Politics in the Social Media Age

 

On September 26, 1960, American politics left the radio age behind. In the first-ever televised presidential debate, radio listeners considered Richard Nixon the winner. But television viewers, while hearing the same audio, contrasted Nixon’s dark countenance with the sunny disposition of John F. Kennedy — and came away with the opposite conclusion. If there were any question that TV imagery would shape political campaigns, it was laid to rest four years later, when Johnson used TV advertising to define Goldwater in the public eye, and demolished him at the voting booth.

In a similar way, politics’ television age ended with another presidential debate: Obama vs. Romney, October 16, 2012. With eerie parallel, those watching TV thought Romney won decisively, dominating the substance. Meanwhile, those who consumed their news via the new communications medium — Internet social media — took away a very different impression. They learned that Obama would keep a steady hand on the wheel of state, whereas Romney would wage wars on Big Bird and women alike (keeping the latter in his special binders). Moreover, if there is any doubt that a new age has dawned, one need look no further than the 2016 election, in which Hillary’s TV domination was inadequate to overcome an opponent with mastery of social media.

We are already seeing the practical implications of this shift. PACs and super-PACs, which amassed large sums to buy TV time for candidates, are giving way to issue-advocacy groups such as the NRA, which reach dedicated supporters through social media campaigns. Parties, already weak, see their ability to control narrative and messaging further erode. However, the rise of social media is leading to a more significant change in our political life: It is changing political culture itself. Political strategists, take note; as Peter Drucker purportedly observed, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Edward Tufte, in his essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint,” makes the important observation that every form of communications media has its own conventions for presenting and processing information — in other words, its own cognitive style. Tufte’s subject is PowerPoint, and he shows how the tool, even when used effectively, can corrupt analytical thinking. Information is presented in single-slide-sized bites; a conclusion must be reached by the end of each one. To fit within this constraint, arguments are truncated, sentences are abbreviated, subject and object often blurred. This ambiguity is fine for a sales pitch, but dangerous when dealing with more complex subject matter. Tufte uses the space shuttle Columbia disaster to illustrate how use of PowerPoint among NASA engineers fostered not only sloppy communication, but — more critically — sloppy thinking.

Television too has its cognitive style. The superficial, transient use of images and music is intended to provoke an emotional response. And this cognitive style, for better or worse, has characterized our politics for 50 years. Washington DC has been described as “Hollywood for ugly people;” over 50 years, it became impossible for Hollywood not to seep into the DC culture. Sound bites and focus groups. Experienced public servants pushed aside in favor of relatable stars. Aging female politicians having “work done.”

But that culture is giving way to a new one, as the cognitive style of social media moves to the forefront. It is characterized by cheap shortcuts: Cost-free friendship, quick snark, easy and plentiful approbation, cheap virtue. Ideas are shared in memes and GIFs and 140-character bites, thumbs up or thumbs down. Anyone who challenges your beliefs can be unfriended, dismissed, blocked, muted, swiped away. Before long, people create echo chambers that suggest large swaths of the world — the reasonable parts of it, anyway — agree with the obvious truth of your views.

Social media offer a lot of benefit. Nonetheless, we need to be alert to the dangers as well, as their cognitive style begins to infuse our politics. As each party retreats to its echo chamber, the world’s greatest deliberative body no longer deliberates. Each party reduces tough governing challenges — financial, social, economic, foreign, domestic — to the superficiality of memes and hashtags. Profanity, once heard only in private, is used openly and unabashedly by public figures.

How can the worst of this new social media culture be avoided? None of us can change the culture singlehandedly. But then, each of us does have some influence, however small, on those around us. We must begin, of course, with ourselves. You need not immerse yourself completely in any particular medium — books or magazines or newspapers or blogs, radio or TV, Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. So if we work at it, we can escape and transcend the type of thinking fostered by social media. We can shape our own cognitive styles, and encourage those around us to do the same. Perhaps eventually our policymakers and politicians will find less reward in asocial posturing and more reward in productive dialogue.

For the sake of our republic, swim against the tide, and resist the snarkosphere. I say, in all earnestness: Read a book.

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 27 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Son of Spengler: Perhaps eventually our policymakers and politicians will find less reward in asocial posturing and more reward in productive dialogue.

    But if ‘our’ policymakers and politicians favor productive dialogue over social posturing, and ‘their’ p&p continue to beat the posturing drum, who wins?  Refusing to engage and retreating from the field has political risk.

    • #1
  2. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    I think being hateful & being nice, which is so easy online, either way–that’s what social media has done to transform passivity–giving people the change to lie to themselves that they’re being themselves by clicking on things–work together in a depressive way. People who get fed up, for right or wrong reasons, with being nice always have the quick alternative of turning hateful. It turns out, there’s a lot of contempt & anger–people start feeling lonely in their anger, but anger has a way of arousing more anger & that makes for a new kind of equality & commonality.

    But the bent around buying & selling is always going to be niceness. Then niceness just develops ways, from humiliation to censorship to banning to, eventually, prison, to drive the anger out.

    That makes niceness obvious, to many, for the low-level evil it is. Being nice is mostly a way of ignoring that human beings are human. This makes people who don’t think it’s worth much, being human, because it’s not worth much to them, try to get a sense of worth out of opposing the sterility of being nice. Because being nice requires imposing conformism on people in hateful ways, being hateful ends up looking like the authentic thing to many, who want both to say to society, I am what you made me, & to say, I am superior because I’m not a hypocrite.

    That’s never a majority opinion, but it ensures the cycles continue. Whenever niceness weakens, the anger comes out. Then niceness is imposed again in an ugly way.

    Sentimentality, what niceness is supposed to feed, the cheapest, quickest way, most reliable for the largest number, breeds cruelty both in the sentimental & in the ones who think they’ve turned unsentimental, realistic.

    There’s a lot of this in what pretends to be ideology or partisanship. It’s just about how people relate to events & groups of people in crude ways.

    • #2
  3. Trink Coolidge
    Trink
    @Trink

    Son of Spengler: Perhaps eventually our policymakers and politicians will find less reward in asocial posturing and more reward in productive dialogue.

    It is to be fervently prayed. ^

    This is a fascinating and  factually interesting,  thought-provoking post, SoS.

    Thank you.

    • #3
  4. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Keeping discourse at a higher level would be nice, but unfortunately we have standards and whomever is tweeting as @TheDemocrats does not.

    • #4
  5. Songwriter Inactive
    Songwriter
    @user_19450

    SoS – Another thoughtful post.  Thanks.

    I appreciate your inner optimism that believes things can get better. My own natural tendency is toward Eeyore-itude (yeah I made that up) – and after a sustained barrage of media negativity I tend to just unplug from it all.  I don’t imagine my approach is doing any good, but I tell myself that it isn’t doing any harm, either.  I’m probably wrong. But I’m older than you, and grumpier. :)

     

    • #5
  6. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    100 years ago Woodrow Wilson centralized the government and the Fed enable it even more by pushing the economy around with inflation and asset bubbles. A bad governing system is going to get even worse via these new factors.

    • #6
  7. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Thanks for the op Spengler.  I think you’re right on the money.  My concern is that there’s little we can do about it overall.

    About 2 years ago I observed changes in the workplace driven by expanding use of social media.  As you observed in re politics, the way we chose to communicate also affected how we thought.  The demands to keep up with myriad, short-form communication channels has resulted in business leaders that don’t have time to consider detailed analysis.  At the same time the perceived popularity of a thing is impossible to miss.  As a result, many of us now work in a TLDNR culture wherein decisions aren’t based on persuasion, but popularity.  The right thing to do is what gets the most likes.

    In many ways, this is not new to politics.  If you’re a politician, you always assumed that “likes” (constituents that support your policy or position) turned into votes on election day.  That’s a big part of why government has been less effective than the private sector at most things – government did things based on popularity while business was results-oriented.  Now I’m concerned that the private sector is doomed to follow the same forces.

    I’ve been spreading the word about and rebelling against this mindset in my office for over a year, and while a few people seem to see the problem, nobody has been effective at curtailing it.  It gets worse by the day.  I hold out little hope for remedy in the near-term.  It’s only after it’s obvious that it has cost us dearly that we’ll recognize the error of our ways.

    • #7
  8. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Son,

    Let me be the devil’s advocate a little. In the 1960s TV was a one-way medium controlled by only three networks. You watched passively and had no control even over the time that programs were on. The news came on at 6:00 and you’d better be in front of the set or you’d miss it. Half an hour (less than that subtracting commercials) full of talking heads standing in front of building droning on about an event.

    Social media at least requires active participation. You must log on and you must comment. Even a tweet of 140 characters or less must be composed. That is more active than watching Walter Cronkite inform you “That’s the way it is.” over and over again. What I think we are reacting to is the difference between a happy comfortable illusion and an unpleasant reality.

    The TV age appeared completely calm and comfortable. Happy TV consumers just passively watched, voted, bought products. This, of course, was a comfortable illusion. Viet Nam and Race Riots erupted breaking the fantasy. After a while, it became clear that a population with a numbed intellect was just following whatever trend they saw on TV.

    The twitter age, our unpleasant reality, is obviously anything but calm or comfortable. A cacophony of information from a wild spectrum of sources produces a pronounced unease. People are obviously still chasing trends but no longer is there one giant herd. They spin off into their own little groups and communities. Again this is not a picture of manageability but one of chaos.

    What is positive about the new age is that each one of us is involved in it. We are not passive subjects of it. The choices we make can easily shape the result. I have never used twitter. I am not interested in my thoughts being limited to 140 characters. I am not interested in developing an ungrammatical writing style so I can quickly send it on my phone. I used facebook at first but not as facebook. I considered it a free website. It did allow me to write at least in complete paragraphs and as I hadn’t done much writing in a long time that was a plus. Very soon it became boring. When I discovered Ricochet I found it a huge move up. The level & quality of discourse plus the CoC admonition against ad hominem produces an environment that improves you. Also, I’d say it is a very good sounding board to help you evaluate the events of the day. No single source can be all things. With the net we are not limited at all.

    To make good use of the new environment challenges each of us to make good personal choices. That takes work. Maybe we are nostalgic for the days when we didn’t feel the need to work so hard. Personally, I wouldn’t give the present up for the past if you paid me.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #8
  9. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):

    Son of Spengler: Perhaps eventually our policymakers and politicians will find less reward in asocial posturing and more reward in productive dialogue.

    But if ‘our’ policymakers and politicians favor productive dialogue over social posturing, and ‘their’ p&p continue to beat the posturing drum, who wins? Refusing to engage and retreating from the field has political risk.

    Perhaps I take a more expansive view of who constitutes “our” politicians.

    Regardless, you misread me if you think I advocate abandoning the field. Rather, I think it’s hard to see how a conservative vision is advanced by adopting short attention spans and the cheap, first-order answers that emerge from echo chambers. Many problems — say, our relationships with China and Russia, or the looming insolvency of our entitlement programs — are deep and complex. They can be fought over with hashtags, but that doesn’t help either the country or the conservative movement. We will need to resist the easy Manichaeism of social media.

    • #9
  10. DavidCLowery Coolidge
    DavidCLowery
    @DavidCLowery

    Nice piece. A handful of unrelated points here, that I wanted to add:

    1)Before the election the conventional wisdom was that HRC and Democratic Party had a lock on social media electioneering.  The Trump campaign was generally viewed as hapless, that his tweets were destroying his own campaign.  The HRC & Democrat campaigns were based on a “big data” approach and conventional wisdom gave them a lock.   Google CEO apparently funded a quite large operation: https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/    Nevermind the fact that “big data” is the new venture fund investment snake oil,  online data really only works for clicktivism.

    2) My experience arguing for market rates for songwriters rather than federally set rates on social media is instructive.   When I post an “outrage” on my blog, it is rapidly shared.  For instance how little a writer received for a million plays.  Some of these posts received hundreds of thousands of shares.  When I post a complex piece on how one might fix the previous outrage by reforming antitrust and/or copyright laws I might get a dozen or so shares on social media.   My experience (like the authors) is that the medium itself seems better at amplifying the bite sized negative.

    3)Bite sized negative vs complex negatives is an important distinction.  Writing an article on a complex negative like “how zero interest rates are killing music tech” is a fools errand.

    4) Being in the business of marketing songs and music with social media, I’ve noticed it’s become remarkably less effective since the election. Even paid advertising. I’m wondering if many people like @songwriter are now tuning out, or further retreating into bubbles.

    5) Did anyone else see the “Rick Roll” by the neo-marxist FreePress.net at FCC?  It is so lame.  The leftwing of the Internet Freedom Brigade is looking pretty frumpy and out of touch. You think with $1 million plus in salaries and $1  million in other expenses,  they could do better than inkjet printed  “never give it up” signs and TJ Maxx blazers.   Astroturf failure.

    https://youtu.be/um8YeBje5MA

     

    • #10
  11. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    The Trump campaign also ran a big data campaign, run apparently by Mr. Kushner, but it was kept out of the news, I suppose, to a large extent because Mr. Trump wanted to look less like a conman…

    • #11
  12. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    James Gawron (View Comment):
    To make good use of the new environment challenges each of us to make good personal choices. That takes work. Maybe we are nostalgic for the days when we didn’t feel the need to work so hard. Personally, I wouldn’t give the present up for the past if you paid me.

    Jim, well said. Please allow me to clarify: I’m not nostalgic for the television age, with its bathos and superficiality. I think it’s good that an ugly old man like Bernie Sanders with a grating voice could get as far as he did on the content of his ideas. In the television age, that would have been impossible.

    But let’s also keep our eyes open to the dangers. Sanders’s ideas were tired and discredited, yet they gained traction because they are the kind of cheap and easy shortcuts that echo loudly on social media. If there is going to be real conservative victory, it will have to be through patterns of thought that are deeper than the default mode of social media.

    • #12
  13. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Son of Spengler (View Comment):

    Richard Finlay (View Comment):

    Son of Spengler: Perhaps eventually our policymakers and politicians will find less reward in asocial posturing and more reward in productive dialogue.

    But if ‘our’ policymakers and politicians favor productive dialogue over social posturing, and ‘their’ p&p continue to beat the posturing drum, who wins? Refusing to engage and retreating from the field has political risk.

    Perhaps I take a more expansive view of who constitutes “our” politicians.

    Regardless, you misread me if you think I advocate abandoning the field. Rather, I think it’s hard to see how a conservative vision is advanced by adopting short attention spans and the cheap, first-order answers that emerge from echo chambers. Many problems — say, our relationships with China and Russia, or the looming insolvency of our entitlement programs — are deep and complex. They can be fought over with hashtags, but that doesn’t help either the country or the conservative movement. We will need to resist the easy Manichaeism of social media.

    Son,

    I agree with your basic point with one caveat. We still must get someone elected who gives us some chance of seeing our point of view enacted into policy. The difference between Hillary & Trump was that with Trump there was a chance of getting some of our policy objectives fulfilled. With Hillary, we would lose 99.9%. If Trump’s tweeting helped him get elected, I say Let Trump Tweet!

    As for what can be done. At this very moment, as we type, our own Rob Long is doing something. He has created a new super cheap Ricochet membership where (I hope I get this right) you will be able to read and comment on podcasts, you will be able to read member feed but not comment, but you will not be able to post. If this form of membership is popular then not only will Ricochet get a much wider exposure but the individuals who take advantage will also benefit from a much more elevated discussion. If they write 300 or 400-word comments and converse with a tough but fair group of equally interested people then they will be moved out of the amplified bite size negative universe which has them trapped.

    Good Luck to Rob and the experiment.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #13
  14. Son of Spengler Member
    Son of Spengler
    @SonofSpengler

    James Gawron (View Comment):
    We still must get someone elected who gives us some chance of seeing our point of view enacted into policy. The difference between Hillary & Trump was that with Trump there was a chance of getting some of our policy objectives fulfilled. With Hillary, we would lose 99.9%.

    I think it was Milton Friedman who said he cared less about getting politicians to agree with him than about changing the culture such that politicians who disagree nonetheless feel pressured into doing what he wants. Electoral victories are good. Even better is cultural victories that make all politicians — Republican and Democrat — feel pressured into doing the right thing.

    • #14
  15. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Son of Spengler (View Comment):

    James Gawron (View Comment):
    We still must get someone elected who gives us some chance of seeing our point of view enacted into policy. The difference between Hillary & Trump was that with Trump there was a chance of getting some of our policy objectives fulfilled. With Hillary, we would lose 99.9%.

    I think it was Milton Friedman who said he cared less about getting politicians to agree with him than about changing the culture such that politicians who disagree nonetheless feel pressured into doing what he wants. Electoral victories are good. Even better is cultural victories that make all politicians — Republican and Democrat — feel pressured into doing the right thing.

    Son,

    Both you and Mr. Friedman are right. I would respond cryptically by saying that with a balanced offense you move the ball downfield on a solid 75-yard drive. Still, somebody has got to crack into the end zone and score. In 2012 we got stuck at the goal line. In 2016 there was this great big orange dude who put his head down ala Larry Csonka and smacked in for the TD.

    Don’t ask me but I’m not complaining either.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #15
  16. Dad Dog Member
    Dad Dog
    @DadDog

    Son of Spengler:

    Read a book.

    Amen.

    • #16
  17. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    Son of Spengler (View Comment):
    I think it was Milton Friedman who said he cared less about getting politicians to agree with him than about changing the culture such that politicians who disagree nonetheless feel pressured into doing what he wants. Electoral victories are good. Even better is cultural victories that make all politicians — Republican and Democrat — feel pressured into doing the right thing.

    This is the crux of it.  Without widespread public support for your preferred polices the benefits of electoral victories will be fleeting.  Even if you can elect your guy and he can affect the changes you want, a few years later there will be a new guy undoing those things.

    It’s foolish to expect our politicians to vote for things their constituents don’t want, and it’s unrealistic to expect politicians to change their constituent’s minds about what they want.  Sure, Reagan moved the country to the right, but he didn’t make it nearly as conservative as he was.  He moved us from the left to the center.  And even that is the exception to the rule.  If you want your preferred polices enacted in a lasting an meaningful way, convince other voters to want those same polices.  There’s no other way.

    • #17
  18. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    So that’s normal. But not all of life is. When things stop being normal–when normal ways of conducting the public business stop working in ways that create doubt in the people that normal is all that normal after all–then it is possible for politicians to change the basic agreement by which people think about politics. That’s not a change in the Constitution, necessarily, but in the actual constitution of things political & human. Like, say, getting to think that massive military power, with all the institutions & monies involved, is normal. That used to be thought un-American… So with any number of other things. The welfare state, for example.

    Now, Americans no longer know what’s normal; there is no longer an electoral majority for the political normality of yesteryear. It’s time for a new agreement on the common good; even on the minimum understanding about what justice requires in Americans & in the various groups Americans form to gain influence & respectability.

    Spengler is right to note that the terms on which the new agreement is discussed are heavily influenced by the internet-way-of-doing-things. This is not good for our side, not just because we cannot quite make it work, but because we rather dislike the democratic bent of the internet. Being able not to be sucked in & trying to figure out how to live in an internet-based democracy is really important, however little people think about it.

    One thing that’s changed is American ignorance. Time was, Americans did not know what other Americans believed, because they did not venture beyond the confines of community & habits of mind. They were much aided in this by the broad consensus on what we would today call the culture; & by the crazy confidence of the mid-century, concerning all big institutions, public & private alike.

    Now, Americans do not even know that other Americans exist–or they know so little, they have no idea how they live or how they think even. Now that there is no more consensus, there is no innocence left in this ignorance.

    Because of the internet, people believe that ideas they don’t constantly encounter as so many vaguely dissonant, but relatable chimes–don’t even exist, & maybe can’t exist. That’s tough to deal with for anyone…

    • #18
  19. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    It’s pretty hard to fight against all the catchy (usually factually incorrect) Facebook memes being constantly pounded out by Occupy Democrats, especially when Facebook routinely censors conservative content. I’m heartened, however, by the fact that we’re finally seeing some ridicule (from The Onion and the Babylon Bee, etc) being aimed at the SJWs lately. Ridicule is our greatest weapon, and we should be using it a lot more.

    Great analysis, SOS.

    • #19
  20. Chuck Enfield Inactive
    Chuck Enfield
    @ChuckEnfield

    I’m not sure I buy that TT.  It’s just as likely that the consensus you refer to never existed.  The artifacts that point to it were largely generated or edited by a tiny segment of the population.  Everything appears homogeneous if your filter is coarse enough.

    I think we’re more aware than ever of the diversity of public opinion, and it’s why we work so hard to either avoid or discredit anything that challenges our beliefs.  We see threats everywhere we look, and we’re terrified.

    • #20
  21. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Chuck Enfield (View Comment):
    …    I think we’re more aware than ever of the diversity of public opinion, and it’s why we work so hard to either avoid or discredit anything that challenges our beliefs. We see threats everywhere we look, and we’re terrified.

    So true. We’re all huddled in our little echo chambers, immune to having our minds changed.

    • #21
  22. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    The consensus–as opposed to homogeneity–was real. What eventually ended up being called the culture wars came as shocks that created the opportunity for the current combination of partisanship & cluelessness. Now, nothing can be taken for granted, but people know far less about one another.

    Party loyalty has really declined.

    Democracy has really moved out of politics.

    Americans really have since segregated on partisan & economic lines in ways previously unimagined.

    The changes are all real & there’s a lot of social science documenting them–I’m not sure we’re disagreeing on that.

    But everything like the Lord’d prayer, the Miranda rights, & all the way up to Roe v. Wade, came as social shocks that tore the national fabric apart. The latter still divides Americans. The former have contributed their power to encourage divisions, such that the people they divided remain divided although there is no one now trying to roll back the changes.

    Much was once taken for granted that later became contentious & there was a real loss of innocence in that regard.

    • #22
  23. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Americans have learned that everything they cherish is essentially disputable. & that the disputations can have scary effects socially or personally. This is news to Americans–not that it never happened in American history: But Americans always forget their history.

    Americans really do know far less about each other than they used to, partly, because there is less to know.

    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    There are several noteworthy social media aspects.

    Crowdsourced research: 

    Emily Rose Nauert aka Emily Marshall aka Louise Rosealma, etc is (the antifa thug who after throwing bottles at the pro-Trump/pro free speech crowd in Berkeley on April 15) got national attention after being hit in the face.

    Her identity was discovered and rapidly disseminated on social media.

    In an image that did not get much MSM currency a different camera angle shows her punching white nationalist Nathan Damigo at the time in the throat with gloves that about which @bossmongo had this to say:

    …motorcross gloves with molded kevlar strike plates above the knuckles. I use those, since they’re about 1/3 the price of “assaulter” gloves.

    Looks to me like mutual combat. Also looks to me like she went straight for a throat punch: a lethal move when wearing hardened gloves. She probably took a prog martial arts class, and was told this was a “guaranteed” technique. Nothing in a fight is guaranteed.

    4chan /pol/’s “weaponized autism” also rapidly discovered the identity of the U-lock attacker from the 4/15 Berkeley riots.

    Crowdsourced funding… and scams.

    The local CBS affiliate had a sycophantic interview with “Rosealma” a couple of days later, in which she pitched a sob story. This video provided terrific PR for a crowdfunding appeal for money for medical bills; this appears to have been well orchestrated scam despite the interview having been well fisked soon after being broadcast. One such fisking is here; while edited for a partisan purpose, the video sticks closely to the facts:

    Noteworthy in the video is how the money collected for her “hospital bills” was repurposed to support Antifa activities.

    Not bad. A social justice warrior lies, scams thousands from sympathetic fools and fellow travelers in a few days, and gives it to the cause.

    I haven’t researched this, but I would be very surprised if this wasn’t the tip of the iceberg for one funding channel for this violent movement, and an example of a new paradigm in fundraising.

    continued

     

    • #24
  25. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    [continued from #24]

    A video here takes a longer look at BAMN:

    Shanta Driver, the lawyer seen in the video at domestic terrorist and middle school teacher Yvette Felarca’s side is from an activist law firm that contributes both money and legal services to BAMN, of which Driver is a co-founder. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin was, until recently, a follower of BAMN’s Facebook group. He defended this by saying he was keeping an eye on a potential threat to his city. Since he didn’t join any right wing groups, I guess he doesn’t consider them to be threats.

    Felarca is one of the local riot managers for BAMN; she and several others can be seen directing the action from just behind the front lines in videos from demonstrations in Sacramento, Berkeley, and other Northern California cities. Felarca, who is young and energetic, also likes to assault people though other managers are more hands off.

    Antifa crowds are a mix of thugs, useful idiots, more committed activists who won’t themselves throw rocks, bottles, and explosives, or hit or stab their opponents, but will provide tactical cover for the violent thugs.

    • #25
  26. Tim H. Inactive
    Tim H.
    @TimH

    One thing that concerns me about social media in general, but applied to politics and social issues in particular:  mob tendencies, especially the “pile-on.”  That can take something innocuous to most of us and turn it into a controversy.  Or it can take something controversial and turn it into an outrage, and it can do it very quickly.

    Maybe twenty years ago, it would take a few days—the pace of the daily news cycle—for a tempest to brew up over an issue, and the delay dampens a lot of the anger worked up over truly trivial things.  You still got controversies over silly stuff, but not nearly as many as we have now.

    And I think it has hit politics especially hard, because you’re always looking for something silly your opponents have said, and, being human, they’ll say plenty.  The quick spread of video clips over social media has turned a good deal of politics into damage control over offhand comments, deserved or not.

    • #26
  27. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Tim H. (View Comment):
    One thing that concerns me about social media in general, but applied to politics and social issues in particular: mob tendencies, especially the “pile-on.” That can take something innocuous to most of us and turn it into a controversy. Or it can take something controversial and turn it into an outrage, and it can do it very quickly.

    Maybe twenty years ago, it would take a few days—the pace of the daily news cycle—for a tempest to brew up over an issue, and the delay dampens a lot of the anger worked up over truly trivial things. You still got controversies over silly stuff, but not nearly as many as we have now.

    And I think it has hit politics especially hard, because you’re always looking for something silly your opponents have said, and, being human, they’ll say plenty. The quick spread of video clips over social media has turned a good deal of politics into damage control over offhand comments, deserved or not.

    Virtual Flash Mobs

    • #27
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.