In Reality

The Saboteurs Within: University of Michigan's Barbara McQuade

Mar 26, 2024

47:15

For decades, America’s foreign adversaries have used disinformation to undermine American democracy, to sow division and create confusion about what is even true. But who needs foreign adversaries when so many Americans, for whatever reason, have embraced the same tactics and same apparent goal? Today’s guest, Barbara McQuade, is a professor at University of Michigan Law School who previously served as vice chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and co-chaired its Terrorism and National Security Subcommittee.

In her new book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, she makes it clear that then same kind of disinformation campaigns she saw originating in Russia or Iran are now homegrown. Barb and Eric talk about why Americans are particularly susceptible to disinformation; about the authoritarian playbook that leaders like Hungary’s Victor Orban or Donald Trump employ to seize power by ostensibly democratic means; about the right wing’s embrace of violent rhetoric and the dangers of stochastic terrorism; and the importance of media literacy in a chaotic information environment.

This is not perhaps the most optimistic episode to air on In Reality, but stay with us. This needs to be heard.

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