Anatomy of a Smear Take Down
Last week I wrote about moralism and those social justice warrior folks who are so prevalent today. I believe that in a misguided effort to purge skeletons out of closets and to protect victims, especially women, they are creating a dull and listless America.
Depression rates are at an all-time high, especially among young adults. And it’s no wonder–when you are afraid to follow an inner desire for fear of being canceled it makes for a tough way to live.
Now, I am in no way defending illegal action, nor am I endorsing harassment. But I am suggesting that too many times those behind the take down of people are some very bad actors with horrendous motives and rarely are they doing it to “protect” the innocent.
Let’s look at what a smear campaign is.
Portions of the following are adapted from an article by Clint Fuhs, PhD. He hits the nail on the head with his definition of a smear campaign.
A smear campaign is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation.
A smear campaign often works by enrolling people in what appears to be a righteous cause or by appealing to supposedly shared values and is not anything new. What makes it much more damaging these days is how easy it is to hide and become anonymous because of the internet.
In the famous smears of 1950s McCarthyism, the cause was anti-communism.
Ralph Nader was the victim of a smear campaign during the 1960s, when he was campaigning for car safety. In order to smear Nader and deflect public attention from his campaign, General Motors engaged private investigators to search for damaging or embarrassing incidents from his past. In early March 1966, it was found that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.
The examples go on and on.
These takedowns often disguise personal ambition or the desire to take another person down out of competition or vengeance.
On the surface, smears appeal to shared motives– victim advocacy, saving future victims, justice, or a desire to avoid something terrible from happening in the future — but underneath they are typically driven by hidden actors with hidden motives like vengeance, malice, or rage for crimes not committed.
According to sociologist, Steven Hoffman, motivated reasoning refers to the process where people, rather than searching “rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.”
Once smears have succeeded in eroding the middle (those who don’t have a feeling one way or another about a situation) then subsequent claims, false or otherwise, serve to confirm the conclusion that has already taken hold.
Once people are saying that “if there’s smoke there must be fire,” there is already a bias in their reasoning. It does not occur to most people that “where there's smoke there is fire” is exactly the response that the smear campaign seeks to evoke.
Once this bias takes hold, contrary information tends to be ignored. Because of this, you hear so-called “neutral” comments such as “Maybe that person is not a rapist, but he must be a scumbag if these things are being said about him.”
New claims, false or otherwise, serve to further confirm the conclusion that’s already taken hold and contrary information, even when based on verifiable fact, tends to be increasingly ignored.
Little by little, as the slurs on the target's reputation mount up, even those who believe he is being unjustly maligned are afraid to stand up for him for fear of becoming collateral damage.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” –Edmond Burke.
But good people do not do nothing for no reason. They often do nothing because they are protecting some other closely held, good value, which they are afraid will be compromised or tarnished—i.e., their reputation or career. They are good people, after all.
What “good people” often fail to see is that good values should include standing against the social murder attempted through a planned smear and it is critical to upholding the foundational values of human rights.
This brings to mind the words of Martin Niemöller, the German theologian who belatedly opposed Hitler:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.
Nowadays, smear methods often inflame a frenzied Internet mob that blindly believes in its own virulence. The mob crusades for retribution disguised as justice — a form of social jihad, Internet lynching, or a modern-day witch hunt — all while believing that their actions are the appropriate response to a real moral panic.
Reasoned discourse and the possibility of discovering anything resembling truth becomes a near impossibility.
“Yeah, but so and so has been attacked for so long and so intensely, some of what is said about him must be true.’
Again, this is exactly how a smear operates; this is what the smear organizers aim to have you think.
The adage, where there's smoke there is fire, is not the only explanation for the presence of smoke. Alternatively, where there is smoke, there could also be a smoke bomb, or there could be an ember that is intentionally being flamed into a fire by organizers with ulterior motives.
We don't assume that a popular narrative is true just because it is popular. We are supposed to embrace the possibility of innocence until proven guilty.
In a culture where everyone has a voice, and the content of their speech goes mostly unchecked, a target’s susceptibility becomes a function of emotional climate, not facts.
Culturally, it’s now blindly applied in the realm of sexuality, as Alan Dershowitz so clearly pointed out in his defense of Bill Clinton. “The tactic is to leverage a legitimate moral repugnance at a social evil—say sexual abuse or harassment—and then to use it as a smoke screen to disguise more personal motives.”
In smears, it’s as if a Lie + Lie + Lie = Truth, but that’s just bad math. Repeated lies don’t add up to truth. They add up to a steaming pile of lies that deserve to be exposed.
Malice, defined as the intention or desire to do evil; ill will, plays a big part in most of these takedowns. Malice arises from the interplay of three forces: envy, greed, and jealousy.
Only one is required in a great enough force to evoke malice.
Envy is the desire not to possess but to prevent the other from possessing. It attacks or destroys the goodness of the other, provoked by an overwhelming sense of inferiority, impotency, or worthlessness. Think of a disgruntled spouse after a divorce.
Envy is rooted in imaginary conflict. An envious person will go to nearly any lengths to diminish such feelings. Think of a colleague or employee who doesn’t like thar the boss got extra bonuses.
Greed, in contrast to envy, is the insatiable desire to take for oneself that which another possesses. Think of the friend who sues a lottery winner saying they encouraged them to buy the ticket.
Jealousy is concerned with relationships. It involves a rivalry with one person for the love of another. Love scorned is a central theme of jealousy. Think of a spouse learning about their partner’s extra-marital affair.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
In the blink of an eye, Armie Hammer went from being Hollywood’s hottest actor to working in a cubicle. If you’re not familiar with the case, Hammer went through a bitter divorce and began a custody battle for his children.
Not long after that accusations surface on the internet by an anonymous user telling of Hammer’s BDSM and cannibalistic fetishes. The user even accused Hammer of rape.
Long after all the accusations and after Hammer had been taken down even to the point where he considered suicide, the police investigated and found no evidence whatsoever of a crime. Sure, he had some desires that many may not have but that didn’t make him an evil person.
It’s also important to note that famed feminist attorney Gloria Allred fired her client who had accused Hammer of rape because the accuser wouldn’t sign a declaration putting her at risk of perjury for her accusations.
Why?
Apparently, Hammer had moved on from both his wife and other girlfriends to a new love interest. Upon later investigation it was found that the accusers had shared a series of private messages on their social media accounts with Hammer’s former wife, in which the wife appears to encourage them to go public with claims against her ex.
Investigation into the allegations which happened much later did a good job of exposing the accusers’ inconsistencies and the wife’s role in the smear campaign.
But by then it didn’t matter.
Private provocative text messages had already been revealed. A documentary had already been made and the internet mob had already performed the lynching.
When a fact begins to resemble whatever you feel is true, it becomes very difficult to tell the difference between facts that are true and ‘facts’ that are not.
This is less of an issue if the facts in question concern some stupid made up story designed just to get clicks. But it’s a whole different story if those implied facts concern someone’s life and livelihood.
There is a reason the forefathers understood the importance of due process. It’s time to stop trial by internet and public opinion.
It’s time we changed the game!
--Dan