A big difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans understand the science of political communication. Republicans dictate the topics/terms of debate while Dems (and the left) usually burn energy in constant response. Thiel and Co call this mimetics, Lakoff calls it framing.
Spot On!!
Thievery machinery based wealth come treacherous traitors get publicly tried what?
It's a similar idea—to wield the power to control the debate and thus the political culture. Example: "Abundance," manufactures a new framework for others to attack/debate/join. Very effective and clever—make people argue against "abundance." 🫴😘
Thiel's Antichrist obsession is another example. He obviously wants to cause a stir and make us talk about the Antichrist. A knee-jerk reaction is to say Thiel is the Antichrist, and that's understandable. However, that is also what he wants: Mimetic rivalry.
If everyone is arguing over "who is the Antichrist?" we accept that frame that 1) Antichrist is real and 2) the Antichrist can be named. Once we accept the frame as legitimate, most of the battle is lost. In a "mimetic rivalry," the one who gets baited into the fight is generally the loser.
I think it's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Might as well be. All fiction. With dragons.* *Yes, there is a dragon in the Bible.
For example, Gavin Newsom is in a mimetic rivalry with Trump. Where does it end? Who has the most power to keep escalating? Who wins when crazy is the norm? Imitation/flattery, etc. (Mimetic rivalry is all about escalation. Hate to be a buzzkill, but reality is a thing, too)
My pet peeve: A certain breed of Dem "influencer" that spreads MAGA-like conspiracy theories about a stolen election or other such fact-free nonsense. They go viral because misinformation is popular, but who wins in a world where misinformation is the sport? Election stolen! Trump dying! Secession!
What's next, storm the Capitol in red hats? To break the cycle, it's important to understand how this stuff works. And there lies the problem: Democrats generally lack an interest in how it works. When it comes to communication, they are science deniers.
All this to say: My upcoming work on Thiel's Antichrist obsession will necessarily double as a lesson on framing/mimetics. Expose the meaning rather than accepting it Whether we know it or not, these concepts wield tremendous force in our lives. We are surrounded by them—especially on social media.
By accepting the frames constructed by our opponents, we neglect to create our own. That is how they win. It's not that Democrats can't frame—they have before. It's that, as a group, they fail to understand the need for constant and systematic framing. ...And the need to STOP TAKING THE BAIT.
This is not to pick on any one person. The bigger point: The brains behind tech fascism view themselves as practitioners of "mimetics." They sees themselves as controlling discourse. And it's important to understand what that means, because flailing instinctive reactions are what they want from us.
Some in the Network State movement call it "Fifth Generation Warfare." Now, there's a rabbit hole for ya.
I sort of wish I could force all senior Dem comms to read ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’ - which helped me understand this dynamic AND my conservative parents
In other words we need to show a better vision so there is contrast, and then defend that to the hilt. The vision needs to, regrettably, mostly remain high level, for details give you something they can attack to death by taking it out of context. How we let them disclaim project 2025... *sighs*
It is the media that accepts reactionary conservative framing. Blaming Dems doesn’t fix this basic problem.
I think they're sort of attempting to, just not that well. Calling everything a "distraction" is rejecting Trump/GOP's frame. Trying to make everything a "kitchen table issue" is rejecting their frame. It's not taking the bait, but it's also probably not the optimal way to avoid it, either.
Stuff for thinking: What is a bait? And what is central and important? And how to frame these differences and form them into a consistent communications strategy? Specifically the first two questions are not trivial in a values based environment, I think, but can easily become wedge issues.
The are not fighting back because they 1)Don’t have ammunition, and/or 2)Have been bought off, and/or 3)Don’t give a shite!
THIS I do know. If you are like them in any way, they win. Chaos plays to their favor. Hysteria plays to their favor. Hate plays to their favor. Violence and coercion plays to their favor. Resentment and bitterness plays to their favor. You have to do things they can’t do which are also appealing.
Yes, they want a race to the bottom. And they get their opponents to want it, too. That is the mimetic theory in a nutshell!
Ugh. I don’t want it. But it’s very clear that other people do. One good thing about Bluesky is one can use it to shut them out and discuss things on different terms. This needs to be done much more.
Trump is dying though. We just don’t know how imminently.
idk the difference between dems and reps saying the election was stolen is data. there were so many statistically and mathematical anomalies its impossible to be real results for the last election, counties voted democrat for every position except for president that just doesn't track.
not even kamala is pretending that
I didn’t know everyone was arguing over who the Antichrist is! I’m out of the loop on that.
They aren’t — yet. But that is a fight they are trying to pick.
Having read René Girard in graduate school has turned out to be depressingly relevant.
Everyone knows Trump is the Antichrist.
Perhaps more importantly, Republicans have numerous avenues by which to spread that communication. Fox, all the corporate media sites, leftwing punditry that carries water for them with their constant attacks on Dems, etc.
It's all part of the same strategy, and part of Lakoff's critique. Republicans invest in this stuff because they understand its importance. They started decades ago.
So what do you think Dems should do now?
Yes. Dems still think digital media is a convenient broadcasting channel, which makes me apoplectic. Totally missing the boat. Meanwhile, the Right understood it as a set of meeting spaces, created/acquired an entire media ecosystem, and met voters *where* they were. Did same idea grab in academia.
Yeah, like all the dingdongs on this godforsaken website jerking off over an obviously fake rumor about Trump dying
Did anyone believe it though? I thought it was just a fun distraction, like the rumor about Vance and the couch
Yes, people believed it.
That's the point Gil is making, though: "Republicans dictate the topics/terms of debate while Dems (and the left) usually burn energy in constant response." It's kinda embarrassing to watch.
I would like more discussion on this. Is there a place for trolling in all of this? Newsom getting under their skin implies yes but then dems need to be able to make use of the attention grab.
Me - I’ve always called it lying
I call it lying.
Well, I see it like this. If you are a fire fighter and half the city is burning, then you are obligated to put out the fire before taking on the task of installing better fire detection. That’s where many Dems find themselves. They need a moment to breathe.
🎯😒
understood and had been willing to take russian money (tenet) or money from anywhere really to grow
It's true that D's need to get way better at fighting the info wars. But it's much less about *content* than it is about *bandwidth*. The RW propaganda machine wins because it is so massive & pervasive & getting more so every day, & it also drags along MSM. *That's* the problem to be solved. /1
I agree that content is not primary. Bandwidth is more significant. However I vouch that the packaging/delivery mechanism of the media is even more important. How does a virus get past a host’s defenses? It’s the packaging. Apply this concept to memes.
Yes, good point, the point being (if I may generalize it), that content can drive bandwidth. That's what virality is all about. But at the same time the game is being further and further rigged against left-leaning or truth based virality. Look at what Twitter was before Elon and now. Extreme RW /1
voices are amplified, left voices are suppressed. Facebook just hired this "Robbie Starbuck" guy to "ensure that Meta's algorithms / AI is not "biased". Robbie Starbuck is an anti-DEI zealot so you know where this is going. And then we have Tik Tok, which is still ostensibly for sale, and dollars /2
donuts that Tik Tok will be bought by RW oligarchs. /3
Agree. But by packaging i mean quality more than quantity. Ex: Dems throw lots of $ at social media advertising to mid effect, whereas FSB et al. deliver highly effective messaging on same platforms for (ostensibly) pennies on the dollar. Platforms being hijacked followed early swarms, & is worse
Well this relates to another of my "3 challenges" for truth-based counter-propaganda. Grievance, conspiracy, and racism sells, truth does not. Sure there are better ways to frame the truth, but it's an uphill battle and the rigging of the game against the left makes it even much harder.
The D's could nail the "mimetics" / framing in their message *today* but it wouldn't make a difference because that message would be drowned out by the RW propaganda machinery. We will keep failing if we keep trying to solve the wrong problem. It's not content, it's bandwidth. /2
Yes, as Lakoff has argued for decades, this infrastructure and understanding should have been built long ago.
the money to build it did not support those who might threaten that wealth
That is, indeed, another major problem
key seems to be finding ways to drive support to democrats instead of ways drive it away
It’s no coincidence that people have built vast fortunes through theft and fraud (incl MLM, televangelism, inflated tech valuations, exploiting underpaid labor, etc) are conspiring to build a society without rules or even stigma against theft and fraud. Where have the egalitarian oligarchs gone?
they never existed
Yes, meant to (humorously?) imply that
Point is, it’s inevitable: those who have consolidated vast fortunes (i.e. via exploit’ve biz models … low overhead) such that they can invest enormous sums into influence campaigns will prevailingly seek malign ends with their influence. If good people shall rival that, it’ll take a different model
CNN was started by oligarch Ted Turner & at least initially it was left-leaning. I don't hear anything about him anymore, & in fact I was suprised that he's still alive 😞 Apparently he lost much of his fortune now though & he is, at this point, a "minor oligarch" and getting rather up there in age.
You would think that someone like Bill Gates would want to get involved in counter-propaganda, i.e. truth based information infrastructure, at some level. He's spent a lot of his money and time trying to address fatal disease and child mortality in impoverished countries. Trump got elected on the /1
wings of RW propaganda & evil RW oligarch Elon arrives & destroys USAID programs that were trying to address a lot the same problems Gates has been working on. So how would his $ best be used? Same with climate change, another Gates target. We can't fix it unless people believe it's real. /2
Basically, Gates invests his $ in actually doing useful things. The death cult has no need for that - they don’t care about any actual pro social investments and spend their money on influence to con people. He has to balance spending on programs and influence etc. Nihilists just spend on influence
The asymmetry is at the root of what makes fraud, fraud. If you don’t have to invest in your business, product, or service to make money, all you have to do is convince people of something untrue. Major advantage to frauds vs ppl who built a real business, in the absence of effective regulation
True, but I think people like Gates, as they see democracies and real problem solving crumble around them at the hands of RW propaganda, should think about getting into *that* fight, because, sadly, at this point it might turn out to be more cost effective than going straight to problem solving.
Well these are the challenges that make a truth-based information infrastructure such a challenge (which is why I call it a moonshot). 1) The RW oligarchy is funding the RW propaganda machinery. They are protecting their power. Someone on the left would have to seek more selfless goals, like, /1
I don't, know, saving democracy, saving our country? And 2) grievance, conspiracy, and racism sell. Truth does not. /2
thats another big issue good governance is boring, train wrecks are attention grabbing trumpism offers train wreck after train wreck
Oh, and I forgot the 3rd challenge. Foreign influence campaigns work against the left / democracy. I don't believe there are pro-democracy foreign influence campaigns of any significance inside the US information infrastructure. Maybe there should be. France, Germany, can you help us out here?
Yes, it should have, but we need to start building it now, or we're toast. What I see mostly is endless debate about what "the message" should be & little to no focus on the infrastructure. The problem can't be solved if people don't see it. It needs to be seen as *the* moonshot to save democracy.
Meanwhile, VERY effective messaging from young leftist candidates is being actively sidelined
Rs very successfully made trans issues part of the 2024 D platform although it may not have been D intention. All they had to do was keep saying nasty things about trans and the Ds jumped around like puppies.
Agree dems need a much better publicist/marketing team. Trump sucks the air out of the room and the press licks up his every bit of his insanity.
Not time to read the whole thread now, but will in time. But I get the general drift. I think it’s fair to characterize the essence of the problem as a lack of boldness and vision. Describing it as a technique to be learned is, I’m sure, instructive, but misses that it represents and act of will.
Death tax; waste, fraud and abuse; war on coal; open borders; welfare queen; cancel culture
once you start spending your energy arguing that there is not much fraud, you’ve expanded the “fraud” discussion and lost the war
It’s more than framing. It’s seeing the need to occupy the space first. Democrats are horrible at considering how to maximize public resources for their personal gains. The others are trained their entire lifetimes about best ways to do so.
I call it depressing.
The mainstream media seems to have no awareness of how to respond to this basic information management (warfare) technique. They need to learn that when Trump/MAGA/GOP accuse the left (broadly, a figure a group) of something bad, this probably means Trump/MAGA/GOP are doing that bad thing.
The Republicans have a built-in advantage. Their constituency doesn't bother to verify anything, so they can spew all sorts of incendiary bullshit and get away with it.
I would love to read the 'why'. My brain doesn't function well unless there is reasoning behind people's actions, or reasoning that resonates within my brain. Illogical reasoning does not do the trick and arguing an illogical point gets you nowhere.
The first clue: it’s not about reason or logic. This is what Lakoff calls “the Enlightenment Reason Fallacy.” I’d recommend “The Political Mind” or “Don’t Think of An Elephant.”
Partially correct. When the MSM is owned by the oligarch class, however, the understanding of the science of political communication either side possesses doesn't matter because the media is actually the P.R. wing of the oligarch class, and the GOP (by default). Acumen matters less than ownership.
very true
I will grant that the the Dems are handicapped by its nominal leaders in Congress who lack both the communication acumen required by the historical moment and the requisite fire in the belly. But new leaders like AOC, Jasmine Crockett and several blue are helping make up the stagger.
The differences between the two parties is defined more by the structure of the current media-scape than it does by a failure of communication skill between the two., e.g., Mike Johnson is one of the worst communicators I've ever seen. But he appears on MSM and spews lies with zero pushback.
the structure of the media scape is a function of the differences between the two parties.
But then people shouldn't conceptualize the MSM as a sperate entity at at all. People post every day on Bluesky gnashing their teeth about how unfair and biased the media is but then... did they expect? yet they keep blaming Dems for being poor at messaging.
The difference between the two parties is that the wealthiest are advantaged by huge tax breaks and Republicans give them what they want. Media bias flows from the imbalance of wealth supporting it.
There is plenty of wealth on the blue side.
The basic problem imo stems from the fact that the Dems care about the well-being human beings, and Thiel & Co. do not. You have a much wider moral and ethical latitude in which to act when you literally don't care about whether you're killing people when enacting your wishes.
100%
And that is pretty much the only thing they understand...
Quite some food for thought, cause I'm certainly guilty of partaking in this, as well. I feel like there is overlap with the steps that @heathermarsh.bsky.social described in "How to Dismantle a Dictatorship". Especially the steps • Reject their reality • Take the focus • Create the alternative
George Lakoff is the truth teller
Sure, it's understanding the science of communication, it has nothing to do with controlling what the media will report and with what spin and controlling algorithms and paying swarms of bots in social media
Aside from Chomsky’s pioneering work, linguistics can seem like a sleepy social science And then you have a linguist friend turn you on to George Lakoff
If in our hyper-consumer society advertising is recognized as propaganda, it makes sense big business has a leg up on pulling the wool over the country’s eyes on its civics
A big problem in a society like the US is that the vast majority of the population actually believe its myths. The Republicans exploit that, even as they dismantle each of them one by one: liberty, a free press, justice etc. Thiel doesn't even LIE...he said he doesn't even believe in democracy.
It helps when the news media is literally bought and paid for by the oligarchs that want a dictatorship. Science of political communication here means lie constantly, blame everyone else about everything. Democrats have the weakness of telling the truth, seeking consensus through reason.
Lukes called this the 2nd face of power. Although arguably controlling the media environment means they also have hegemonic control of people’s understanding of reality, the 3rd face of power
The elephant in the room. Hard to ignore. Propaganda thrives on this-the right has always tried to be the Thought Police. Anti-democracy.
The bigger difference is owning media institutions and using them to push agendas.
That's not a difference, that's part of the strategy. Once you understand the crucial role of communication, you understand the crucial role of creating a full range of institutions. They have done that.
I call it lying. It’s much easier to create an engaging narrative if you make shit up
Yep. It often seems like Democrats are primarily playing the defense.
Dem leaders refuse to learn from experience
In other words, the Democrats are feckless whiners.
With AI and social media reshaping everything, I wonder if anyone truly understands it besides the tech bros who control the algorithms. We don’t even live in the same socially constructed world anymore when it comes to access to information.
"The definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power; the antagonist can rarely agree on what the issues are because power is involved in the definition... [T]he definition of alternatives is the choice of conflicts, and the choice of conflicts allocates power." - Schattschnieider
It’s also bc GOP are bullies who spew shit they know is absolutely not true— it isn’t possible to negotiate with folks whose arguments are literally pretend
🧵This mindset makes people inherently crafty. It’s as much party-related as stereotyping Repugs as greed-mongers. Case(s) in point: one of my neighbors (whom I thought was on my side of the HOA battle) is a “kindly” Serb Dem woman who cosplays. Newsom (Dem) ADORES the predatory investors🤑he has been
backing, for yrs, hurting all of mainstream CA residents. Fewer and fewer honest people can be found. Some of THE worst are blue-colour.
And that is the frustration of us, progressives. For the most part, we have the correct mindset and convictions to architect the approaches. We see the DNC and Party leadership being fairlyercurial and ungrounded, with only the boundary conditions established by their lobbyist donors.
Perhaps a deeper problem for most "professional" Democrats is a lack of passionate belief in—and a genuine drive to proclaim— clear and concrete values and material goals. Constructing and promoting your own frame requires a great deal of (not least mental) energy... Plus: stop the infighting!
The i fighting is precisely because of the frustrations with the establishment status quo Dems. They championed the ACA and Medicare Advantage to enrich their insurance lobby donors and then want it praised. We vote (taken for granted) for them as a far lesser evil, but they retard progress.
Labeled as *intolerance* because the "r" word was assumed in a pejorative context, while its use was wholly appropriate.
Fair point. So we should support and promote the narrative of the social movements (including some unions) that are pursuing a better course, as well as Democrats like AOC and Bernie, instead of putting energy into bashing the dinosaurs. Then the dinosaurs may also begin to dance to the new tune.
🔼 Source: www.theunpopulist.net/p/what-is-th...
bsky.app/profile/sybr...
Chris is a prominent thinker and activist of Extinction Rebellion. bsky.app/profile/chri...
Thoughtful thread: bsky.app/profile/dhne...
Yeah for example if Biden ran and won again, you could bet R’s would be all over TV/media saying if Biden dies Harris shouldn’t be President for…some crazy reason. Dems should be doing this about Vance now but they’re unwilling to participate in theater.
Would argue that it's mostly not “the left” but liberal media that has little interest in talking about the material issues with what Thiel etc are doing
It's all bullshit. The media dictate what gets highlighted and spun. It's called the Billionaire Agenda.
hm i dunno if i like that framing for some reason ..
Gêorge Lakoff blew my mind apart when I read ´Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things’ - such insight!!!!!
I took his cognitive linguistics class as an undergrad and remember thinking he was full of shit, until the third week when it all suddenly clicked, and yeah, it blew my fucking mind
So cool! I was working at Yahoo! in the early days (when the web was still kind of small) and his writings were a huge influence on me and many others there
Girard is now science?
There exists a conduit through which Republicans successfully manufacture and amplify mob rage but I don't think we fully understand the way through which that mechanism has come to exist. I don't know that Republicans understand anything they're doing (including Thiel) or if they treat it as a
science. What does it say about democracy itself if we accept some of the precepts of concepts like mimetic desire and victimization? If the natural state of the bulk of our species is motivated primarily how their peers view them then what does that imply about democracy? These ideas reduce
people to irrational agents. And sure people certainly are very irrational. I don't think they comprehensively describe us or our capacity and need to cooperate and be reasonable.
Yes there is an attention economy. Spectacle has swallowed everything. Democrats and Republicans are trying to do two very different things. Democrats are trying to encourage people to think critically and act reasonably. Republicans are trying to get people to bypass critical thinking.
I'm not trying to suggest fascists aren't using strategies to promote propaganda or that they have no understanding of how they otherize groups and cultivate hate and antidemocratic sentiments. I think we need to change from viewing this as simply a communication problem or as if there is a
science to this. There are a lot of factors as to why it works for Republicans. I think we need to switch from viewing this as a communication problem and more as a social group behavioral problem.
Sarah Longwell at the Bulwark is trying, but she needs her a Lieutenant of the calibre of Newsom’s social media crew
Republicans have more money, and they pay for the first mover advantage. Furthermore, 86 47 and lock him up for life!
