The truth battle: How misinformation ruins lives, and how education can save our future

Friday, 16 September 2022

Anti-mandate protesters have often turned to conspiracy theories to form and deepen their views.

Obsessed and angry, Sandy sits night after night on Telegram reading everything but judging nothing.

Long after midnight, when her husband and her children have gone to bed, she remains rooted to her phone.

She’s not focused at work, and her relationship is breaking down. Sandy’s friendship group is growing ever smaller and those who remain block her messages. Her parents are estranged from her, and her world is imploding.

But Sandy is the only one who can’t see it.

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Her husband James – neither is their real name – feels abandoned. He can’t reconcile how the beautiful, friendly and empathetic woman he loves has become an angry husk he doesn’t recognise.

Within the space of a year James has gone from having a loving relationship to one that has almost been completely destroyed by his wife’s slide into conspiracy theories. Now the relationship with her children is on the line, but still she continues.

Sadly, her descent is not unique in the current climate. Families have been carved up, friendships severed and workplaces divided.

For Sandy it began with Covid-19 vaccination mandates, which quickly led to joining Voices for Freedom (VFF). She attended meetings where she met others who shared her altered view.

Those meetings led to her being exposed to extremists, and what began as a concern over Covid-19 mandates morphed into a feeling of martyrdom, according to James.

Under VFF, James believes Sandy was manipulated to thinking Covid-19 wasn’t real but was instead created by Bill Gates and The World Economic Forum to pull down the economy – abetted by Governments and the media. That theory has no basis in reality.

Those views were always unchallenged in the VFF groups, he says, and were nourished by confirmation bias in her tight circle.

Anti-mandate protesters took their anguish to Wellington earlier this year, clashing with police during an unprecedented occupation of Parliament’s grounds.

Worse was the abject belief that she was right and people like her husband were wrong. No amount of coaxing, gentle persuading or, better still, facts, could shift her concreted views.

Sandy became angry at her husband. She believed she had a simple reason for the pain and frustrations at life that she felt – and a solution. No matter how impractical or far-fetched, Sandy and the people she surrounded herself with bought into a narrative that bridged her fear.

What truly shocks James is Sandy’s cursory attitude to threats of violence that she views and hears daily, from people she has met in person and online.

The constant call to exercise physical and sexual violence against women, including the prime minister, is accepted and allowed. As she immerses herself deeper, this once peaceful mother is becoming hardened to the idea that violence is necessary to force the change she wants.

“It’s dangerous,” James says.

He repeatedly tried to reason with his wife and coax her back to a rational way of thinking, but she just got angry and refused to hear his views.

When Sandy did try to pull back, in order to save their relationship, the vitriol she received from VFF members grew hateful.

The sympathy she had previously received was nowhere to be found, and the pressure that led to her returning to the movement left James feeling like it was a cult.

Hannah Blake struggled to align her bisexuality with her hard-line Christian upbringing.

Angry at groups like VFF, who he says are deliberately filling a vacuum for people struggling with pain, confusion, isolation and anger, James is at a loss as to how to bring his wife back.

“Instead of teaching them critical thinking they offer simplistic answers … regardless of whether you think they are delusional or ill-informed, as a society that pain has to be addressed,” James warns.

The extreme Christian connection

As a child, Hannah Blake’s world was one of extreme religious ideology. Part of a Manawatu Presbyterian family swept up in the charismatic church revival of the 1980s, she was Christian homeschooled and was a hobo of five radical churches.

A typical day began with prayer, followed by Bible readings at breakfast and education lessons infused with extremism. Then came lunchtime prayers and nights dedicated to more Bible readings. Friday evening to Saturday evening was entirely devoted to scripture study, while Sundays were for church.

Blake was indoctrinated with misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic attitudes. She also learnt how to justify colonialism and attitudes which supported a Western supremacist world view.

“I was taught that as a woman my role was to serve men. I was taught that when I had my own children I had to hit them in order to save them from their own selfish nature. I was taught that I must stay silent in the church. I was taught that I had no rights to my own body,” she says.

She was also taught the secular world was evil and chaotic, and that Pākehā saved Māori from their “heathen ways”.

“I was taught that to question my parents, to question my husband, was to question God.”

Demonstrators gather at the federal courthouse in Austin, Texas during the decision to overturn Roe v Wade abortion legislation.

Later she would go on to describe her experience as akin to being in a fragmented Gloriavale.

As a female Blake, found herself essentially powerless apart from having control over men’s sexuality, and did not have the capacity to handle leadership because she was told her gender made her prone to emotional manipulation.

But by the age of 10, Blake knew she was bisexual and harboured guilt, believing she was wicked and evil.

Four years later she would attempt to exorcise herself of the demons she believed had caused her sexuality, but would continue to air homophobic views - because if the idea that gender was a binary issue was removed from the Bible, what would be left of her religion?

The belief system she had been indoctrinated in was central to her world and became akin to a pleasure drug, she says. Challenging those ideas – either herself doing that, or other people – was in essence a challenge to her identity.

Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti is passionate about teaching our young people how to think critically.

“It’s world-shaking,” she says.

The moment Blake realised she no longer believed what she had been taught was shattering. Physically she collapsed, because the safety she felt in having all the answers was gone, and she was alone.

Faced with an existential crisis she stopped handing in school work and subsequently failed Year 13.

Suddenly, at just 19, she faced uncertainty about everything around her and had no purpose, even though she had begun the de-conversion process years earlier.

Looking back Blake, now 30, doesn’t think there was one key moment that changed her views, but she knows having parental consent to go to secondary school, unlike many in the same Christian community, played a pivotal role.

There, Blake met teachers who privately and gently coaxed her to share her views, but never ridiculed or shut down her opinions. Instead, they asked questions and encouraged her to research different viewpoints.

At the same time she had studied The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, and felt physically sickened by what she was reading. Some commentators believe Atwood was imagining a world where fundamental Christians ruled, and it was a world that resonated strongly with Blake.

“I hated the concept, but I couldn’t disagree with it … I was thinking I would be one of the bad guys in that book. It was hard, but it was what I needed to hear at the time.”

Blake’s experience has led her to speak out publicly about extremists espousing disinformation and conspiracy theories.

She sees many similarities and overlaps between Voices for Freedom supporters and extreme Christianity, including the fact that many ideas espoused by American political conspiracy theory group QAnon had already been published years before they came back to public consciousness, within the circles she previously mixed in.

Listening to Counterspin co-host Hannah Spierer talk about “toxic femininity” and denounce Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for having a baby while working, Blake feels she has stepped back into her old world.

“It’s the same stuff. They’ve just removed the overt Christian aspect from it.”

And Blake goes further. She believes the rise of charismatic churches in the 1980s has led us to where we are now, and says the recent reversal of the famous Roe v Wade American legal judgment on abortion has given the fringe majority in the US the belief that they are now the majority.

Research Blake has conducted suggests that of the 80% of 250 Christian homeschooling students on social media that she tracked from her era, 70% hold anti-government and anti-vaccination views today. Many attended protests during the pandemic.

“The overlap is massive,” she says.

So what can be done? Blake read voraciously while growing up, and was taught critical thinking – so long as the teachings of the Bible were the presupposition, or starting point, to any of her research, but she knows how difficult it is to save those locked into a world they have so much invested in.

Many Voices for Freedom protesters supported the group for its anti-vaccination/mandate stance, but now that has morphed into conspiracy theories and an anti-government view.

Instead, protecting vulnerable people from misinformation is far more important, as is ensuring those that have been indoctrinated believe in non-violence.

Can you teach critical thinking?

According to a European Media Literacy Index, which measures 35 countries in Europe, Finland’s citizens have the highest potential to withstand the negative impact of fake news and misinformation due to the quality of their education, free media and high trust among people.

The country has consistently topped the index and has led the way in developing strategies that help their younger generations separate misinformation from fact.

Since 2016 Finland has begun teaching young students how to critically evaluate the news sources they read due to the country’s proximity to Russia.

Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Finland saw a rise in disinformation, including attempts to rewrite history and persecution of critical researchers and journalists.

By 2016, secondary schools introduced multi-platform information literacy and critical thinking as a core of the national curriculum. The same approach has since been taken with primary schools.

A trailer for the Stuff Circuit documentary 'Fire and Fury'

Success was reflected in the country stopping misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine from being allowed to grow.

Social media pages urging people to not wear facemasks also failed to find traction.

However, Massey University associate professor Dr Stephen Hill says research shows the biggest spreaders of dangerous misinformation and disinformation are adults, and not children.

“If it’s an education system at fault it’d likely be the one that the adults went through the 1990s, 1980s and earlier.”

Hill says universities have always taught critical thinking, although research has shown that numbers of years in education isn’t a huge determinant in who will believe in conspiracies.

Recent work undertaken by Hill also suggests this may be the same for misconceptions, or inadvertent misunderstandings, rather than deliberate attempts to misguide.

Research also shows older people are less likely to believe in conspiracies than younger people, he says, although he believes it is difficult to know if it’s a changing susceptibility with age or merely a consequence of being older.

Because of the time it can take for claims to became tested and well established, Hill suggests our tolerance for uncertainty is important, and especially our ability to be able to withhold judgment, even if we’ve heard the same claim on numerous occasions.

“If you can make this a habit, then we’re well-placed to avoid major problems … and I think most people already do pretty well on this score.”

According to studies, some people feel more uncomfortable than others with uncertainty, and may seek out certainty in places that provide clear answers – such as religious or anti-establishment groups.

“The pandemic has been one of these situations for some people whose lives have been disrupted by it.”

While Hill doesn’t believe there has been a rise in disinformation, he thinks there has been a “ramping up” of the weaponisation of normal cognitive processes, including making snap judgments in time poor situations, or being impressed by messages from charismatic individuals.

Regardless, the issue looms large for Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti.

While critical thinking is happening in “pockets” in schools, Tinetti is hopeful the new curriculum overhaul means such thinking will be studied in all schools.

A fan of what is happening in Finland, Tinetti has been watching closely and is passionate about making change happen now.

“Social media and how young people interact to get their news is critical.”

She agrees a strong educational approach is needed and says no age is too young to start.

Tinetti knows the challenge we face, having had articulate acquaintances go down the rabbit hole since the pandemic began.

“It’s heartbreaking.”