I just saw The Brainwashing of My Dad

[leftyladyfrommo]

Please find a way to see this film. It is just amazing.

I saw it with a group of other Democrats here in Kansas City. It lasts an hour and a half and I hated to leave it long enough to use the restroom.

A young woman's father began listening to Rush Limbaugh and his entire personality changed. Then she began to hear from other people who had experienced the same change with their family members. So she did this film to explore just exactly how this complete metamorphosis took place - from a wonderful, loving fun Dad to a fearful, hateful completely obsessed person.

It is full of interviews with all sorts of experts and media people.

It is wonderful. So please try to see it. It is so worth your time.

[progressoid]

1. I've seen this happen to one of my aunts. It's really sad.

[mopinko]

2. they got my sister.

all my sibs were raised to be good dems, and all still are except my oldest sister, who married a ditto head, and my brother who identifies more as a veteran than an american.

when i heard her repeat the lie that "john kerry got 3 purple hearts but never bled." i nearly fell on the floor. i dont know if she wore a purple heart bandaid around, but i wouldnt be surprised.

[awoke_in_2003]

5. They got my favorite uncle

He was the family hippy, always liberal. He lives in a very small town and has been retired for a while. Fox News and AM radio have gotten to someone whom, I once thought, was one of the smartest, wisest, and kindest men I have ever known. My father has always liked him (he is a maternal uncle) and he stopped to see him on his way to Pittsburgh to visit his brother. He said it is shocking how much he has changed.

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. Hillary was right. There was a huge right wing conspiracy.

This brain washing of the American public goes back years and years.

Now I sound like a conspiracy nut but it was true. It was actually amazing. And the results unbelievably awful.

[Cobalt Indigo]

4. I've seen this with my own eyes

With my dad. It's terrifying and my mom is slowly going down that path as well. My mother is better at hiding it but sometimes, like just yesterday, she'll come out with something so ignorant that I barely recognize her.

[maxsolomon]

11. Mine, as well

We cannot discuss politics AT ALL. He believes things that are not true, and is belligerently insistent about it: Obama is a Muslim.

In fact, all my relatives are brainwashed suburban republicans. except for my 3 siblings, thank Buddha.

[madokie]

6. I seen it happen with my neighbor

total nut case now

[Caliman73]

7. I watched it...it was interesting and depressing

When you don't have a real message you use the type of underhanded tactics that the right wing uses. They have been smart in a really disgusting and destructive way.

I have family members that have succumbed to those messages as well. It is really interesting how the joy, the humor, and the compassion just melts away.

[workinclasszero]

8. They got most of my family

They had me as well I'm sorry to say for many years.

What broke the spell for me was wanting to hear what the other side was saying.

That allowed me to see the lies and hypocrisy of the right who claim to be patriots while destroying everything good in this country.

The lies and hypocrisy of the religious right wing who claim to be Christians and do everything then can in their life that goes against the teachings of Jesus.

The lies and hypocrisy of the Right to Life movement what will condemn a poor child to a life of misery and death with no health care 10 seconds after it is born.

You have to somehow break these people out of the walled garden of evil that Hate radio and Fox news holds them captive in.

[yardwork]

9. It happened to my uncle.

I'm thinking that the right wing media/entertainment industry used very sophisticated psychological techniques to influence people. I think they started in the 1970s and gradually honed the techniques. Evil.

My uncle was a decent guy until he started listening to hate radio 24/7.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. I saw it happen to poor factory co-workers making minium wage ($3.35/hour) back in the 80's...

... when Limbaugh was new on national radio. They totally bought into the idea that they weren't being paid better for their hard (and HOT) work because businesses were highly taxed to help support numerous people on welfare... with implications that most of them were African Americans.

EDIT: Someone there played Limbaugh's radio show during lunch break on his portable radio, and that was the first time that I ever heard that hate-mongering, deceitful jackass. He clearly made an impression on many co-workers, though, especially at an emotional level.

I also saw night-shift co-workers suddenly act angry on 9/11 after a break room TV showed Bill O'Reilly get furious about it, blaming Bill Clinton for the entire thing. Until then, they actually seemed "cheery" about the day's events somehow! Several of them were mostly concerned about prices suddenly spiking at nearby gas stations, and one of them even asked me how fast the people were moving when they hit the ground after leaping from a burning WTC building. (I didn't reply.)

I was furious about the attacks and the collective behavior of my co-workers. Strangely enough, I was less emotional after I saw O'Reilly blow up while those co-workers FINALLY acted angry! It's almost like they didn't know how they were supposed to feel until they saw O'Reilly get angry, and the transformation happened in front of my eyes almost instantly!

[Lucinda]

12. KNR Thank you!

[ChoppinBroccoli]

13. It Happened To My Dad In The Late '80s, Early '90s

Almost exactly the same scenario. My dad's family for as long as anyone can remember has been staunchly Democrat. But around the time I was finishing up high school and starting college, he started listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. He voted Republican, voted for H.W. Bush both times, absolutely HATED Bill Clinton, and would repeat right-wing talking points at the drop of a hat.

In his older years, after I got out of college and was able to hold conversations with him on a more intellectual level (and especially after he witnessed the disaster that the George W. Bush presidency created), he came back to the fold. But for pretty much the entire decade of the '90s, he was a full-blown right-wing flunky.

My wife's father, on the other hand, always has been a fully brainwashed RW sycophant. And now that he's retired, all he does is sit around all day watching Faux News and getting mad about stuff. Whenever he gets in the car, he only listens to right-wing hate radio, and all he watches on TV is Faux News. My wife and I can always tell when he's been cooped up in the house all day because as soon as you walk in the door, you got bombarded with, "Did you hear about......" stuff from him because he knows we're both Democrats and he's looking to start a fight. However, I will say that as of the last time I talked to him, he told me he couldn't vote for Drumpf. He can't vote for Hillary either, but a guy who's always voted 100% Republican his entire life staying home on Election Day is as good as a win in my book.

[Gabi Hayes]

14. Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud's Nephew

who was the father of modern PR:

so easily accomplished, actually>>>>

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized… "

So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/02/stephen-bender/karl-rove-the-spectre-of-freudsnephew/

simple version, refined over the last century: all one needs to do is tell a lie, often the bigger the better, and repeat it endlessly, JUST as they've done to Hillary over the last 20 plus years.

it's what they did to Gore and Kerry, and tried (unsuccessfully with Obama, probably because of the totally disastrous presidency of #43).

the only hope I see for the reversal of this trend with Hillary is for Trump to keep stepping on his dick every time he goes off script.

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. This film goes back to the beginning of the John Birch Society.

I remember that well. I was in Junior High School and one of the girls I walked to school with whole family was involved in that stuff. That was about 1962 probably.

One of the reasons this campaign worked was that people listened to the radio while driving. Isolation. They would drive for a long time with nothing to do but listen to Rush and his ilk. So many of these people listened for hours every day to the same hate filled awful rants. Repetition over and over and over.

And then along came Roger Ailes. He goes way back. And, of course, Fox News was a huge player. The film points out all the tricks they used on TV to get and keep people's attention: bright colors, bright sets, camera tricks, body language, hand gestures, certain kinds of angry presentations. It just goes on and on.
Actually it was horrifying. I knew some of it, of course, but had no idea just how pervasive all this was. And what that kind of brainwashing does to even bright, smart people. This has gone on for years and years.

This film goes into all the reasons this worked to influence so many people. How it just ruined so many lives and families.

It is just griping. Please see it if you can.

[Different Drummer]

16. I saw it recently. A good--and frightening--movie. n/t