How to Mount a Cognitive Insurgency: Know. NAME. Disrupt. — Part II
Naming is not the solution. But it is the lever that makes a solution possible.
In Part I of the “Know. Name. Disrupt” framework for a cognitive insurgency, I focused on knowing, which, under an epistemologically totalitarian regime, is both a personal rebellion and a firewall against cognitive contagion for those around you.
In Part II, I will focus on naming as a tool, both for yourself and in the real world, as part of an essential arsenal for mounting a cognitive insurgency against a powerful psychological regime. Naming is the hinge between the internal and the external, and a way to short-circuit the trauma bond between an authoritarian and his cult.
This article includes:
The neuroscience of naming
CBT and distortion labeling as tactical groundwork
Steven Hassan’s principles of cult recovery
Cognitive surfacing via questions
Memetic disruption and clean exits
Colloquial and precise naming as dual-mode tools
Introduction: Breaking the Loop Without Breaking the Person
In Part I, we established that the Trump regime, like all authoritarian systems, is fundamentally about total information dominance. This isn’t just censorship or propaganda. This is cognitive control—a hijacking of attention, emotion, and language that rewires how people interpret the world around them.
The first step in resisting that system is knowing it’s happening.
The second is naming what it’s doing to you—and to the people you care about.
I. Why Naming Works
The act of naming or labeling something performs a real neurological function. The label demands permanent storage in memory and an explanation from your conscious, thinking mind. And just as importantly, it lowers the temperature in your fear center.
In a 2007 fMRI study, UCLA researcher Matthew Lieberman showed that labeling emotional states reduces activity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat center, and increases activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which governs rational thought, reflection, and regulation. [Lieberman et al., 2007]
“Labeling the emotion seems to disrupt the amygdala response,” Lieberman writes. “It turns down the emotional volume.”
— Putting Feelings Into Words, UCLA Department of Psychology
Psychologist Dan Siegel translated this into something simple but durable:
“Name it to tame it.”
— The Whole-Brain Child
This mechanism is the same one used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—the most evidence-based treatment for anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysregulation. In CBT, distorted thoughts are identified, labeled, and then restructured.
“Cognitive therapy seeks to alleviate distress by helping patients develop more realistic perspectives through systematic identification of errors in thinking.”
— Aaron T. Beck, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
When people fall into authoritarian systems, they adopt distorted thoughts as part of their identities. Naming those distortions—and using effective strategies in the process—can be a way of handing someone the key to their own exit.
II. Naming as Self-Defense
Here are some of the foundational emotional distortions identified in CBT that often appear in authoritarian, abusive environments or in people recovering from them. It is often just the act of labeling itself that can make all the difference to someone.
All-or-Nothing Thinking — “Everyone who doesn’t agree is evil.”
Emotional Reasoning — “I feel afraid, so it must be true.”
Catastrophizing — “If we don’t support him, it’s the end of everything.”
Personalization — “They’re talking about me.”
Labeling — “I’m a traitor for questioning this.”
Fortune Telling — “This won’t end well. Why try?”
On a personal note, I remember very clearly the first time a therapist used the word “catastrophize” with me, many years ago. It was new to me but I worked out what it meant in context, and entered it into my lexicon, having no idea that it was part of CBT. But that simple act of naming a very harmful habit has helped me to keep down serious anxiety ever since because I can now say, “Oh, it’s just that again.” That alone breaks the loop.
If you find yourself caught in a loop of thought that feels urgent, overwhelming, or hopeless, pause and ask:
What is this thought telling me?
What emotion is it riding on?
Can I name the pattern?
Naming and asking questions forces you out of the overwhelming experience of emotion into the realm of analyzing emotion. It is active, not passive, which fires up the thinking part of your brain.
III. Naming as External Disruption
When used externally, naming can be a precision psychological tool, a way to engage a different part of someone’s mind than they’re using in the moment; in the case of someone captured in an authoritarian system, it frees the part of the mind that’s being starved, the prefrontal cortex, for a moment.
This is a tactic I use all the time online, especially on the former Twitter. If someone has a particularly vicious, rage-filled reaction to the truth, I will sometimes reply along the lines of:
“You are experiencing cognitive dissonance, which is mental anguish experienced when the objective world is suddenly introduced into an alternate reality.”
Optionally, I will add, “I’m sorry this is happening to you.”
It’s very hard for people to come back from this, because they have to figure out what it means, place themselves in the definition I provided, and formulate a coherent response. I have short-circuited their loop.
But why not “fight fire with fire”? Isn’t this like “when they go low, we go high”?
No. This is a way to fight fire with water. This is hand-to-hand psychological warfare.
Why not just return the same insults and heat at your adversary? Well, as long as you’re safe about it, there’s nothing wrong with it exactly—if it helps you.
Otherwise, however, it’s just not that effective at anything else:
“Attacking the belief head-on triggers the person’s defense system.
It reinforces the false identity.”
— Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump
Instead, Hassan and others in cult recovery emphasize indirect methods: asking questions, surfacing contradictions, appealing to past values (reminding them about who they were before the cult), and preserving rapport. The key is not to “win the debate,” but to introduce cognitive dissonance without closing the door.
IV. Tactics of Naming
Here are two basic tactical modes for the use of naming in the field:
1. Colloquial Naming
This is the use of simple language to point out a pattern—and to use the words to deliver the idea as smoothly as possible because you want them to recognize the pattern, not decipher the meaning.
Examples:
“This is just repeating his words.”
“You’ve been trained to react this way.”
“You’re in a fear loop.”
“They bait you with outrage, then feed you the solution.”
Humans are incredibly powerful pattern-matching computers. In this case, you are identifying a pattern for them—one that part of their mind is forced to acknowledge. A small door opens.
2. Precision Naming
These phrases use unfamiliar or clinical terms that require the subject to interrupt the emotionally-controlled part of their brain to think about what the term means. It’s like a little puzzle for the mind, a sort of neural catnip that may cause them to look up a term, or spend a minute trying to figure out what it means in context.
Examples:
“That’s mimetic synchrony.”
“You’re being refrozen. Like Lifton said.”
“This is operant conditioning—you’re in a Skinner box.”
“This is epistemological totalitarianism.”
“That’s DARVO.”
Lying to people is immoral, but telling them the truth in a way that makes them think is not.
Nevertheless, the goal here isn’t clarity. It’s dissonance.
The mind pauses when it hears something it doesn’t immediately understand. That pause is the opportunity you give someone to think for themselves.
Optionally, when you “name drop” like this, you can provide a link, or a meme, or some other explanation for what the term means along with the message, e.g., a meme explaining DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender, or a link to an article.
3. Fallacies
Most people think of logical fallacies as an academic matter. But fallacies are not just errors in logic. In authoritarian systems, they are weapons of emotional manipulation, memetic short-circuits, and tools of control.
Fallacies are essentially linguistic magic tricks. They use any number of distractions, disruptions, and diversions of thought to hide the ball—the emotional and cognitive payload of the message.
But naming the fallacy, either by its technical term or a colloquial simile, you are essentially telling the subject how the magician is doing what they’re doing. If you can break the cognitive loop long enough to get them to understand it, it’s much harder for it to work in the future.
Fallacies are not persuasive because they are logical. They are persuasive because they are emotionally satisfying. They offer a sense of certainty, blame, or righteousness exactly when the subject feels confused or afraid. That’s why they’re so effective in authoritarian rhetoric, cult doctrine, and conspiracy loops.
“Fallacies don’t spread because they’re dumb. They spread because they offer relief from cognitive dissonance.”
The goal here is to remove one of the ways the authoritarian cult prevents that cognitive dissonance from occurring. Another way to slowly pull back the curtain.
Common Fallacies in Authoritarian Systems
While there are dozens of classical fallacies, a few dominate the rhetorical style of modern authoritarianism. These include:
False equivalence – Equating unequals to flatten responsibility
Straw man – Refuting a distorted version of the opponent’s view
Ad hominem – Attacking the person instead of the argument
Appeal to authority – “The king said it, so it’s true”
Slippery slope – “If we don’t stop this, everything will collapse”
No true Scotsman – Redefining the group to exclude inconvenient truths
Post hoc ergo propter hoc – Confusing sequence with causation
Whataboutism – Avoiding accountability by redirecting blame
Begging the question – Basing the conclusion on its own assumption
Ways to use these:
“That’s a slippery slope argument.”
“That’s a straw man. I didn’t say that.”
“That’s just whataboutism. It’s a distraction.”
Say it once. If appropriate, leave a link. Then let them think about it. Even if the subject brushes it off, the frame has shifted. At a minimum, you’ve repositioned the conversation—from belief to method, for one beat.
V. Naming + Questions = Cognitive Surfacing
The most effective technique is not naming alone, but to get them to name it for themselves. Done right, this avoids triggering the defense system—and instead activates internal contradiction.
“What do you call it when someone blames others for what they did?”
“Do you really feel safer—or just angrier?”
“What’s it called when someone imitates someone else all the time?”
“What happens if this turns out to be a lie?”
“Would the version of you from five years ago agree with this?”
This is Cognitive Surfacing. You’re not planting a new belief. You’re provoking awareness of a pattern that’s already present—but unspoken. It’s a crack in the armor of their captors.
Cognitive surfacing is the difference between telling someone they’re brainwashed, and helping them realize they’ve stopped asking questions. The evil genius of authoritarian systems is that the act of confronting someone about the system that enslaves them immediately reinforces their belief that the system is actually protecting them.
By guiding the subject to their own conclusions, you are short-circuiting the defensive systems of the adversary.
VI. Break the Loop, Not the Person
Naming is powerful—but if misused, it turns into judgment, or superiority. This closes the loop you just opened.
Here are a few tactical principles drawn from Hassan, Lifton, and other cult exit strategists:
Never attack the leader directly. Critique the system, not the symbol.
Avoid “you’re brainwashed.” Instead, ask: “Have you changed your mind—or just stopped speaking it?”
Don’t mock or sneer. That feeds the persecution script.
Don’t overload with facts. They bounce off. Name the manipulation instead.
Reconnect with values. “You’ve always cared about honesty. Does this still feel like that?”
Use memory. “I remember how skeptical you were of power. That’s why this surprised me.”
These tactics are not solutions, but they create ruptures in the harmful attachment structure between a person and an authoritarian system. And the ruptures are where the healing begins.
VII. How to Leave the Conversation
One of the most over-used clichés in sales is: Once you’ve made the sale, stop selling. All you can do after that is screw it up. So leave, as soon as possible.
Similarly, if you’ve said something that lands—or might—the best thing to do is leave the situation. Let it sit. All of these strategies are cumulative and stochastic, in the sense that you never know quite when someone will have the light bulb moment. But the more opportunities they have, the more likely it is they will have it.
Do not stay to explain. Do not press your point. Let the discomfort remain unresolved.
Psychologically, unresolved patterns tend to repeat in the mind. That’s what makes them stick:
“That’s something to sit with. I’ll leave it there.”
“I said my piece. Thanks for listening.”
“No pressure to respond. Just think about it.”
VIII. Naming as Cognitive Immunity
Why is naming so powerful? When you name a pattern, your brain files it in the part that handles complex, symbolic reasoning: the frontotemporal cortex. It’s not just a nameless feeling anymore. If it has a name, it has an abstraction.
In this way it acts like an inoculation: “once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Once you know the magic trick, it’s not so magic anymore, is it?
This is what psychologists call inoculation theory:
Exposing people to a weakened version of a manipulative tactic, along with a warning or label, builds resistance to stronger versions later.
“You can’t unsee a named distortion.”
— Sander van der Linden, Inoculating Against Misinformation
Conclusion: Naming Is the Lever
Naming is not the solution. But it is the lever that makes a solution possible.
In authoritarian systems—especially ones as deeply mimetic and emotionally synchronized as Trump’s—the first victory is not changing someone’s mind.
The first victory is getting them to see that they are not thinking for themselves.
If you’ve done that—even for a second—you’ve done more than most institutions ever will.
What comes next is Part III: Disrupt. How to interfere with the loops themselves, counter-condition new patterns, and build exits from the system.
If you are able to help me continue my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. It really means a lot. Thank you!
Here are a few benefits to upgrading:
Live Zoom call each Sunday
Substack Live AMA every week, video posted for paid subscribers
Ability to comment and access all content
Wonderful, supportive community
Helping independent journalism fill in the gaps for our failing media
Thank you for reading and sharing my work. Grateful for your support.
If you’d like to help me with expenses, here is my DonorBox. 💙
If you’d like to help with my legal fees: stopmikeflynn.com.
My podcast is @radicalizedpod & YouTube — Livestream is Thursdays at 4PM PT.
Bluesky 🦋: jim-stewartson
Threads: jimstewartson
Tiktok: @jimstewartson
I’m a psychotherapist and I’m like wow this is excellent. TY Jim, again. I’ll reread this until the info is mine and I feel I can implement the strategies.
Thank you, Jim, for this helpful information! Naming something is empowering and establishes a boundary. You did an excellent job describing this process. I like that you described cognitive distortions and examples of this. I’m glad that you described how to effectively reach people in the MAGA movement. We need to remember the long goal and keep our emotions in check. If we can help people to start critically thinking again, that’s what we want.