correction of
that nature on the social media side, because I've got
to control and it's destabilizing democracies around the world.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, it is, it is. And yeah, and young people
that's where they're getting their news and these little snippets.
And you talk to young because they're busy with their
lives and with children and everything else. I don't have
the luxury that some of us do now to watch
news more and see what's really going on.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It's too much work. It's too much work to expect
everyone to be a full time fact checker of what's
coming in on their social media feed. And so they
they believe it or they don't believe it. Or they
go with their gut, and going with your gut, you know,
it has its place in certain in certain arenas, but
not on facts. On facts, facts need to be established
(19:44):
by evidence.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I agree, and you've get to be able to have
a few more minutes. But I when I was watching
this film, I said, the people who need to see
this film are not going to be the ones who
get to go who will see it probably, Well.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That's always that's always a criticism of political films is
that they've preached to the converted and that the people
who should see it aren't going to see it. And
you know, what's the point. I don't I think that
that's a I think that that's it's a tired argument
that doesn't it doesn't really apply. I think there's a
lot of reasons for a film like this.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Oh, I think there's wonderful reasons for the film. And
you have some wonder people that I really love listening to,
like George Conway and Michael Steele and many others that
you know.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Only trusted legitimate conservative Republicans, yes speaking speaking hard truths.
But I think I think that a film like this
is very good for a few different things. One is it.
It lays out a case, It makes an argument, hopefully
in a way that's digestible to a lot of people,
and a framework for talking about some of these things
(20:52):
that hopefully it activates the people who see it and
gives them language and framework for talking about these problems
and addressing them, you know, whether it's at the dinner
table or in their own media creations or whatever it is.
But I do think it also. I do think it
has the potential to reach people. I think in our
polarized society, it reaches few people, but I think it
(21:15):
does have the potential to reach people who are on
the bubble, who are wobbling, who are considering, who've had misgivings.
This is really who it was aimed at, as people
who have misgivings about Trump, but they just love Republican
politics and so they're willing to hold their nose and
vote for them and their ideas. Really just to make
the case that like it is not worth that.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that surprises me. I
had a friend and we had lunch. This is before
Biden left the race, this is before the first debate,
and we talked and she at least listened to me
and she said, you know, I'm from Texas, I'm a Republican.
I always vote Republican. It's like, okay, you know, I
(21:59):
mean I've voted. I've voted for both parties, you know,
different elections. You know, throughout my lifetime. You vote for
the candidate, you know. But you know, the one good
thing is I mean, I do want people to see
this and I have sped the word. I have spent
any text message and emails everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
You must see this movie.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And everybody should see this movie, no matter what your
belief system is, because it is eye opening and there's
lots of wonderful things and I think it's yeah, it's
it's definitely people should be seeing it, especially now before
the election. So having said that, Dan, where can people
see Untruth?
Speaker 1 (22:36):
You know, people can see it pretty much anywhere where
you can get videos on demand. It's i'll tell you
right now. It's on Apple, It's on iTunes, It's on
Google Play, YouTube, Microsoft, Direct TV, Fandangle, at Home, Infinity, Fio, Spectrum, Cox, Comcast, Shaw, Bell,
and Dish. It's everywhere. It's everything everywhere. It's everywhere, and
(22:58):
people say, oh, it on Netflix it's not on Netflix,
it's on it in order to reach with literally the
plan is to be available to one hundred percent of
the audience in the United States. The way to do that
and not only be available to Netflix subscribers or Disney
subscribers is to put it on all of these other
platforms because and I think that's great. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Everybody seek out Untruth. It's it's a really well done documentary.
We'll open your eyes, you'll learn a lot, and it's
a great, great, great documentary. Dan, Thank you so much
for this enlightening conversation. It's been very much a pleasure
to have you on this show today, and I wish
you much success with Untruth, and I look forward to
(23:42):
your next documentary.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Thank you so much. John, great to be with you.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
You're so welcome to all my wonderful loyal listeners. Your
love of film allows me to do what I do.
If you want to support me, the best way to
do that is to hit the subscribe button on the
iHeart Podcast Network, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
you listen to your favorite podcast, and of course on YouTube.
(24:07):
Subscribing matters if you are feeling really compelled, I want
to hear from you. Have a burning question, comment or review.
Drop me an email at the Jamprice Show dot com.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The Jam Price Show All about movies.
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