DISINFO SUBSTACK 1: The Firehose of Falsehood—And Why the Right Is Winning the Information War
We are seeing an authoritarian disinformation campaign being executed in real time.
They Didn’t Just Build Campaigns. They Built a Worldview.
When you spend enough time inside the right-wing media universe—Fox News, Facebook groups, Joe Rogan interviews, Telegram channels, PragerU reels—it doesn’t feel like propaganda.
It feels like community.
It feels like belonging, identity, purpose. That’s the secret.
The modern right hasn’t just created messages. They’ve created an entire media ecology—24/7, multiplatform, emotionally immersive—and they’ve done it using a tactic originally identified in Russian state propaganda: the firehose of falsehood.
They aren’t trying to win an argument. They’re trying to win your attention, your identity, and your outrage.
📚 What Is the Firehose of Falsehood?
The term comes from a pivotal 2016 RAND Corporation study analyzing how Russian propaganda operated during the invasion of Ukraine. RAND researchers noticed something very different from classic propaganda:
“A high-volume, multichannel, rapid, continuous, and repetitive messaging strategy with no commitment to objective reality and a strong emphasis on emotional appeal.”
In other words, a firehose—a nonstop blast of:
Lies
Contradictions
Half-truths
Emotional manipulation
Not designed to convince, but to confuse, exhaust, and erode trust in any source of truth.
Sound familiar?
I can’t personally prove that foreign actors are coordinating with the right wing—but whether by collaboration or coincidence, they’re dancing to the same tune.\
🔥 Why It Works
The firehose works because of how our brains process information:
Repetition makes lies feel true (the illusory truth effect).
Emotion overrides logic. Anger spreads faster than accuracy.
Fact-checking is too slow and not emotionally sticky.
Contradiction is a feature, not a bug—it paralyzes belief in any truth at all.
When audiences are overwhelmed, they don’t choose truth—they choose tribe.
💥 Features of the Firehose
Key mechanisms of the firehose include:
Volume: Constant flood of content across platforms
Repetition: Same talking points across memes, pundits, and podcasts
Contradictions: School boards are both “too woke” and “not teaching kids” at the same time
Emotional Triggers: Outrage, fear, disgust
Bypass Logic: Appeals to identity and survival, not reason
Overwhelm: Too much to fact-check, too fast
Goal: Not persuasion—but confusion and domination of attention
“The firehose doesn’t ask you to believe the lie. It asks you to believe nothing.”
USA - Why the U.S. Is Especially Vulnerable
This tactic isn’t limited to authoritarian states. In fact, it thrives in our modern American media environment:
Only 18.5% of TV viewing is traditional broadcast.
71% of Americans use Facebook, where right-wing engagement dominates.
Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire gets more Facebook engagement than The New York Times, NPR, CNN, and NBC—combined.
More people saw Trump on Joe Rogan than watched the entire GOP convention.
And while legacy media still plays by 20th-century rules, the right-wing machine floods TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels, and podcasts with algorithm-friendly outrage content.
🧠 It’s Not Just a Message—It’s a Delivery System
The power of the right-wing disinformation machine lies not just in the content—but in its infrastructure:
C3 Think Tanks (Heritage, Claremont) generate ideological ammo
C4 Campaigns and Influencers distribute it via livestreams, memes, and reels
Alt-Education Platforms like PragerU embed narratives in schools
Retail Ecosystems like Patriot Mobile tie identity to commerce
Dark Money Networks like DonorsTrust and the Bradley Foundation keep it all running, year-round, off-the-books
This machine is always on. Always evolving. Always reinforcing a singular worldview: one of grievance, threat, and division.
It’s how we get from “CRT is a college concept” to “teachers are indoctrinating kids” to “ban the books” in under six months.
🧭 What Progressives Must Learn
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about copying their playbook. It’s about understanding the battlefield.
Progressives have largely treated disinformation like a nuisance. Something to “debunk.” But the firehose isn’t an argument—it’s an environment. A structure. A psychological trap.
So no, we don’t need more fact sheets.
We need:
Trusted messengers
Culturally fluent stories
Emotionally resonant content
Local networks of creators
Repetition, repetition, repetition
The firehose thrives on confusion. Our counter must be clarity rooted in connection.
We must stop thinking like fact-checkers—and start thinking like culture-builders.
🚨 Because the Firehose Isn’t Slowing Down
If we don’t create a permanent, values-driven media ecosystem—not just for campaigns but for culture—we’ll remain stuck in a losing game.
They’re building worldviews.
We’re building talking points.
That’s not a fair fight.
Let’s change that.
Next Substack: Fighting the Firehose—How to Counter Right-Wing Disinformation Without Playing Their Game.
Such an important memo. Especially like "They're building worldviews. We're building talking points." Along with all your other points -- emotion, connection, repetition -- what Dems and progressives have to learn is pace.
The days of the occasional "media hit" followed by periods of silence are long gone in the attention economy.
Excellent post. The point I think is that it's an emergency. I respect the hell out of Robert Reich but he says sometimes that this is a new gilded age and that we can beat it back the way we did the first, and I don't know if he believes that or is trying to keep our spirits up and thinks optimism is a more productive outlook but I believe it's different this time...
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-hope/comment/141719361?r=8oyab&utm_medium=ios
Even the Civil War failed to make us into one country, but it's happening now and on the wrong terms, big time. All that Will describes is right out of our own little apartheid substate and the Yankees aren't seeing it. Republicans are fighting a war and we still have some kind of bipartisan hallucination going while they're actively annihilating the state, and not in the cause of a small government enabling individual freedom, but in favor of an oppressive, Christo-fascist empire.