Lies: Using Momentum Against Them

By Stephen, 13 September, 2021

We tend to argue back against lies: it is absurd to think that Democrats cheated in Republican-run Arizona and Georgia. Arguing back on social media often just drives attention to an issue, making it clear what the sides are.

On social media with short attention spans, a more powerful technique may be to further draw outrage within the world of delusion: encourage Trumpist voters to ask why their local representatives allowed themselves to be so badly tricked by Democrats. We could be feeding petitions into these groups, encouraging the idea that easily hoodwinked Republicans need to be primaried. Make Trump-style politics dangerous to the politicians who use it.

— If a politician talks against the vaccine AND takes money from Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson, make sure the people they're rallied into an angry mob turn on them.

— The Trump movement gathered many people who honestly hold a strong aversion to war, usually a progressive opinion. Saying that Trump doesn't seem safe won't convince someone who trust Trump. But we could use this moment to demand budget cuts to the military. Pacifist-leaning Trump supporters should not be supporting militaristic Republican senators and congressmen: it would be a big deal, and perhaps not that hard, to make sure this becomes reality.

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The techniques used here are a mix of active listening and using questions to draw people's stories out, getting them to go beyond the talking points. Often this technique helps people find reality again: when you don't have a ready-to-go answer, and someone is honestly listening to hear your opinion, that can cause people to think, where before they were just repeating their team's lines. But it's possible to turn it in another direction, and get people "Doing their own research" in ways that damage the propaganda.