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MAGA Hates Freedom · The Lucas Bean Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've been wondering for a while now how millions
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: of MAGA supporters gave away their freedom and the ability to think for themselves
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: and ask no questions.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to do some research on how regular people learn to live under a dictator.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: In Hungary, millions of people watched Viktor Orban dismantle their free press
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: for 16 years and thought it was fine.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It took losing almost everything before they voted him out.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: In Turkey, millions watched Erdogan jail thousands of journalists and judges
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: and went back to work the next day.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in this country, millions watched the president call the press the enemy
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: of the people, and they cheered for it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow none of these people think they're the problem.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: In 1955, journalist Milton Mayer at the University of Chicago published
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: a book called They Thought They Were Free.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: After World War II, Mayer moved to a small German town and became friends
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: with ten ordinary men who had all been members of the Nazi Party.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't there to interview generals or war criminals.
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  SPEAKER_00: He interviewed regular people, a baker, A tailor, a teacher, a policeman.
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  SPEAKER_00: Normal people with normal lives who all went along with the fascist government.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to understand one thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: How did these people not see it?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the six things Meyer found that pulled ordinary people into fascism.
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  SPEAKER_00: One, they were given someone to hate.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first thing Meyer noticed was
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: that the ten Germans he was interviewing were all handed an enemy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Before the Nazis came to power, these men were frustrated.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were broke, they couldn't find work,
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  SPEAKER_00: and their country had been humiliated after World War I.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were angry, but they didn't know who to be angry at.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the Nazi party showed up and gave them a target.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jews, communists, intellectuals, foreigners.
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  SPEAKER_00: Anyone the government pointed at became the reason their lives were hard.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because that hatred made sense, but because that hatred felt good.
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  SPEAKER_00: It gave them someone to blame for everything they couldn't control themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meyer found that not one of the ten Germans he interviewed had ever known
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: a Jewish person personally.
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  SPEAKER_00: They hated an idea, not a real human being.
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  SPEAKER_00: And years after the war had ended, after everything that happened,
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  SPEAKER_00: they still couldn't be talked out of that hatred.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: In 1939, researcher John Dollard at Yale University published
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: a book called Frustration and Aggression.
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  SPEAKER_00: He studied what happens when people are frustrated.
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  SPEAKER_00: But can't fight back against the real source of that frustration.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called We called it displaced aggression.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means when the people are angry and they can't go
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  SPEAKER_00: after the thing that's actually hurting them,
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  SPEAKER_00: they find a weaker target And then take their anger out on them instead.
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  SPEAKER_00: A man who gets humiliated at work doesn't yell at his boss.
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  SPEAKER_00: He goes home and yells
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  SPEAKER_00: at A country that's falling apart economically doesn't blame its leaders.
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  SPEAKER_00: It blames the outsiders.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Nazi Germany, the government told ordinary people that Jews were
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  SPEAKER_00: the reason their country was struggling.
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  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't true, but it gave millions of frustrated people someone to hate.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And hating someone felt better than feeling helpless.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the MAGA cult, the same playbook is running right now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Working class people whose wages haven't kept up in decades are being told
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  SPEAKER_00: that immigrants are the problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: That trans people are the problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: That people who went to college are the problem.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of it's true.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it gives them someone to blame.
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  SPEAKER_00: And blaming someone feels better than admitting that the leader they voted
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  SPEAKER_00: for isn't doing anything to actually help them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The hatred isn't a side effect.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's their strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep people angry at each other and they'll never look up long enough
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  SPEAKER_00: to see who's actually really picking their pockets.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Germans Meyer was interviewing fell for this as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: And MAGA is falling for the exact same thing right now. Two.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each step was so small they didn't even notice.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of Meyer's ten Germans could point out a single moment
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  SPEAKER_00: where they realized what was happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: There was no day where Germany was free in the morning and then fascist by the afternoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: It happened one small change at a time.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new state rule here.
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  SPEAKER_00: A fired teacher there.
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  SPEAKER_00: A neighbor who disappeared and nobody talked about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1996, sociologist Diane Vaughn at Boston College published research
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  SPEAKER_00: on how organizations slowly accept things that would have been unthinkable
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  SPEAKER_00: when they started.
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  SPEAKER_00: She called it the normalization of deviance.
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  SPEAKER_00: Vaughn studied the Challenger space shuttle disaster and found
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  SPEAKER_00: that engineers had seen warning signs for years.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every time something went wrong and nothing exploded,
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  SPEAKER_00: the problem got reclassified as acceptable.
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  SPEAKER_00: The danger didn't go away.
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  SPEAKER_00: People just got used to it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each small exception became the new normal,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the new normal became the baseline for the next exception.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what Meyer's subjects described.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each step was small enough to explain away.
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  SPEAKER_00: First it was banning a few books.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was firing professors who said the wrong thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was loyalty oaths.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was neighbors reporting each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each one felt like a small thing on its own, but they were all moving in the same direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: In MAGA America, the same thing is happening right now.
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  SPEAKER_00: First it was calling the press fake news.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was banning books from school libraries.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was threatening to jail political opponents.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then it was telling people the courts can't be trusted.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of these steps felt like the end of democracy on the day they happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: But every one of them moved the line of what's acceptable.
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  SPEAKER_00: And people got used to each new line before the next one moved.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's how it works.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not a revolution.
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  SPEAKER_00: A slow slide that feels normal the entire way down. Three.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were kept too busy to think.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of Meyer's subjects, a college professor,
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  SPEAKER_00: told him that the regime gave them dreadful things to think about.
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  SPEAKER_00: But kept them so busy with constant changes in manufactured emergencies
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  SPEAKER_00: that they never had time to actually think about any of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: New enemies every week, new threats every day, new rules, new rallies, new emergencies.
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  SPEAKER_00: And underneath all of it, they had a quiet gratitude that they didn't have to sit
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  SPEAKER_00: with the weight of what was happening themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because who wants to think, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: In 2011, psychologist Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University Published decades
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  SPEAKER_00: of research on what happens to the brain when it's overwhelmed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Researchers call it cognitive overload.
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  SPEAKER_00: Kahneman found that the brain has two modes.
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  SPEAKER_00: One is slow, careful, and rational.
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  SPEAKER_00: The other is fast, reactive, and runs on instinct.
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  SPEAKER_00: When people are overloaded with information, stress, and constant decision making,
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  SPEAKER_00: the slow system shuts down.
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  SPEAKER_00: The brain stops reasoning and starts reacting.
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  SPEAKER_00: It grabs the easiest answer, the simplest story, and the loudest voice in the room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because when the brain is overloaded, it looks for shortcuts.
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  SPEAKER_00: The regime understood this without ever reading a psychology study.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep people overwhelmed and they'll stop thinking.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep them from reacting and they'll never plan anything.
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  SPEAKER_00: Keep them distracted and they'll never look up long enough to see what's actually happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about what MAGA has been like since 2016.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new executive order every day.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new scandal every week.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new enemy every month.
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  SPEAKER_00: Immigrants one week.
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  SPEAKER_00: China the next week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then trans kids.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then woke corporations.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the deep state.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the time you process one outrage, three more outrages pop up.
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  SPEAKER_00: This seems like chaos to the outside person, but it's a strategy.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it works because your brain was never built to keep up with the chaos. Four.
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  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want to know.
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  SPEAKER_00: The ten German men Meyer was interviewing...
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  SPEAKER_00: They suspected and heard rumors.
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  SPEAKER_00: They saw things that didn't add up.
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  SPEAKER_00: But they never confirmed it, and they never asked questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because as long as they didn't know for certain, they could tell themselves it wasn't real.
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  SPEAKER_00: Knowing would have required them to do something about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not knowing was freedom.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 2023, psychologist Shal Shalvi at the University of Amsterdam published a study
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  SPEAKER_00: on why people deliberately avoid information.
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  SPEAKER_00: That would make them feel responsible for someone else's pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: They called it willful ignorance.
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  SPEAKER_00: They found that 40% of people will avoid information that's easy to get
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  SPEAKER_00: if that information would make them feel responsible for someone else's suffering.
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  SPEAKER_00: They don't avoid it because they don't care.
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  SPEAKER_00: They avoid it because knowing would mean they have to do something about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It would cost them their image of themselves as a good person.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they choose to look the other way.
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  SPEAKER_00: And not looking becomes its own form of permission.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what these German men Meyer was interviewing did.
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  SPEAKER_00: They chose not to know because knowing would have meant that they were guilty.
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  SPEAKER_00: What they didn't understand is that not knowing still made them complicit in the crimes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Millions of MAGA supporters know that people's lives were destroyed by lies
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  SPEAKER_00: about a stolen election.
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  SPEAKER_00: They know that veterans and disabled people are losing benefits
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  SPEAKER_00: while billionaires are getting tax cuts.
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  SPEAKER_00: They don't look it up.
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  SPEAKER_00: They don't read articles.
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  SPEAKER_00: They just change the channel.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because if they confirmed what they already suspect,
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  SPEAKER_00: they'd have to admit they helped make it happen.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they choose not to know.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they try to convince themselves that they are innocent.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're not innocent. 5.
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  SPEAKER_00: They waited for someone else to stand up.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every one of Meyer's subjects knew someone who had doubts.
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  SPEAKER_00: The teacher thought it was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Few others felt uneasy about it, but none of them said anything.
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  SPEAKER_00: They each assumed that if it were really that bad, someone more important,
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  SPEAKER_00: someone braver, someone with more to lose would step in and stop the madness.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they waited, and while they waited, the window for stopping it closed.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1968, psychologist John Darley and Bib Latane Study what happens
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  SPEAKER_00: when people witness an emergency and do nothing about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: They called it the bystander effect.
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  SPEAKER_00: They found that the more people who witness a crisis,
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  SPEAKER_00: the less likely any single person is to act.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because they don't care,
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  SPEAKER_00: because they look around at everyone else and assume someone else will handle it.
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  SPEAKER_00: If it was really dangerous, somebody would have done something by now.
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  SPEAKER_00: So they wait, and so does everyone else.
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  SPEAKER_00: The teacher Meyer interview described this perfectly.
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  SPEAKER_00: He said that one day, too late, your principals catch up with you.
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  SPEAKER_00: You didn't stand up at the time because it wasn't quite bad enough yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: And by the time it was bad enough, you'd already missed every chance to stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: How many people right now are watching what's happening in America and saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: The courts will stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Congress will stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The military will stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone will stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what the people Meyer was interviewing thought also.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone will stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nobody ever stopped it. 6.
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  SPEAKER_00: They thought they were free.
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  SPEAKER_00: After the war, after the trials, after the photographs of the camps,
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  SPEAKER_00: 9 out of the 10 Germans Meyer was interviewing Still believed Hitler was good
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  SPEAKER_00: for Germany. Only one changed his mind.
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  SPEAKER_00: And not because of the Holocaust.
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  SPEAKER_00: He changed his mind because Hitler started a war he couldn't win.
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  SPEAKER_00: These men looked back at the Nazi years as the best times of their lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: Their towns were cleaner.
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  SPEAKER_00: Their economy was better.
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  SPEAKER_00: They had purpose.
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  SPEAKER_00: They had pride.
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  SPEAKER_00: They didn't feel like they had given up their freedom.
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  SPEAKER_00: They felt like they had finally found their freedom.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: In 1994, psychologists John Yost and Mazarin Bonahy
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  SPEAKER_00: at Yale University Published research on why people defend systems that work
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  SPEAKER_00: against them.
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  SPEAKER_00: They called it system justification.
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  SPEAKER_00: People are psychologically motivated to see the system they live under as fair,
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  SPEAKER_00: legitimate, and necessary.
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  SPEAKER_00: Even when those systems are hurting them,
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  SPEAKER_00: the more trapped people feel inside the system, the more they defend that system.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because admitting the system is broken means admitting that you were wrong to defend
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  SPEAKER_00: that system.
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  SPEAKER_00: And people would rather believe that lie than understand the truth.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what Meyer found sitting in living rooms in a small German town ten years
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  SPEAKER_00: after World War II.
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  SPEAKER_00: Men who had lived through the worst government in human history and still believed it was good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because they were completely evil,
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  SPEAKER_00: because admitting the truth would have destroyed who they thought they were.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right now there are MAGA supporters who lost their health insurance and still defend
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  SPEAKER_00: the man who took it from them.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are farmers who lost everything in a trade war and still wear the red hat.
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  SPEAKER_00: These people are not going to wake up one morning and realize what happened.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how this works.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the deeper you go into the system, the harder it is to admit it was a lie.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meyer came home from Germany and wrote something that should keep every American awake at night.
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  SPEAKER_00: He said he was afraid, not of Germany, but of America.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because he realized that under the right conditions,
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  SPEAKER_00: every single thing that happened in Germany could happen here.
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  SPEAKER_00: The same small steps, the same silence,
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  SPEAKER_00: the same people telling themselves it's not that bad,
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  SPEAKER_00: the same people looking back on it someday,
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  SPEAKER_00: And calling it the best times of their lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching what's happening in this country and telling yourself,
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  SPEAKER_00: someone else will stop it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Meyer already met you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You were living in a small town in Germany in 1935.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you thought you were free.