How Liberals Give Conservatives Power
To bring equality out of inequality, you need a power shift — probably a big one. To shift power, you must understand how the current state of power is operating.
In my last post, I argued that liberals made a tactical mistake by allowing conservatives to take control of the phrase “All Lives Matter.” Effectively, liberals allowed conservatives to portray themselves as the party of “equality” by allowing conservatives to use that phrase. A few people responded to my piece by informing me that the phrase “All Lives Matter” was racist when said as a response to Black Lives Matter (with similar logic as this Vox piece.)
But, in the words of Chidi Anagonye— That’s worse. You, you do get how that’s worse, right?
Because, you have now have people who are explicitly trying to counter Black Lives Matter and you let them use propaganda to present themselves as the party of equality in the public eye. Sure, not to like, far left people who know better — but many people in the center now believe liberals are trying to further an anti-white agenda, and conservatives are the current party of equality.
And, that’s because the conservatives succeeded in a propagandistic coup over Black Lives Matter. That’s why this whole “Critical Race Bullshit” took off, why Virginia just voted in a conservative governor who promised to remove Critical Race Theory from schools, and why I believe there is worse to come.
The deep unfairness of it, is that it’s all backwards! Because of existing racism against Black people, Black Lives Matter is trying to promote equality and “All Lives Matter” is trying to keep a racist inequality in place. But, here’s the thing, when it comes to propaganda — reality doesn’t matter.
Language matters.
And, this is the important thing to understand: this was not an unusual move for conservatives. This was, in fact, an example of a type of highly effective and democracy destroying propaganda called “undermining propaganda” that is used in the US all the time.
What happens with “undermining propaganda” is that people pretend they are promoting one thing ( “freedom,” “equality,” etc.) while actually doing work to realize opposite (“oppression”, “inequality”, etc.)
Jason Stanley describes “undermining propaganda” as such in his book How Propaganda Works:
Undermining Propaganda [is a] contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals.
How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley, p 53 (Note: Amazon affiliate link¹)
In the case of “All Lives Matter,” the point of the phrase “All Lives Matter” was to perpetuate inequality even though it appeared superficially to be promoting equality. Given that we live in a system where Black lives matter less, this phrase was being used in context to try to prevent corrective actions needed to give Black people equality. Yet, superficially, it sounds as if the goal is to promote equality.
Propaganda of this nature, undermining propaganda, is a type of propaganda that undermines the roots of democracy itself because it causes people to vote against their true ideals.
Or, again, in the case of “All Lives Matter,” it is possible that some people who like the phrase actually want equality. They may want equality for everyone, including Black people, but can be convinced to vote for inequality if they are taken in by this type of propaganda. For people not following the issues closely, they just get a rough take might be that one side is promoting “Black Lives” and one side is promoting “All Lives,” and might choose to side with “All Lives.”
If that sounds overly simplistic to you, think again. In fact, it is fairly common practice to literally get Americans to vote the opposite of their personal interests with this technique. I’m going to awkwardly quote an example from myself on the topic of campaign finance reform in a previous piece, because I’ve written about it before and I don’t want to re-write it:
80% of Americans believed campaign finance laws were corrupt, or would of had the purpose of “helping current congress members get reelected.” Actually, these laws were in place to set limits on how much individuals could contribute to a campaign, and these limits were removed in 2014. But, there was enough confusion about what the law meant that many people didn’t object, because they believed a corrupt law was being removed.
Article from myself a few years ago
So, the good news is, it’s actually possible many people who seem “racist” in the US might actually want racial equality. The bad news is, the presence of undermining propaganda means they will take action that furthers the racist agenda, because they don’t understand the nuance of what is happening.
And, you know, I don’t want to go too hard on liberals about this because a few years ago I don’t think we knew what was coming. But, we need to learn some lessons moving forward. When “All Lives Matter” started surfacing, it was actually extremely dangerous and liberals didn’t recognize the true threat it posed. There were, however, two warning signs I can think of.
- It was popular
- It appeared to be promoting the same ideal as an already existing liberal movement (BLM)
If liberals are trying to promote equality, and suddenly conservatives *coincidentally* start popping up with a new slogan that is also promoting equality, be wary. Be wary, and be tactical, because what is happening is conservatives have observed the power of your movement, and they are trying to take some of that power for themselves.
I’ll repeat that, because it’s important. When liberals are trying to forward a popular ideal, (equality, justice, etc.) and conservatives pop up with their own version of this ideal, that means conservatives have recognized the power of this liberal principle and they are trying to gain access to this power.
Early on, within liberal circles, “All Lives Matter” was actually an attempt by white people trying to get power from the BLM movement — as witnessed when Hillary Clinton said “All Lives Matter” in a Black church. That quickly got shut down in liberal circles, but unfortunately, it happened in such a way that it gave conservatives an opening to start generating their own propaganda.
People who make conservative propaganda (Fox News & co) watch liberal infighting, and it is from liberal infighting that they see where the weaknesses in the liberal coalition are. As soon as “All Lives Matter” became taboo, conservatives picked it up and ran with it.
I don’t really know what the right solution was. In my last piece, I did argue that liberals should have somehow kept ownership over that phrase “All Lives Matter” to try to keep conservatives from branding themselves as the party of equality, but that may have been too simplistic an answer. Simply stated, even if liberals had done that, republicans may have found another weakness to exploit because they’re always looking for that.
So, I will finish up with the more general idea that rejecting popular concepts is dangerous. Explaining to a population why they shouldn’t say “All Lives Matter” leaves that phrase open to be adopted by the opposition, who can use the popularity of that phrase to form a coalition against you.
I don’t know if there was a way to adopt “All Lives Matter” into liberal discourse without undermining “Black Lives Matter” — especially given that its initial usages were power plays from liberal whites. I don’t know if something like a combo that continued to call out BLM (“#BlackLivesMatter because #AllLivesMatter”) could have nullified the threat while maintaining the integrity of BLM. And, as a white woman, I don’t believe it’s my right to give a final opinion on that. But I will say, sadly from my perspective, I believe many of the goals of BLM have been badly damaged from the undermining propaganda that arose to counter it.
When it comes to populations, you cannot control them; you can only ride their energy like waves. Power flows from this energy, yet you never have complete control over where the wave will take you. So, ultimately, people who find themselves about to catch a wave have to make a decision; do I accept the power of this wave and the unknown compromises it will bring, or do I turn down this power and keep my ideals intact?
Liberals tend to stick to their ideals, and conservatives tend to ride the wave.
¹ I’m experimenting with affiliate links (which give me a small commission if you decide to buy from them) to see if eventually I can have more time to write without full time work. I’m trying to use them primarily in areas where I would have organically quoted and linked to the book anyway.
