Buckle up for a mind-bending dive into the psychology of mass hysteria and cognitive dissonance, straight from a recent Coffee With Scott Adams podcast. As a trained hypnotist, Scott Adams unpacks how propaganda and fear can trap millions in a distorted reality, using the lens of Trump Derangement Syndrome and the case of Charlie Kirk to reveal uncomfortable truths about belief and perception. Check out the full episode here.

You can read the selected transcript below, or watch the video. But here’s a money quote and then a high level summary:

I would argue that TDS would be the right word for one person. You know, if you if you’re dealing with one person, they have Trump derangement syndrome. If you’re talking about a body of people who have all been propagandized and hypnotized, that’s closer to a mass hysteria if the false thing they’ve been they’ve come to believe is also dangerous. So that’s what the hysteria part is. You don’t you don’t get a hysteria unless the false belief is also scary. So their false belief is very scary. Hitler’s coming and the people living in that Hitlerian fantasy.

High-Level Bulleted Summary

• Hypnotist’s Perspective: Scott Adams, a trained hypnotist, analyzes societal phenomena through a lens of persuasion and mental phenomena.
• Hitlerian Propaganda Bubble: Since 2015, messaging equating Trump with Hitler has fueled mass hysteria, convincing tens of millions that the country faces imminent catastrophe, predicting prison camps and societal collapse.
• Mechanics of Mass Hysteria: Mass hysteria, distinct from individual Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), occurs when groups share a scary false belief, reinforced by observing others’ similar reactions, like fearing a nonexistent monster.
• Cognitive Dissonance Resistance: Correcting this hysteria is challenging because contradictory evidence triggers cognitive dissonance, causing people to rationalize rather than admit errors, preserving their self-image (e.g., believing they’re smart despite evidence otherwise).
• Illogical Defenses as a Tell: Cognitive dissonance manifests as incoherent explanations or “word salad,” where defenses of false beliefs sound illogical to those not affected.
• Charlie Kirk Mischaracterization: Charlie Kirk, tied to Trump, is wrongly labeled as stupid and evil by some, but evidence of his intelligence and kindness in debates contradicts this, exposing biased perceptions.
• Cognitive Dissonance in Action: When confronted with evidence that Kirk is smart and generous, many experience cognitive dissonance, fabricating or misinterpreting information to maintain their negative views rather than revising their beliefs.

Video and Transcript

The way I see it is through my lens as a trained hypnotist. Most of you know that cuz I say it too often. So, I’m a trained hypnotist literally. And so, when I look at things, I see it through a persuasion slash, you know, mental phenomena kind of a filter. Here’s what I see.

There was a whole bunch of Hitler messaging. Ever since 2015, there’s been all this Trump is Hitler stuff. And that that caused a mass hysteria because enough people took that to be literal that they actually believed they were living in a country in which a Hitlerian character was taking over. And what that did was it formed a a bubble. And there were all these people, it wasn’t every Democrat, of course, it never works that way, but there was a lot of them, probably tens of millions of people, who got locked in a propaganda created Hitlerian bubble where they thought they were in this just the worst situation ever and the country’s going down the drain and uh it’s all going to be prison camps and all that. Now, that would be a classic mass hysteria.

If you haven’t studied mass hysterias, you really should because one of the features of it is that when people see other people acting the same way, it reinforces that they must be right.

“Wait a minute, I think there’s a monster under my bed and you think there’s a monster under my bed. And wait a minute, somebody else thinks there’s a monster under my bed. My god, there’s a monster under my bed.”

There’s no monster under the bed. That’s a mass hysteria. Now, the word we use for it is TDS. But I would argue that TDS would be the right word for one person. You know, if you if you’re dealing with one person, they have Trump derangement syndrome. If you’re talking about a body of people who have all been propagandized and hypnotized, that’s closer to a mass hysteria if the false thing they’ve been they’ve come to believe is also dangerous. So that’s what the hysteria part is. You don’t you don’t get a hysteria unless the false belief is also scary. So their false belief is very scary. Hitler’s coming and the people living in that Hitlerian fantasy. Um there’s not really any quick way to fix that. That’s not really fixable in the short run. And because if he were to point out that they were wrong, they would be triggered into cognitive dissonance.

Now, cognitive dissonance is where your brain basically misfires because you saw something that was incompatible with who you believe you are. For example, if you believe you’re smart, but there’s strong evidence that you did something really stupid, will you say, “Oh, I guess I’m actually stupid.” Almost never. If you believe you’re smart, you’ll say, “Huh, well, it didn’t work out, but it was really smart anyway.” And for these reasons, and and people listening to your reasons will say, “Are you are you drunk?” I mean those don’t even sound like reasons but like the things you say are just word salad and that’s the tell for cognitive distance that that that when they explain their position people who are not in cognitive distance listen to it and go uh I don’t think that made sense that didn’t even make logical sense so that’s how you tell.

So let’s take the uh Charlie Kirk situation. So Charlie Kirk, because he was associated with Trump, was demonized as stupid because that’s what the left thinks of the right, right? They think they’re stupid, uninformed, ignorant, and that they’re they’re just plain evil. Just evil. Like they’re killers. Now, what would happen if that was your belief about Trump and therefore by definition about Charlie? Um, and then you see a clip in which he is being friendly and open and listening to other people’s opinions and then giving very well-informed answers. And you realize he’s not dumb. You thought he was. He’s actually like really smart. Like really smart. And then you realize that he’s not evil. He’s actually a really nice person. And 100% of the people who know him knew him. um all say the same thing. It’s It’s not like there’s somebody who came out and said, “You know, I keep hearing these good things about Charlie, but it wasn’t my experience. I had a bad experience.” Nobody, none, not a single person. Every single person who knew him, left and right, left and right, say he was a nice guy. Now, he was a genuinely generous. He’s generous, smart, and nice to a fault.

Now, what what happens to you if you think he was a stupid Hitler, but then you observe through all the clips of him interacting with the other side in his debates on campus, you observe that he’s very clearly the opposite of everything you held to be true. What would be your mental experience? Would you say, “Oh, I changed my mind. It looks like the evidence is opposite of what I’ve been told, so I’m going to go with the evidence.” Some people will, but not many. Far more people will be triggered into cognitive dissonance, and they’ll have to find something terrible about him, and they will simply imagine things that didn’t happen. That’s what happened. If you ask people, well, what is it you didn’t like about Charlie Kirk? They will tell you that they know somebody who knows something that was really terrible and they’re just sort of going after what their friends say. Or they’ll say, “Well, he said,” and then what follows is something he didn’t say ever anywhere. Or they’ll say, “He said X.” And maybe the quote is correct, but the context is completely incorrect and it changes the meaning of what he said. You know, sometimes he’s talking about what other people said, not even agreeing with him, and it gets quoted as what he said, the thing he’s disagreed with. So that that’s how I understand this. It’s a mass hysteria because it’s a collection of people.