The brainwashing of Palestinians and Trump supporters
22 January 2024
Brainwashing is an important topic in 2024 - I suggest that it accounts for the self-destructive behavior of Palestinians in the Middle East and the widespread support of Donald J. Trump.
My definition of brainwashing is the process of pressuring otherwise rational people into adopting irrational beliefs using repeated lies and other indoctrination methods.
The brainwashing of Palestinians and Trump supporters has common elements:
Inability to accept a loss.
Palestinians have refused to accept the loss of the Arab nations in the 1948 Arab-Israel war. The Arab nations began this war after the United Nations developed its Partition Plan for Palestine to divide the territory into an Arab state and a Jewish state. For 75 years, Palestinians have, to a large extent, refused to accept the legitimate existence of Israel and have focused politically on restoring the rights to “their land”.
Trump supporters have followed the delusions of Donald Trump, who has refused to accept his election loss to President Biden in November 2020. Today, most Republicans believe that Trump won this election and show little interest in the undisputed facts indicating that this is not true.
Engaging in self-destructive behavior with little concern for their well-being.
Palestinians in the Middle East have accepted living in refugee camps under difficult conditions for 75 years and neither they nor their friends and families outside the Middle East, have made any significant effort to improve their living conditions. They continue to support Hamas as the government of Gaza, despite Hamas’s use of Palestinians as human shields and their repeated attacks on Israel with a predictable response leading to the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.
In the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas is counting on human shields and the effect of their deaths on international opinion as their best way to restrain, if not halt, Israeli military force. Hamas considers two million Gazan civilians, including children, as martyrs, whether they want to be or not.
“We are called a nation of martyrs,” said another top Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad. “And we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” He promised more attacks: “There will be a second, a third, a fourth.” When asked whether he sought the annihilation of Israel, Hamad matter-of-factly replied, “Yes, of course.”
This is not simply terrorism, which is the use of illegal violence to achieve political objectives. It is cold-blooded human sacrifice, and on a scale that evokes the ritual slaughters of ancient times. The Hill
This willingness to accept and not protest the actions of Hamas leading to the deaths of large numbers of Palestinians, for no apparent purpose, is evidence of the brainwashing of Palestinians.
For Trump supporters, the self-destructive behavior relates to denial of the seriousness of the COVID epidemic and the effectiveness of COVID vaccines - Trump supporters are less likely to get vaccinated and more likely to die due to their irrational adherence to Trump’s beliefs:
In this cross-sectional study, an association was observed between political party affiliation and excess deaths in Ohio and Florida after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults. These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US. JAMA Network 2023
Continuous engagement with dishonest individuals and institutions.
Palestinian children in Gaza undergo indoctrination through UNRWA schools, Hamas summer camps and “religious ideological indoctrination”.
Trump supporters are indoctrinated by watching Fox News, which settled a defamation lawsuit for $787 million due to their history of repeated lying to avoid alienating their listeners. In addition, Trump supporters appear to be addicted to other right-wing media.
Can this brainwashing be undone? That will be explored in a future essay.
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