Election Thoughts 4: Evangelical Trumpers And Al-Qaeda Members Aren't All That Different

I'm reading The Black Banners by Ali Soufan.  Soufan was born in Lebanon and came to the US with

his parents as a child.  After college he applied to the FBI and finished a graduate degree while waiting to hear back.  

Because he's a native Arabic speaker he got involved with anti-terrorism as soon as he got into the FBI and through the training program in November 1999. 

I was struck by this passage.  Soufan is writing about how they prepare for interrogating Al-Qaeda suspects.  At this point in the book, he's in Yemen tracking down the men who blew up the USS Cole in Aden.  

"Al-Qaeda members commonly had the same problems with time-lines that Yemenis did.  Part of the reason is cultural:  in the West we are trained to think in a linear manner, and we learn that the truth can be arrived at by following a series of logical steps.  Al-Qaeda members, however, are greatly influenced by conspiracy theories, and they suspend their critical thinking.  Rather than logic, they have a culture based on relationships and impressions, and there is considerable willingness, on their part, to accept conspiracy theories to explain certain events. Bin Laden capitalized on this by reiterating long-standing assertions that America, Israel, and the West were trying to subjugate the Arab and Muslim world and destroy the Islamic faith." (p. 266)

Surely this description of beliefs in conspiracy theories which interfere with logic sounds very familiar to the die-hard Trump supporters.  

And the idea of a "culture based on relationships and impressions" also corresponds to people who hero worship Trump and know truth through a sort of impression.  

So they are easily convinced by their leader that, say, Democrats have stolen or faked millions of votes.  Or however many Trump suggests.  And the fact that Trump's details vary from hour to hour doesn't matter either.  

Here he discusses the need to focus on details of time and whereabouts:

"Concomitant with pledging bayat to their leader, and in preparation for the possibility of capture by Western intelligence, al-Qaeda operatives are trained to come up with a false narrative that follows linear thinking;  but they find it hard to stick to lies when questioned in minute detail.  A key part of successful interrogations is to ask detailed question related to time and whereabouts.  Such questions are easy for a detainee to answer if he is telling the truth, but if he is lying, it is hard for him to keep the story straight.  Often Badawi would not lie completely but give a partial lie.  By zeroing in on the details, we could see where he was lying.  I would point it out, he would correct himself, and slowly we'd get the full picture." (p. 226)

The FBI has an advantage over most of us.  They get to interrogate suspects over hours and days even and to focus on factual details until the suspect trips himself up (and so far the suspects have always been male in the book.)

We, on the other hand, deal with fleeting exchanges, at best, with Trump cultists.  We don't have the luxury of pinning them down in most exchanges.  But I put down this idea of getting details because I think it's more effective than yelling and demeaning.  "Tell me exactly how Biden tampered with the votes in Pennsylvania and how you know this."  At worst you're being respectful, at best you may cause some recognition that they have no facts.  

The best rebuttal is getting more votes nationally and in enough states to win the electoral college and to have lawyers who know the law and how to argue it and who don't  hold press conferences in garden supply stores that have a name in common with giant hotel chains

 [Think of this post as notes jotted down so I don't forget.  Even more than usual.  I know this comparison of similarities between Al-Qaeda and Trump cultists is pretty limited, but I want to get this passage down before it gets lost in the 500+ pages of this very compelling  book, that shines a light into the shadows of bin Laden's terrorist network as well as the security agencies in the US government.]