Why cultists are so loud and proud Lies and conspiracy theories are related, finds Marcel Danesi, a professor of semiotics and linguistic anthropology at the University of Toronto. In a pattern that “goes back to antiquity,” populist leaders such as former President Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Russia’s Vladimir Putin “use language to develop a cult-like following.” Danesi offers a scientific explanation at Politico. Such leaders deploy “dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.” Here is an example of the result, live and in color, from the Trump rally Saturday in Erie Pennsylvania: Whoops. Danesi explains: The first step to manipulating the minds of the public, or really the precondition, is that listeners need to be in the right emotional state. In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty.That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear. The brain is designed to respond to fear in various ways, with its own in-built defense mechanisms which produce chemicals in the response pattern, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemical responses, which zip straight past our logical brains to our fight-or-flight reactions, are also activated by forms of language that instill fear, either directly (as in a vocal threat) or, more insidiously, by twisted facts which allay fears through lies and deceptive statements. Lay observers of this phenomenon simply call it “the lizard brain,” the area triggered by our most primitive instincts. This…