The Backfire Effect: Why The Epstein Files Aren't Making a Dent.

In 1956, Leon Festinger published When Prophecy Fails.

Maybe you know the story, but it never gets old. It narrates the ordeals of a Chicago housewife named Dorothy Martin and her cult, “The Seekers.” They believed an epic flood was going to destroy the world, but aliens were going to save them. Cult members quit their jobs. They sold their homes. They gave away all their belongings. They moved in with Dorothy.

They waited and waited.

The UFO never came.

Instead of giving up or admitting they were wrong, the cult members entrenched. The failed prophecy strengthened their beliefs. They worked overtime to bring in new members. They proselytized louder. Eventually, they told themselves that their resounding faith had saved the world. The cult dissolved.

In 1975, psychologists ran an experiment on high school girls who believed in the divinity of Jesus. They showed the girls convincing evidence that challenged their beliefs. Many of the girls even agreed that the evidence was compelling and that they might be wrong. But during their final interviews, the girls didn’t renounce their faith. They said the experience deepened it.

It made them believe more.

Social psychologists have called this response “the backfire effect” or “belief perseverance.” When you try to educate or inform someone, it can backfire. They can wind up clinging even harder to their beliefs. A major 2010 study found that it happens a lot, and it’s often politically motivated. If someone considers you their enemy, it doesn’t matter what you tell them.

They won’t believe you.

There’s a corollary to this, and we’ve all seen it. Even if you’re not someone’s enemy, if you start expressing ideas that someone associates with their enemies, they’ll reject the ideas, and they’ll reject you.

There’s one more study we need to talk about. In 2020, researchers ran a similar experiment on Trump supporters. They presented them with substantial documentation of his crimes and wrongdoings. Those supporters responded by focusing more on his opponents. Learning about Trump’s crimes made them more eager to talk about the alleged crimes of other politicians.

Actually, one last study:

In the late 1990s, researchers identified a phenomenon called spontaneous trait transference. It works like this: The more you try to warn someone about a bad person, the more likely they are to transfer those negative traits to you. It doesn’t make sense, but it happens all the time.

For decades now, time and again, over and over, social psychologists have documented these glitches in human thought. We’re only scratching the surface here. It goes far deeper, but you get the idea. We could also mention the Asch conformity experiments, where peer pressure managed to convince participants to willfully choose the wrong answers on a test, just to fit in.

Maybe you see where we’re going.

For about a year now, practically every podcaster and political strategist has predicted that the Epstein files would be Trump’s undoing. It was supposed to be forming irreparable rifts in the MAGA base, something we could exploit to wake them up and get them to turn on their dear leader. Well, look, I’m not in the business of telling everyone what they want to hear. I’m in the business of telling them what they need to know, and what they need to know is this:

It’s not happening.

There’s plenty of reasons to keep pursuing the Epstein files, but unseating Trump isn’t going to be one of them. I’m sorry.

Some of us have spent the last few years studying social psychology, to understand what on earth has been going on with everyone lately. We weren’t really surprised to observe what’s unfolding, whether it’s Thomas Massie losing a primary or Marjorie Taylor Greene fleeing the country. From psychology to communications theory, we’ve already seen how this story plays out. Once a group settles on an ideology, almost nothing can dislodge it. Members will even start ousting and exiling their own leaders who reject the shared ideology.

There was a brief moment when MAGA was starting to turn on Trump. Unfortunately, the Epstein files have become a liberal talking point now, and MAGA has responded exactly the way 70 years of social psychology would predict. They’re denying reality and digging in their heels.

They’ve decided to wait for the UFO.

Again…

Thomas Massie was right to break with Trump, but let’s be clear about something. His heart and brain didn’t suddenly grow ten sizes like the Grinch. He does not deserve praise or respect for standing up to Trump. He was doing what he and his team considered politically expedient. They banked on the podcaster logic that the Epstein files were hurting Trump, and that he was polling low nationally because of his bogus tariffs and wars.

But Massie made a critical mistake.

He started to believe his own hero narrative, and he forgot the role he played in creating this mess. Ultimately, Thomas Massie served in Congress for 14 years. He spent that entire time fostering ignorance and cultlike thinking among his constituents. He conditioned them to reject logic and compassion. He trained them to conform to groupthink at every turn.

Thomas Massie has a long history of unhinged behavior. You can look up his voting record, and his hate mongering. It’s despicable. His legacy is that he helped drive America into conspiracy land. He has led the charge on climate denial. He promoted conspiracy theories about masks and vaccines.

He spread Trump’s election fraud allegations.

He claimed January 6 was an “inside job.”

The point here is not that Thomas Massie is a terrible person who got what he deserved, although that’s true. The point runs deeper. He didn’t just get what he deserved. He brought it on himself—and us. He did that by nurturing the very kind of thought you see in these studies on social psychology.

He helped Trump build a cult.

When you spend your entire political career promoting conspiracy theories and training your own voters to behave like a cult, then they’re going to behave like a cult. They’re going to think like a cult. And as nearly a hundred years of social psychology tells us, cults learn to reject evidence and logic in favor of their own beliefs. They’ll choose their beliefs over their friends and family.

They’ll choose their beliefs over their own interests.

That’s what cults do.

It’s true that billionaire tech bros spent huge sums of money to unseat Trump critics, and it’s true that the GOP manipulates elections, but that’s not the full story. We’re not doing ourselves any favors by ignoring the social and psychological dimensions at work here. Thomas Massie wasn’t a reasonable Republican standing up to fascists. He wasn’t someone with “a different opinion.” He was a raging conspiracy theorist who made a career out of tearing down our democracy, stripping away human rights, assaulting public health, and destroying the planet.

He was also an opportunist.

Politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie never had a crisis of conscience. They had image problems. They built their political brands on being the craziest voices in the room. But they ran out of gimmicks. It’s hard to stand out when everyone in the GOP sounds as crazy as they do now. The only way for them to stand out in their party was to start sounding halfway sane again. But it was too late for that. The cults they built don’t want sanity.

They want their beliefs affirmed.

The full story is that Thomas Massie forgot that he was in a cult. He forgot that he helped build that cult, and that’s his legacy. He saw populist sentiment drifting away from Trump, and he tried to mobilize that for his own campaign. He underestimated just how far to the right he had dragged his own district.

The Epstein files were never going to save Massie or Greene, because they spent their entire political careers working to eliminate the compassion, logic, and sense of justice that would’ve made their voters care. Even now, Greene is out there hawking ivermectin to treat viral infections.

We’re seeing the backfire effect in real time.

Someone could stand on the floor of Congress and read out the entire Epstein files. They could show every photo. They could name every name. It wouldn’t move MAGA one inch now. A piece by David Gilbert in Wired makes some similar observations. In short, the liberal podcast world has been reading this situation wrong. Trump has, despite all logic and reason, managed to manipulate his base and much of the Republican party to dodge the Epstein bullet. He has already shifted blame onto scapegoats and deflected the personal attacks.

For the researchers and journalists who’ve been writing about the Epstein files because they’re important in their own right, I say carry on. They’re doing valuable work. But if you’ve been wondering why the Epstein files seem to be having a muted impact on the elections, much less than anticipated, please look beyond the low-hanging fruit of saying the election was rigged. Perhaps it was, but you can’t underestimate the power of cult logic.

It’s the backfire effect.

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