Trump’s not-so-secret weapon

IN THE prologue of his new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Yuval Noah Harari writes: “We should not assume delusional networks are doomed to failure.” The implications for the United States in the run-up to its presidential election should be clear. After all, the authoritarian “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement – of which the Republican Party is now just the political wing – is nothing if not delusional, and a second term in office for its leader, Donald Trump, would be catastrophic.

And yet the race is neck and neck: polls place support for Trump at about 50 per cent – an alarming result, given Trump’s penchant for extreme, offensive, off-the-wall, and outright dangerous rhetoric. It is a testament to the Maga delusion’s intoxicating power that half of American voters apparently genuinely believe that Trump is better suited to lead the US than his opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s supporters might not all give the same reason for backing him, but they do have one thing in common: the constant and sustained inhalation of highly addictive right-wing propaganda. These voters have been bombarded with Trump’s toxic rhetoric for a decade, but that is just the latest phase in a much longer process. Americans heard the late Rush Limbaugh’s vitriol for a half-century, and they have been watching Fox News’ monotone stable of talking heads spew lies and stoke division for nearly 30 years.