Republican propaganda: focused, disciplined, aggressive and professional

Republican messaging

Over the last ~50 years, Republican messaging has greatly improved in its focus, discipline, aggressive presence and professionalism. It is now clearly anti-democratic and solidly authoritarian, arguably fascist. It is ruthless. It is devoid of any qualms about sweeping aside any facts, truths or sound reasoning that are inconvenient or contradictory. None of that is allowed to impede or complicate the GOP agenda and the propaganda used to advance it. Complexity weakens messaging greatly. Simplicity greatly aids it. 

Modern radical right propaganda is purely pragmatic and focused on only one thing, persuasion regardless of the means. Contrary facts and truths are irrelevant. They are denied, distorted and/or ignored. The unspoken goal is political and social power and wealth accumulation for elite donors and key supporters, while the publicly stated but contrary goals are prosperity, liberty and power for the little people. 

Disciplined GOP messaging always includes a frame that all of this sophisticated deceit is coming from “the people” or the “grassroots”, but in fact it is coming from extremely professional researchers and propaganda operatives that are funded by multi millionaires and billionaires, in particular the Koch propaganda Leviathan. That appears to be the case true even when the professionals are speaking to powerful insiders. That is an example of what I mean by discipline. 

It is military-grade: I now see that level of military-grade discipline as a key reason that RINOs, including people like Liz Cheney have been, or are still being, pushed out of the GOP by force. Dissent is simply not tolerated. Dissent is damaging to the power of GOP propaganda because it gives average people a reason(s) to question the message. With no dissenting counter message, most people usually see no reason to question a message, even if it is mostly or completely based on deceit, lies and slanders. That blindness is a well-known human trait. It is why tyrants, fascists and the like, almost always shut down dissent as much as they can, especially internal dissent. 

I made these some of points in a recent post that was based on a leaked 10-munite phone call among powerful Republicans.[1] The call was hosted by a Koch-funded operative doing research on ways to propagandize HR1 to get people to oppose it. HR1 is a democratic bill intended to defend voting rights. The GOP hates voting rights, except for Republicans. They have publicly stated will block its passage if they can. Right now, they can and are blocking it.

Attacking voting rights: A few days ago, Mother Jones (high fact accuracy rated) published an article based on a leaked video of a professional GOP propagandist discussing how fast, easy, quietly and effectively GOP elites were able to push forward laws in many states that are intended to limit voting by democrats and minorities. The frame in this messaging for deceiving the public is “election integrity.” The MJ article included this 3-minute video that summarized the talk to GOP insiders.

Yes, it can be that easy if you are dealing 

with an ideologically cleansed political party

The MJ article, Leaked Video: Dark Money Group Brags About Writing GOP Voter Suppression Bills Across the Country, includes this:

In a private meeting last month with big-money donors, the head of a top conservative group boasted that her outfit had crafted the new voter suppression law in Georgia and was doing the same with similar bills for Republican state legislators across the country. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, “or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”

The Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, a sister organization of the Heritage Foundation, told the foundation’s donors at an April 22 gathering in Tucson, in a recording obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones. Those included policies severely restricting mail ballot drop boxes, preventing election officials from sending absentee ballot request forms to voters, making it easier for partisan workers to monitor the polls, preventing the collection of mail ballots, and restricting the ability of counties to accept donations from nonprofit groups seeking to aid in election administration.

All of these recommendations came straight from Heritage’s list of “best practices” drafted in February. With Heritage’s help, Anderson said, Georgia became “the example for the rest of the country.”

The deceit in this GOP messaging tactic is blatant. It speaks for itself. Nowhere in the video is there any mention of exactly how the new laws that limit non-Republican voting would reduce voter fraud. That is because the point is for Republicans to win elections, not to deal with almost non-existent vote fraud. The speaker noted about how the elites quietly influenced Iowa’s voter suppression law: “We did it quickly and we did it quietly. Honestly, nobody noticed.” 

The GOP elites, multi-millionaires and billionaires want their messaging against voting rights to “have that grassroots, bottom-up vibe.” This propaganda is pure deceit. GOP propagandists pay attention to professionalism of the messaging to falsely make it look like the urge to suppress votes comes from grassroots people, when instead the urge comes from quiet multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Democratic messaging: at a big disadvantage

By contrast with the GOP, Democratic messaging is not as nearly as dependent on deceit, lies and slanders. That put the Democrats at a big disadvantage in messaging. The world of messaging mostly based on deceit, lies, slanders and irrational emotional manipulation is vastly larger than the world mostly based on honesty, truths, respect and rational appeals to reason. Think about that for a moment. For a given issue, there are multiple way that deceit, lies, slanders and irrational emotional manipulation can be packaged for messaging. But there are far fewer ways to message honesty, truths, respect and rational appeals to reason. 

In other words, there are usually many lies and fantasies about an issue and many ways to deceive and disrespect, but usually (always?) far fewer defensible realities and ways to speak honestly and respectfully.

Look at how the GOP approached building opposition to HR1 and defense of voting rights. They relentlessly looked for angles based on their professional empirical research on public opinion responses to various test lines of messaging, true or not, rational or not, democratic or not. The GOP wanted to know how to persuade people into opposing HR1, regardless of what means the persuasion employed. Any angle that worked would be used. 

If one believes that the Democrats are at a disadvantage inherent in limits imposed by honesty, truths, respect and rational appeals to reason, then what does that says about what they need to do when it comes to messaging? It tells me that they need to get a lot more focused, disciplined, aggressive and professional than they are now. 

I listen carefully to messaging coming from both sides. I hear and see a great difference in focus, discipline, aggressive presence and professionalism. With the Republicans, talking points usually come from the top to the bottom, e.g., “the election was stolen,” Christians are persecuted, taxation is theft, government is evil tyranny, death tax, abortion is murder, etc. With the Democrats, messages seem to mostly come from the bottom, e.g., Black Lives Matter. Sometimes they are counterproductive, e.g., “defund the police.” Because the Democrats do not engage in DINO hunts and are ideologically far broader than the GOP, they don't speak with one voice. Most dems do not want to defund the police. So the dems have all kinds of dissenting voices in their messaging and that undermines all Democratic messages. 

In my opinion, and based mostly on my read of cognitive biology, social behavior, history and recent political events, the Democrats fight the messaging war with one hand tied behind their back. They have to somehow up their messaging game. If they don't, we just might lose democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to some kind of a corrupt American fascism.

Questions: Is it even possible for the Democratic party to professionalize its messaging given the breadth and ideologies and associated internal divisions that diversity generates? 

Does it matter if persuasion is by any means necessary, or should persuasion be morally or otherwise constrained, e.g.  limited to truth, etc.? 

Is there an inherent major disadvantage to messaging based mostly on honesty, truths, respect and rational appeals to reason compared to the alternative?

Is the difference in focus, discipline and professionalism that I see mostly reality, mostly self-delusion, or is this so subjective that it's pointless to try to make such distinctions?  If it is pointless, then does that give a green light to the kind of messaging the GOP routinely employs? 

Footnote: 

1. The New Yorker article the leaked phone call is embedded in includes this opening paragraph:

In public, Republicans have denounced Democrats’ ambitious electoral-reform bill, the For the People Act, as an unpopular partisan ploy. In a contentious Senate committee hearing last week, Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, slammed the proposal, which aims to expand voting rights and curb the influence of money in politics, as “a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats.” But behind closed doors Republicans speak differently about the legislation, which is also known as House Resolution 1 and Senate Bill 1. They admit the lesser-known provisions in the bill that limit secret campaign spending are overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. In private, they concede their own polling shows that no message they can devise effectively counters the argument that billionaires should be prevented from buying elections.

The deceit just gushes from this GOP messaging. GOP billionaires wants billionaires to have the liberty to buy elections. Period. The rank and file don't like that idea, so the GOP needs to trick or deceive them into giving the billionaires the power they lust for and are paying the GOP to get for themselves.