The Firehose of Falsehood is More Powerful than Ever - and More Important to Halt

Truth can defeat lies, but only if we fight for it

By: Devin Hughes

Disinformation about gun violence is surging at an alarming rate, yet too little attention is being paid to the growing threat. As the 2024 election cycle and the current activities dismantling our federal government have demonstrated, the Firehose of Falsehood — an overwhelming, high-volume disinformation strategy — is being wielded more aggressively than ever, drowning out facts with fabrications.

Now, with Elon Musk amplifying false crime statistics and the Trump administration dismantling federal oversight, the conditions are ripe for an even more coordinated assault on truth.

If the gun violence prevention movement does not prioritize countering disinformation, it will be ill-prepared for the coming storm — one that threatens to rewrite the public’s understanding of gun violence and derail efforts to enact meaningful change.

The Current State of Affairs

The past few months have witnessed an unprecedented assault on federal agencies by President Trump’s administration featuring Elon Musk at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This assault was started by removing Inspectors General who are already in charge of finding fraud and abuse within government agencies, and was swiftly followed by gutting programs that fund critical research.

Meanwhile, adding to the chaos these actions created, Musk unleashed a barrage of falsehoods and conspiracy theories that overwhelmed the ability of government agencies and external fact-checkers to respond.

Musk’s assault through DOGE contains all the hallmarks of a Firehose of Falsehood campaign: overwhelming targets with speed, unleashing a torrent of fabrications, and removing the very government watchdogs who could verify or refute Musk’s many allegations — all while suppressing the truth and lifting a megaphone to disinformation via his “special government employee” bully pulpit and his social media mouthpiece, X.

What is a Firehose of Falsehood Campaign?

In 2016, The RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, released a report detailing an evolving strategy deployed by Russian propagandists, which it coined the “Firehose of Falsehood.” RAND defines the Firehose of Falsehood as a propaganda/disinformation campaign that has four features:

1. High-volume and multichannel

2. Rapid, continuous, and repetitive

3. Lacks commitment to objective reality

4. Lacks commitment to consistency

A Firehose of Falsehood About Gun Violence

There are signs that an even more powerful version of the gun lobby’s long-standing Firehose of Falsehood campaign is coming for the gun violence prevention space:

• The Trump administration has deleted the prior Surgeon General’s advisory declaring gun violence a public health epidemic.

• The Justice Department is seeking to re-arm domestic abusers, with Mel Gibson being the most recent high-profile example of an abuser having their ability to own guns restored.

• Agents at the ATF, the underfunded agency in charge of enforcing federal gun laws, are being transferred to the FBI to work on immigration rather than issues related to firearms.

• The entire team at the CDC’s Web-Based Injury and Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) was terminated, along with most of the CDC’s team dedicated to reducing violence. The dramatic cuts to research, along with the degradation of data collection occurring at the CDC and other government agencies, will harm the ability of researchers to accurately measure gun violence for years to come.

As I’ve written about extensively, the gun lobby has enacted a Firehose of Falsehood campaign over the past five decades to push the lie that guns make people safer.

During the 2024 election cycle, this campaign got a significant boost from Elon Musk, who elevated false claims about crime trends manufactured by gun violence researcher John Lott. The Firehose of Falsehood that Musk has deployed in his war against the Federal Government is likely to combine with the long-term strategy from the gun lobby in a hurricane of pro-gun propaganda.

Unfortunately, the gun violence prevention movement is not ready.

State of the Gun Violence Prevention Movement’s Readiness to Discredit Misinformation

Last October, I shared my concerns about the lack of focus on disinformation within the movement after a Center for American Progress conference I attended: “Yet, unless I brought the topic up during Q&A sessions throughout the conferences, there was no discussion of the importance of countering disinformation. Root causes of gun violence were frequently invoked, but disinformation was never listed among them.”

The same pattern played out in a December conference for gun violence research. Of the hundreds of academic presentations of research, not a single one had “myth,” “misinformation,” or “disinformation” in the title.

This lack of attention to disinformation among gun violence researchers is startling, given that many other fields have been raising the alarm about the problem for years.

Ironically, there is a similar gap in research focused on countering disinformation. In a National Academy of Sciences report released at the end of last year, a team of researchers dedicated more than 400 pages to analyzing the threat of misinformation and disinformation in science and provided potential solutions. Fields such as climate change, tobacco, and vaccines are highlighted as hotspots for disinformation campaigns. Yet the words “gun” and “firearm” don’t appear in the report a single time, despite the field of gun violence research being targeted by one of the largest coordinated disinformation campaigns in the history of science.

The lack of attention on disinformation in gun violence research and disinformation research ignoring gun violence combine to form a Venn diagram with a void at its heart.

Disinformation is a root cause of gun violence. It is impossible to understand or end gun violence without addressing disinformation. Ignoring the gun lobby’s existing and forthcoming Firehose of Falsehood campaigns guarantees their success.

The Path Forward

Fortunately, there is a straightforward, albeit difficult, path to countering the Firehose of Falsehood.

To counter the Firehose of Falsehood, organizations can implement the following strategies:

• Match the breadth and scope of the disinformation campaign with their own Firehose of Truth.

• Deploy inoculation campaigns to counter disinformation, involving informational “vaccines” that expose people to a piece of disinformation in a controlled setting and then thoroughly explain why it is inaccurate.

• Enact “deep canvassing” tactics that rely on canvassers listening attentively and encouraging empathy instead of traditional canvassing techniques.

• Focus on the populations most at risk of being swayed by the ongoing disinformation campaign rather than directly challenging the Firehose of Falsehood.

• Avoid attempting to overtly silence the opposition, as such efforts will most likely prove ineffective and may substantially strengthen the disinformation campaign.

At the personal level, a four-stage process for persuasion can be effective, with each stage requiring its own distinct approach:

• Circumventing tribal barriers by meeting people where they are, establishing emotional credibility through personal narratives, and building trust.

• Exploring the other person’s beliefs and core values by respectfully questioning, listening, and affirming.

• Building a fact-based foundation that aligns with the other person’s values, and using inoculation techniques to protect against future disinformation.

• Motivating the person to action with a single, emotionally powerful story, and having them commit to at least a small action that can be built on over time.

To learn more about these strategies and the research behind their effectiveness, please visit our page on countering the Firehose of Falsehood. In the coming weeks, I will be releasing more material elaborating on how best to counter disinformation at the organizational and personal levels.

In these trying times, educating ourselves and the broader public is paramount. Truth can defeat lies, but only if we fight for it.

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Devin Hughes is the President and Founder of GVPedia, a non-profit that provides access to gun violence prevention research and data.

Photo by Produtora Midtrack: via Pexels