David Jay Morris for BuzzFlash: To Break Through Right-Wing Propaganda, Don't Explain, Frame the Narrative
Use framing to counterattack Republican propaganda. (Mark O' Cúlar)
December 15, 2021
By David Jay Morris
For months it’s been hard to read the news without cringing at Joe Biden and the Democrats apparent inability to craft and deliver an effective message.
Good policies, bad policies, dramatic successes, abominable failures…none of it really mattered when it came to the President’s approval ratings, because no one could even tell what was being discussed.
At long last, however, some of the Democrats seem to have gotten the message about the weakness of their messaging.
The red lights are starting to flash.
Dare we hope that less attention will be paid to the sausage-making aspects of crafting and passing legislation and explanations are starting to be made about the actual contents of the Dems proposals…about all the good stuff that’s in the bills and how much it could help ordinary Americans.
Herein still lies a problem, though.
Or two.
First, who is actually listening to the explanations?
Believers in the President’s programs or those with a genuine interest in well-informed policy discussions and debates, of course.
But viewers of Fox News or its even more extreme propaganda-peddling cousins?
Not a chance.
If they get anything at all, it is only a sliced, diced and spliced rendition of what’s said, spun in the most negative way imaginable.
Will our brothers and sisters on the right see the explanations on their insular Facebook groups, be lectured about them from the pulpits of their pseudo-Christian mega-churches, or hear them reasonably discussed on the right-wing talk radio stations which totally own the market in rural America?
Dream on.
They are stuck in what I call the right-wing’s iron bubble of disinformation.
They get literally no news or information that isn’t massively edited or spun to serve the purposes of the authoritarian cult of Trump.
The second problem is, therefore…
How do we break though this?
Is there any way we might be able to kick-start the brains of at least a few of the people who have been programmed to believe that Democrats are actually baby-blood drinking monsters and Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election?
Clearly intellectual explanations won’t work – however well-crafted they may be.
Instead of that, maybe we need to try fighting fire with fire.
Can’t we come up with pithy statements or phrases that speak directly to their worldview?
And challenge it.
Reframe it.
Cause enough cognitive dissonance to set at least a few of them thinking in a new direction.
Memes for the masses, if you will.
Do what Trump does…
Put them out there and repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat again.
Keep hammering at them until they become the way people think and talk about the issue.
Since Nazi times, this technique has worked remarkably well, even for the biggest of lies.
And ours would actually be the truth.
To get the ball rolling, here are a few of my favorite ideas:
Never say “Donald Trump.” Always call him, “Donald the Deceiver.” What other figure from the fundamentalist Christian cast of biblical characters would be a more believable fit?
With some more spiritually minded fundamentalists already fearing that Trump has become a literal idol to many in their community, I’d love to see tens of thousands of billboards dotting the red states with Donald’s face superimposed on a golden calf, his son-in-law’s 666 building in the background and a caption reading something like:
Do you worship the LORD or Donald the Deceiver?
It’s not just our country that’s at stake!
[Are you listening, pro-democracy billionaires?]
With abortion rights hanging by a thread now, never say “Pro-Life.” It should always be framed as “Anti-Choice.”
A related slogan might be, “News Flash! Life continues after you leave the womb! Anti-Choice fanatics don’t care. Real Pro-Lifers do!”
Continuing in a slightly different direction with the “Pro-Life” meme, some other good slogans might be:
“Pro-Life? Stop killing – get vaccinated NOW!”
and
“Pro-Life? Stop killing – wear a mask!”
Of course, we should never just say “The Republican Party.” In light of the damage they are doing in the fight against Covid-19, it should be the “The Trump Republican Party of Death” or “The Trump Republican Death Cult.” And would it be unreasonable to refer to the current situation as, “The Republican Party Pandemic?”
As for their leader in the Senate, his existing nickname of “Moscow Mitch” is well-deserved, and I might also suggest “Minority Rule McConnell.”
For our media favorite, how about commemorating all the damage Rupert Murdoch has done to democracy by always calling the network “Foreign-owned Fox News.”
And its two top commentators might be called, “Trust Fund Tucker” and “Hate-Monger Hannity.”
And let’s not forget “The 2nd Amendment Pro-Death Crowd” and the “The Anti-Vaxxer Suicide Squad.
President Biden himself probably should probably stick to the more noble explanations, but can’t our side find a few solid pit bulls or cage fighters to bring the fight to our enemies in ways like this?
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