Reminding Me of My Mother-in-Law Is More Frightening Than Misinformation

In the West, we're starting to see echoes of the kind of authoritarian society that shaped her deeply cynical worldview - and I don't want any part of it

Back when my partner still spoke to his Russian parents, the idea that lessons from Soviet times could be applied to Western society often caused him and his mother to clash. This clash ranged from the idea that potato skins should not be eaten in Canada, as in Belarus, due to radiation, to the belief that objective truth does not exist.

The only facts she trusted were the ones she could verify herself (perhaps due to her narcissism, as much as to her lived experience - but I digress).

This was extremely frustrating for my partner (and me). She dismissed many of our views as the result of brainwashing (by whatever authority) - views like he needed to have chemotherapy when he had cancer, rather than forego treatment in favour of a special Russian juice her friend claimed cured hers. 

In addition to often being downright dangerous - there was something deeply offensive to me about her callous cynicism. It was exhausting trying to explain why her skills in navigating her previous society weren't relevant to this one - she reduced the whole world and all people to being the same.

My partner decided years ago to stop talking to his family, and I must admit that I feel newly grateful for that lately. In the event we discussed certain topics now - I would hate to have to concede that she might have some sort of a point.

Not on potatoes, or cancer (obviously). But certainly on trust in authority, in general.

It's always been my tendency to be critical - especially of our leaders and institutions - but I felt comfortable doing so precisely because I knew I lived somewhere where that was okay. Due to my faith in our society, I never felt the need to defer to it.

This wasn't just because I wasn't afraid of repercussions - I also believed speaking out was worthwhile, and that it could make a difference. I wasn't so cynical as to think everyone, everywhere, was equally corrupt - and you could never expect anything better.

While my mother-in-law distrusted or circumvented by default, I only did so after being given a good reason.

That's still who I want to be - but I am not quite sure if I am, or even could be again.

When I saw strange, Pravda-like government propaganda emerge in Covid times, with Canadian bureaucrats elevated in a manner that reminded me of a board of honour you would find in a former Soviet village - my critical nature began to evolve into more of an incredulous skepticism. I mean, how could you not have doubts, when someone like Patty Hajdu is made to seem so heroic - and we’re not supposed to question it, or her?

This feeling only intensified when some of said bureaucrats began urging us to become even more Soviet, and call out friends and family breaking Covid rules (I would never do that to anyone - not even my mother-in-law). 

In light of recent reporting in the Twitter Files on how the US government, academia and social media companies collaborated to control messaging during Covid - the whole experience feels even more unsettling, in retrospect. I could definitely see past me arguing with my mother-in-law that in Western culture, deliberately emphasizing narrative over truth was just not the way we do things. After learning that even “stories of true vaccine side effects” and otherwise “true stories that could fuel hesitancy” were suppressed - past me is looking pretty naive. 

The Lockdown Files investigation in the UK brought similar revelations about decision making and messaging in the Covid era - including that their health secretary rejected advice to shorten Covid isolation from 14 days of isolation to five days of testing, saying it would “imply we've been wrong” and “sound like a massive loosening”.

But what I find most disturbing is that we haven't had any similar reckoning on our Covid response, here in Canada. Given what our prime minister has said publicly about convoy protesters, and the fact that he recently cited anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers as reasons to censor social media to make sure “we are keeping people safe” - who could really believe that our government hasn't done the same sort of things as their US and UK counterparts (or worse), when nobody was looking.

We are no longer the high trust society that shaped me.

There is always a risk of this happening when people feel less secure physically. Post-Covid, all of us have now experienced some level of food and resource uncertainty, many of us for the first time. No matter what your perspective is on why this happened - this is fundamentally unsettling.

Nevertheless, the main reason for the growing distrust in authority is that more people have learned through experience that authorities cannot always be trusted.

It used to be that I could simply laugh through a movie about something like flat-earthers in a light-hearted manner - now, I cannot help but feel more empathy for what drives people to believe such things (however silly), and certainly for people deemed dangerous simply for being ignorant.

For example, the notion that 15 minute cities are a government plot to limit our movement is silly to me - but I get where it comes from. After we have lived through stay-at-home orders, allowing police to stop people and ask their reasons for leaving their homes - is it really all that silly to fear that nice places you don't want to leave, are only being built that way so you can't leave? Aside from being familiar with 15 minute cities as a trend in urban design that predated Covid - maybe the only reason I find this silly is because I don't think our governments or institutions are competent enough to pull something like this off.

Even if the details of an idea are absurd - like extrapolating that because the Soviet government lied about Chernobyl, and because there was radioactive soil contamination in Belarus, no potato, anywhere (even in another country), can be presumed to be radiation-free (because you can't trust any government to tell the truth about such things) - the feeling behind it may not be entirely wrong.

If you are someone who thinks critiquing our own society as similar to the Soviet one is akin to my mother-in-law's refusal to pivot on potatoes -  I would posit that if we refuse to recognize (or admit) that our Western governments can occasionally be quite shady, we will only move closer to becoming that kind of broken society.

A lot of our current shadiness, including the authoritarian way we handled Covid, seems to have been triggered by Western panic over Trump and Brexit, and latching on to Russian meddling as to blame for both. We have become obsessed with misinformation - or, more accurately, the idea that people are questioning authority because of outside influences, rather than any real grievances.

People become more vulnerable to absurd ideas not only because they are ignorant about an issue, and thus easy to fool - but also when too many in authority deny an issue even exists. The more often your reality is dismissed as a fantasy world, the more comfortable you may feel reaching for something fantastical.

This is what is so self-defeating about our current Canadian government's attitude toward its more critical citizenry, lately. You may be concerned about the threat to freedom of expression from Bill C-11, the seeming lack of seriousness in investigating leaked reports of Chinese election interference, or the general feeling that Canada is broken because of unaffordable housing, a decreased sense of personal safety, and a lack of trust in institutions to provide basic services. Our government seems convinced that you are only complaining due to foreign influence or Conservative spin, rather than having any genuine concerns.

When governments refuse to address the root issues that cause criticism, citizens think their government is corrupt and they can never expect anything better. In this way, false equivalencies and conspiracy theories are actually reinforced.

For example, there might not be quite as many people who would buy the Kremlin spin on the war in Ukraine now, if in our existential terror following the 2016 US election, we hadn't grossly overstated how much influence Russian bots had on public discourse. When too many real opinions of people (however cantankerous) are dismissed as misinformation, it becomes easier for people to dismiss the label itself as misleading.

I also think less people would be willing to believe Justin Trudeau is literally the Manchurian candidate if he would just allow more transparent inquiry into election interference claims. I strongly suspect he isn't a Chinese spy - rather, I think he lacks the self-critical perspective that would allow him to realize how suspicious his evasive actions make him appear, and that this has done more to degrade public opinion than any "bad actors". The feeling that he deserves and is entitled to our belief in what he thinks of himself is evident in the way he behaves (in this way, he definitely reminds me of my mother-in-law). 

He and our governments in general still assume our trust - but thanks (at least in part) to their actions, we now live in a society where they will actually have to work to deserve it.

According to current government groupthink, the problem is what we think and say about them, not what the truth is (this is also where my mother-in-law and I tended to diverge). It is because they do not trust us with information that they actively work to obscure our motives when it comes to commenting on it.

We are still not Soviet, yet - that rot set in after decades and many administrations that proved the rule of government secrecy and insidious corruption.

It is, however, unlikely that we will ever be a high trust society again in my lifetime - yet our institutions could still be trusted. It is up to those who lead them to recognize that they must work consistently to earn our trust now, rather than expect it by default.

Canadians (as well as Westerners in general) tend to believe we are good people because we are truly nice, down to our core. But most of us are only nice because we were lucky enough to live in nice places, during nice times. 

As our experience gets less pleasant, so will we. Because of this, it's important to actually fix the things in our society that aren't nice, not to ignore them or castigate those who point them out.

If you met her, you'd probably agree with me that my mother-in-law is not who you'd like to be, and that she has a miserable outlook. However, my experience over the past few years has taught me that many more people than I had ever thought are just a bit of adversity away from being just like her - and that should terrify all of you, as much as it does me.