Sam and Shaan discuss how to learn persuasion techniques from effective communicators — even ones they find morally objectionable. Using Trump and Scott Adams’s analysis as a case study, Sam breaks down what makes Trump’s communication style so effective (simple language, vivid imagery, memorable labels), then extends the lesson to Hitler’s propaganda tactics, noting that understanding how these techniques work is valuable for anyone who wants to use them for good.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Learning Persuasion from People You Disagree With [00:00:00]
Shaan: So the other way of doing this — one of the things you can say about what you just said, which is “use these powers for good” — the other thing I’ve been able to do is the opposite: when I see somebody do something for evil but it works, I try to learn from it.
Sam: I completely agree. Trump is somebody I’m not a fan of. I think the guy is bad in all these different ways. But when I watch him, the guy is an incredibly effective communicator. He’s not polished. He doesn’t use fancy fifteen-dollar words. He doesn’t have a lot of substance behind what he’s saying. But the guy is a master of communication. He knows how to get his point across in a way that resonates with people.
Scott Adams Called It Early [00:01:30]
Sam: I completely agree. Scott Adams — who’s the creator of Dilbert — was talking about this when Trump was running. If you haven’t seen it, go read Scott Adams’s blog. He was early. When Trump first announced his candidacy, Scott Adams called it. He said, “This guy’s going to win.” And people were like, “What?” He said, “I’ve been studying persuasion for twenty years. I’ve been studying hypnosis. I’ve been a communicator through cartoons. I know an effective communicator when I see one. This guy is a master.”
Sam: And so he would break down the things Trump said. When Trump would say things like “low energy Jeb” — when he would call Jeb Bush “low energy” — Scott Adams called those “linguistic kill shots.” And when Trump would talk about the wall, he’d say, “It’s a great big wall. A huge wall.” Scott Adams said he’s painting a picture in people’s minds, which is much better than talking about policy.
Shaan: And he called it — he said Trump was going to win — months before anybody even took him seriously. When FiveThirtyEight was saying this guy had a zero percent chance, Scott Adams was saying this guy’s going to win. And of course, if he was wrong, nobody would have paid attention to it. But when you’re right on a big prediction, you get all the credit.
Hitler’s Propaganda Techniques [00:04:00]
Sam: The other example of this was Hitler. When Hitler was rising to power, I studied: how did this guy get so popular? What did he do? Because when you watch him speak, he’s not a very compelling guy. But they did a lot of things.
Sam: One thing I remember that stood out to me — I was in seventh grade, learning about this — was that when Hitler was trying to rise to power, all the political campaign posters were full color, lots of text, people trying to explain their positions. Hitler went the other way. Everything he did was black and white. Normally that wouldn’t stand out, but he was like, “I’ll contrast everybody else who’s using tons of color — I’ll go black and white.” The second thing: he used only big, powerful images, not a bunch of text. And then he used movies as propaganda — fill the cinema, put people in seats to watch a film that was really propaganda behind it.
Sam: So even though he used it for evil, those techniques and principles are interesting to learn from — for me as somebody who wants to have a strong toolkit I can use for good.
Shaan: I completely agree. I’ve been going on so many Wikipedia holes now that I’m home so much. I was reading Hitler’s Wikipedia because I was reading about World War II, and I’d gotten there from reading about the Mafia. And his rise to power was because he would speak at these — I don’t know what the equivalent is now — halls, veterans’ halls, bars. And I was like, wait a minute. He started as a speaker. That’s it. That was kind of crazy.