An Insurrection of Lies (Episode #230)

Key Takeaway

Practice “two-problem thinking” today: when a political event triggers you, write down the strongest concern on each side before sharing or responding. Harris’s point is not that every claim deserves equal weight, but that separate failures can coexist and require different remedies. This habit interrupts tribal reflexes, helps you resist misinformation and selective outrage, and makes your view more credible to people outside your political camp.

Episode Overview

Sam Harris responds to the January 6 Capitol attack, arguing that it was instigated by President Trump’s election lies and cannot be equated with unrest following Black Lives Matter protests. He criticizes both right-wing minimization of the attack and left-wing efforts to reduce the security failure solely to racism, while calling for institutional reforms, election trust, and more intellectually honest public discourse.

Full Transcript

Transcript of An Insurrection of Lies (Episode #230) from Making Sense with Sam Harris. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. So, the storming of the Capitol. I can't say I expected this, but I can't say I was surprised either. And you definitely won't be surprised by my opinion about Trump's responsibility in this situation . I think I probably shouldn't voice it. But like so much that has happened under Trump, the events at the Capitol were both entirely expected and utterly stunning. Trump managed to invent a new state of the human brain. Trump has turned our democracy and this period of American history into Pizzagate.

It was a Pizzagate-style uprising. We saw people who were visibly and audibly confused by the misinformation. I mean, just listen to what they say when they have a microphone held up to their face. These are people who have lost their minds because of the lies that have been pouring out of this president's mouth for years. To some extent, it was absolutely perfect. It didn't have any of the weight of a real coup, but it completely humiliated our country. In some ways, it was even more humiliating than the actual coup attempt.

What we saw in Washington was like a YouTube comment thread come to life. Maybe we'll learn more about what happened, and maybe it'll turn out to be even more sinister than it seemed. I don't know. But as I write this, I see two terrible unintended mistakes being made on social media and media in general right now, and they are causing a lot of additional harm. One is happening on the right, and the other is happening on the left of the political spectrum. Again, these two poles are difficult to clearly define, but for now we will have to limit ourselves to them.

And we have a problem on both sides of politics where people have started to think in terms of one topic, even those who are very smart on other issues. It seems that most people these days are unable to think about two problems at once. You know, you can have cancer and heart disease at the same time, right? This is a possible state of the human body, and both are problems that need to be thought about differently. They have different causes and different treatments. One can acknowledge that Donald Trump is the most dangerously incompetent person to ever hold the office of president, and at the same time acknowledge that the left's hysteria around social justice is appalling and needs to be countered.

You don't have to be a genius to keep these two grotesque objects in sight. And yet it seems that only a handful of people are truly capable of it. I just can't believe what I see on social media. So, here are the two reactions that I find most disturbing. right-wing or center-right-leaning . Many are downplaying the severity of the events at the Capitol, comparing them to the violence during the BLM protests last summer and the crazy events in Seattle and Portland. And these people are now focused on the hypocrisy of those in the media and the Democratic Party who turned a blind eye to the violence over the summer and are now calling for order.

The real problem is almost certainly worse than that. The real problem is that almost 50% of Republicans support an attack on the Capitol. This is a terrible poll figure. This is a political abyss. But putting that aside, almost all of the right is focused on the hypocrisy of the left, both real and imagined. OK. This is a dangerous fallacy on many levels. First, in many cases this is not true. You know, it's not true that Biden and Kamala Harris didn't condemn the looting and violence last summer.

They did it. They just weren't doing it enough. Not enough at all. And I criticized them then. But there is a much deeper discrepancy here. OK. What happened in Washington this week was not a protest that got out of control . This was an uprising instigated by the current president of the United States. Of course, terms like "uprising" or "coup" seem grandiose, given Trump's utter incompetence. He can't really achieve his goals. But remember the people who attacked the Capitol, they fought with the police, right? They really fought with the police.

They weren't just let in, they risked their lives to get into that building. Of course? One police officer died from being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher . And one participant in the uprising died after being shot in the neck by the police. And it is unknown what that crowd would do if they found themselves inside the buildings. They didn't rob a shopping mall. They stormed the halls of Congress at the direct instigation of the President of the United States, who had been convincing them for months that their democracy had literally been stolen, that they no longer had democracy, that they no longer had a country.

and that they must fight to get her back. He had them march on the Capitol that morning, saying he would be with them. If you don't see the difference between this and the BLM protest that escalates into looting and arson, stop for a moment and try. There is no analogy here. It's a real miracle that more people did n't die under the Capitol . In reality, there should have been much more victims. Don't get me wrong, okay? I'm not saying I wish death on more people.

I am very grateful that there were so few of them. But if this experiment were repeated, say, storming the halls of Congress, and carried out a hundred times, I am sure that in most cases many more people would die. And only thanks to a complete failure of security were there no more deaths. Those who broke through the door, overcoming the police, those who stared into the muzzles of the raised pistols of the police inside, breaking the glass. These people should be shot, because what other alternative is there?

Just let the lives of our elected officials depend on the restraint of the crowd? Some of them were armed. One man was carrying plastic ties that police use as handcuffs. What was he going to do with them ? Take hostages. It's really impossible to know what would have happened if these people had gotten to Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence . There were people there who called for Mike Pence to be hanged. So you're going to rely on the restraint of the people who just risked their lives to storm the Capitol, believing in a global conspiracy of cannibal child rapists who rule the world?

People who have never received anything but favorable insinuations from the President of the United States on these very points . Of course, much of the footage of this attack on the Capitol is confusing. You see a police officer taking a selfie with a crowd. You see police officers supposedly letting people in after others have broken through their ranks. And then everyone just hangs around, taking selfies and committing vandalism. Some of the footage looks like a busload of people going to Burning Man just decided to use the restrooms at the Capitol.

Some of them are surprisingly old, are n't they? But other footage suggests that this was a real emergency . Not acknowledging the seriousness of what happened, not acknowledging how much it has disgraced our country and weakened it in the eyes of the world. Yes, the BLM riots were a disgrace too. And yes, the press antics surrounding them were also a disgrace. When CNN anchors spoke amid the arson of dozens of cities: "Who said protests had to be peaceful?" It was a shame to see a journalist on air praising “mostly peaceful protests” while cars and buildings were burning in the background.

It was all a disgrace, wasn't it? And just an amazing black comedy. And yes, it was madness, obvious madness —to hear calls to defund the police when public order in our country was collapsing. But what happened this week was completely different. Nothing like this has ever happened in our country before . I mean, this was a desecration of our government, our entire system of government, planned by the president himself. The crowd was incited to the Capitol by the president himself with the aim of disrupting the certification of the election he lost.

He lost completely, but claims to have won . Just take a moment to look at this travesty through the eyes of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, or any other dictator on earth who is genuinely interested in proving that democracy simply doesn't work, okay? That there is nothing to strive for. They have a controlled population to whom they send messages. Now they can tell them that democracy is stupid, right? That having a free press is just dangerous nonsense, right? Because it drives people crazy. What does the United States mean in the world today?

If you don't think it's important for our country—to become a laughing stock for the whole world, to fail over and over again, right? To fail in the fight against COVID and do so in a way that still seems impossible to understand , to fail to distribute vaccines. Which we already have on hand, when the COVID mortality rate is higher than at any other point in the pandemic. Truth? We are at an absolute peak, and this desecration of the very heart of our democracy is happening in front of the whole world.

Failing to prevent the Russians from carrying out the biggest hack in the history of cyberwarfare, and failing so hard to contain our president's absolute madness that we can't even talk about these other failures. We can't even talk about COVID or the Pearl Harbor- level hack of our government because we have a half-naked [ __ ] Viking walking the halls of Congress. We have people in Auschwitz T-shirts hunting Nancy Pelosi on the orders of the damn President of the United States. Trump attacked the foundations of our democracy even before he took office.

And if you didn't see it before, like many of us, it should have become crystal clear to you the moment he refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power during the 2020 campaign. He actually did this back during the 2016 campaign. This should have been grounds for disqualification. But throughout 2020, he repeatedly refused to guarantee that he would cooperate with a peaceful transfer of power. At least half a dozen times. He has destroyed the most important democratic norm we have, right before our eyes. He should have been removed from office for this.

I believe that moment was the most stunning event in our politics in the last 100 years. The real Trump disillusionment syndrome is not seeing every day during this outrageous presidency what a terrible threat Trump has posed to the security and integrity of our country. And, of course, the ultimate manifestation of Trump derangement was the mob of deluded people who attacked the Capitol, imagining that this was the way to secure Trump another four years in the presidency. While I'm hearing myself getting set up here, I want to respond to one type of criticism I get all the time on social media.

I think I should have clarified this a long time ago , because there is some conceptual confusion here. I constantly hear from people who seem to be satisfied users of the Waking Up app, things like, “Your app has changed my life. I get incredible benefits from it, but your comments on politics really put me off." These are not the things a mindfulness teacher should say . You know, there are many versions of this. People tweet to me, “You should use your own app. You know, it seems like you need some awareness yourself." Let me clarify this.

If you think there's something to meditation, successful meditation, right? If you think there is anything to overcoming the illusion of self or realizing the nature of mind before concepts emerge, if you think there is some necessary contradictory connection between this task and the concern with the problems I am now talking about, you are mistaken. There is nothing incompatible between awareness and the unwillingness to lose a cyberwar. I will say that there is no contradiction between what I am saying now, and how I am saying it, and the practices or worldview that I present in Waking Up.

OK. You may disagree with some of the points I make here. There are probably a few things worth discussing. But if you believe that meditative enlightenment should encourage a person not to worry about the collapse of our democracy or our ongoing failure to cope with civilizational challenges. If you think we can afford to neglect the world we are building, or destroy the world our children are destined to live in, it's time to get your head out of your ass . And if you think I can't say it consciously or mean it consciously in that particular tone of voice, if you think it's impossible for me to be conscious right now, non-dualistically conscious, right?

If you think being mindful is being “cute,” even when I advise you to get your head out of your ass, then you are confused about what mindfulness, meditation, and the project of a meaningful life in general are. You have adopted a communication style— bland, religious, or New Age—as well as a pseudo-ethic of trying to be as non- offensive as possible—as the goal of spiritual life. Yes, there are some paradoxes here , but there should be no confusion. Yes , it is possible to be free and happy in almost any circumstance.

Isn't that right? I believe this is true. If I were thrown into solitary confinement, I know I could be happy, given what I know about my own mind. This is true. And this is a tremendous power that is born entirely from meditation. And it is available to everyone. But this does not mean that we should agree to the destruction of everything, to the collapse of society. If we find ourselves in some kind of hell, like in the Mad Max movies, yes, it will still be possible to meditate, feel compassion for ourselves and others, and remain calm.

This is an ability of the human mind that will not disappear. But we are right not to want to see everything completely fall apart in our society. And if your meditation practice makes you incapable of taking civilization- wide problems seriously, well, you may be good at handling your own stress, but you're no use to us. We need people now who understand their minds and who also understand the world. I mean, I studied with the greatest meditation masters who lived at the end of the 20th century.

These were extraordinary teachers. But they had absolutely no idea about most of what I'm talking about in this podcast. And if they were alive today, they would n't understand either. And it's a good thing that such people are not responsible for our cyberwarfare capabilities , otherwise we simply wouldn't have them. We have to play this game on many levels. So, it's great that so many of you are benefiting from Waking Up, but if you don't like me in this mode, where I'm really trying to respond to a real emergency in our culture, if you don't understand that we need to respond competently to the challenges that we face on a hundred fronts, you don't really understand what I'm teaching there in Waking Up.

You can't let meditation turn you into a New Age weirdo who just burns incense and thinks the universe is one big mystery and that everything happens for a reason. Sometimes things happen for the wrong reasons, and an entire generation or even a generation loses the simplest ability to order and achieve what they want, losing good things that they shouldn't have lost. You know, sometimes barbarians really do break through the gates. Yes, we can always have conversations about the fundamental nature of reality. We can lead them here, in conditions of relative order and prosperity, where we take important things for granted, where I have a podcast and you have a smartphone to listen to it.

Or we can contemplate reality after we bomb, hack, track, and devalue ourselves into the dark ages. OK. The nature of consciousness is available everywhere, even in a cave. And many great contemplatives found it in the cave. I met great Tibetan yogis who spent years in caves. But I would rather not live in a cave just because the world has turned into a Cormac McCarthy novel. And you would prefer that too, no matter how much you meditate. There is no contradiction between a deep understanding of the nature of the mind and the ordering of our lives in the world .

This tirade was presented by the meditation app Waking Up. Well, that brings me to the second false statement I see on social media and everywhere else. Many on the left are interpreting the police's complete failure to protect the Capitol this week as a sign of white supremacy. They give this farce a racial connotation. And everyone does it. Here's what Joe Biden tweeted. No one will convince me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday, they would not have been treated any differently than the mob storming the Capitol.

We all know this is true, and it is unacceptable. Every news anchor emphasized this, and so did Kamala Harris. Michelle Obama, Barack Obama—everyone tried to grab onto this “woke” rhetoric. And in some cases, that was the only thing they said in response to the desecration of American democracy. And that's the wrong accent. He is wrong in almost every way. That would be wrong even if it were true. Even if it were obvious, now is not the time to talk about it. But there are so many ways to see that this is probably not true.

At best, this is a half-truth, somewhat paradoxical if you look at the details. When something is so easy to notice but ignored, it's worth seriously worrying about what's happening to our culture. First, look at the events of January 6th at the Capitol through the eyes of the black police officers who were desperately trying to protect the building and the people inside. I mean, one of the most shocking images of how unprepared the police were is the video of a crowd forcing a lone black officer to retreat down the stairs.

Maybe you've seen it, right? These are crazy shots. At some point he raises the baton and then changes his mind, right? His weapon was obviously worthless to the pack of men pursuing him. And there was this one particularly aggressive white guy who kept chasing him up the stairs, right? And the officer kept retreating and retreating. What are they trying to prove here? OK. Are you saying that this black cop didn't shoot a white guy in the face because of his own intrinsic white supremacy? You know that there were double standards there.

He would have shot a black rioter, not a white one. Is that really the statement you want to make? But the truth is obvious. This black officer was undoubtedly afraid for his life. And he understood that he found himself in an absolutely hopeless situation . He was trying to do his job and contain the crowd, which was impossible to stop without starting to kill people. But if he chose this path, he wouldn't have enough ammunition to kill everyone he would have to eliminate to save himself.

One policeman with a gun cannot restrain a hundred people who are not afraid to die . If there had been a proper police presence, if that officer had been joined by 50 more, there would have been a fight on those steps, and people from that crowd would have been beaten by the police, as was bound to happen. It was a crazy situation. And in other parts of the Capitol, that's exactly what was happening. There, police fought with what had become a rioting crowd. And one died.

And yes, one Trump supporter was shot in the neck while trying to break through the door. Here is further proof that this racial distortion is a lie. A white woman was shot to death. How many BLM protesters have been shot by police in months of unrest in dozens of cities? As far as I know, none. Imagine if at least one such incident happened. Imagine if a black woman were executed at close range. That's certainly how it would be described if it happened. A black woman was executed at close range just for trying to break through a door at a peaceful BLM protest.

What would they say about it if it happened? That's all we're talking about now . But here a white woman was shot in the neck. It's clear that she was shot. It is unclear why more were not shot. But to see this as another symptom of white privilege is, frankly, madness. And there's endless footage of BLM protests gone wrong where the cops just stand there, watch, and do nothing, right? They do not use excessive force against the mobs of looters , who are predominantly black. We've all seen this footage and asked ourselves, " Why are the police there at all if they're not going to stop people burning buildings?" Yes, absurd force was used against peaceful protesters in many places , not looters and arsonists, and many of those peaceful protesters were white.

Using this abomination that happened in the Capitol as another opportunity to score points in social justice is frankly idiotic and incredibly divisive . This convinces all right- wingers that their cynicism and blind partisanship are entirely justified. What we are witnessing now is just how high a price we are paying for the hypocrisy and moral blindness of the media during the BLM riots. We would be in a much better position if they hadn't tried to justify the disgusting crime outbreak we've seen. How destabilizing it was .

How dysfunctional it was . How appropriate was the anger of business owners who were left to fend for themselves, many of whom lost their businesses , as well as entire neighborhoods that would take generations to rebuild, because they were burned down by mobs of cult-like lunatics. Here is another discrepancy . We are told that the Capitol Police would act like brutal thugs if the Capitol were attacked by a BLM protest. Does anyone remember the endless images of cops kneeling at those BLM protests, literally bowing in solidarity, while something like a Maoist self-criticism session was going on around them?

Yes, there was some strange behavior from the cops at the Capitol, but I didn't see anyone kneeling in solidarity. Honestly, at the time of writing it is still a mystery why the Capitol was so unprotected. And there may be some real conspiracy behind this. This could be something that goes all the way back to Trump, or it could be because the mayor of the District of Columbia didn't like the heavy-handed federal response to the BLM demonstrations taking place in the District of Columbia , particularly when Trump arranged for his photo op in front of a church.

So, ironically, it may have been the opposition of a rather progressive mayor to the harsh methods of the police that left the Capitol unprotected. It would be amazing if this were the root cause of what is now being presented as irrefutable proof of the dominance of “white supremacy” and “white privilege” in law enforcement in this country. Anyway, I don't know what happened there. I'm sure we'll learn a lot, and it could point to different things, right? There could be too many reasons. You know, we can learn that some of the police officers are staunch Trump supporters who were completely sympathetic to the attack on the Capitol, and some, apparently, did everything they could to oppose it.

From what I saw on the recordings, it's easy to see how at least in some places the police officers might have been somewhat confused by what they encountered. I mean, it was pretty confusing. There were people there who fit the bill, right? Who looked like real rebels, which they were. And there were also elderly women and men just hanging around there. And all this cosplay and weird costumes. I don't blame a police officer who, in such a situation, tries to appease the crowd by taking a selfie.

I don't know what the mood was in that particular room at that moment. But there are many social signals that are difficult to interpret. However, the overall picture we have to draw from what is known at this point is a police force that was catastrophically under-resourced. The police found themselves in a completely hopeless situation for reasons we must understand, and something like this should never happen again. These cops were simply framed. And to reduce their failure to a symptom of racism, again, even when you see black police officers among them trying to protect the building, is so careless and hypocritical.

And this pseudo-insight is now pouring in from everywhere, from every liberal voice in the media. I am genuinely concerned that we have tens of millions of people in “ Trumpistan” who are essentially unreachable. But between them and the rest of us are millions of conservatives who are not crazed QAnon supporters, but who are deeply outraged by the selective use of outrage. And, as I said at the beginning, they don't follow the plot, do they? They are overlooking something very important. The analogy between what happened last week and the BLM riots is idiocy.

But it's easy to understand why the media and Democratic politicians have completely discredited themselves in their eyes. Truth? This needs to be fixed. There are so many things here that need fixing. And simply mocking the right now, when the orange goblin is being kicked out of office, is a colossal mistake, politically and pragmatically. We have to figure out how to overcome the division in our country. Our country is broken, and Trump is largely responsible for it, but not entirely. Finally, I just want to mention that Trump was finally blocked on Twitter.

And while I acknowledged that there was a lot of interesting discussion here, I clearly expressed my support for it on Twitter, for which I received a pretty fierce backlash. There are people who seem to be much more outraged by Trump being kicked off Twitter than by the attack on the Capitol. This is a very interesting topic, and I think there are many issues to discuss here. But it seems to me that in the case of Trump, this is not even a debatable issue. Trump has been violating every conceivable Twitter rule for years, has n't he?

He threatened nuclear war on Twitter. More importantly, he was intentionally ruining people's lives on Twitter as President of the United States, with tens of millions of diehard followers, okay? Many of whom he knows are quite unbalanced, right? He repeatedly attacked individuals, knowing that their data would be made public and they would be inundated with death threats. This should be a reason to be removed from Twitter. He should have been expelled many years ago. In recent months, he has relentlessly spread disinformation about the election and in the process destabilized our society, then incited an attack on the Capitol.

Twitter is not obligated to provide him with a platform for such actions. This is not a question of freedom of speech. This is not a question of why we can't just discuss all ideas. This is the question of why should we allow the most dangerous cult leader on earth to use our platform to sow discord in society? Why should we give him the tools to provoke mob violence? Honestly, I expect to be kicked off Twitter for the damage that is one millionth of what Trump has done on the platform.

Many pointed out the obvious irony: the President of the United States was kicked off Twitter, but Ayatollah Khamenei and the Chinese Communist Party still have their own profiles and are spreading disgusting disinformation . Well, they should be kicked out too, right? This is not an argument in favor of not removing Trump. This is an argument in favor of consistency. Yes, the Chinese Communist Party does not need Twitter as a platform to spread its propaganda. This seems like a pretty simple solution, but there's a lot more to be said here .

And I share people's concerns about the power of big tech companies and, especially, the harm that these social media platforms have done to our society. This should be the focus of government regulation, right? I think Facebook should probably be broken up as a monopoly. I think there's a lot of work to be done here, but people have been kicked off Twitter for much less every day since you got there. And it's somewhat ironic to see how all these Aristotelian libertarians can't find their libertarian principles and accept that private companies have the right to do whatever they want.

Twitter can kick anyone it wants off its platform . He can expel all the men and all the women tomorrow. He can keep only transgender people on the platform if he wants, tomorrow. Of course, it's worth having an interesting discussion about the power of these platforms. Perhaps social media should be viewed as telecommunications. Should a phone company have the right to kick all Nazis off its platform just because it doesn't like what they're talking about? These are interesting questions, but we have much bigger problems that are largely caused by social media , and the malicious spread of misinformation by some of the most influential individuals in our society on these platforms is one of our biggest problems.

And with less than two weeks to go before his doomed presidency ends, allowing an increasingly destabilized Trump to simply tweet whatever he wants to the millions of true lunatics—namely, all those who believe his lies. This was an unacceptable situation. So it may have been a tough decision for Jack and the rest of Twitter, but as far as I can tell, it was the right decision. Needless to say, we still have a lot to figure out in the future. I don't have a crystal ball, but I can tell you what's bothering me.

I certainly worry that one day we will see Timothy McVeigh-style terrorism from the right. And, of course, some of the responsibility for this will fall on Trump and his cronies, even if it happens months later. Honestly, the lies he spread will outlive him for a long time. Our society has been poisoned, truly poisoned, by lies, and Trump bears enormous responsibility for this. But the antidote to the lies of Trump and his henchmen cannot be the lies of the left. We need an intellectually honest discussion about what's happening in the world.

So I'm certainly worried about what the far right and the Trump cult are capable of. And let me take 10 seconds to return to a position I held a long time ago, but which has now changed in light of recent events. When the topic of white supremacism and, you know, the threat of Christian militias came up, I claimed that I wasn't sure about the extent of this problem in our society. Are they being diminished or are they being exaggerated by people who are focused on these issues.

Now I think that everything in that cesspool, whatever you call it, is suddenly of much greater and ever-increasing concern. Again, given the way Trump has behaved in recent months, almost half of our society believes—it seems like the latest poll showed 90% of Republicans believe that Joe Biden's election was rigged . I hope this number is wrong. Maybe it was 70%. Honestly, I don't know. I can't believe these numbers. But when even a part of our society believes that power has been stolen, it is the destruction of society.

We need to figure out how to fix this. So a Biden presidency, with all the challenges it will face, the economic fallout, and China's belligerence, are serious issues that Biden needs to focus on. But honestly, one of the most important things we can do and start right now is find a way to have elections in this country that are safe, transparent, recognizable, tamper-proof , where the right people vote and know their vote counts, so that when they lose, they can admit defeat. We just have to figure out how to implement such a system.

And I also believe that Biden should make a lot of efforts to reduce the power of the presidency. I believe the Oval Office should be protected from psychopaths. Of course, it would be great if we could learn not to elect psychopaths to the presidency. But having done so, we need a system that will deter abuse of this position. Right? We need laws where we only had norms that Trump happily violated. I don't know how to do this, and I'll invite people who know better to the podcast, but Trump has become a stress test for our democracy that we almost failed, and we must do everything we can to learn the lessons.

I've been a real source of fun on the last two podcasts. Can we start 2021 over again ? Is this normal? Today is January 9th. I'm starting the new year again. Happy New Year, everyone.