Positive Antagonistic Propaganda
This is a post about propaganda. It is not about about the example I use.
Propaganda is, for lack of a better phrase, fucking insidious. You have to be extremely aware of it! Positive Antagonistic Propaganda especially so, and it's one of the reasons why you should hire someone that does messaging professionally to make sure you don't do your opponents' work for them.
Positive Antagonistic Propaganda is about getting your opponents to do your work for you. You create a messaging program that they can agree with unexamined, and then they do the work for you! Propaganda is not always about convincing you to do something. Sometimes it is about making it harder for you to do something.
The example I'm going to use to talk about this is, “No one is illegal on stolen land.” Again, this is not about this statement. I think most of the people saying this have good intentions. You should not tell strangers to stop saying this, because you're wasting the time and energy of people you agree with. This is about how good intentions can support your opponents' movement.
The problems with this statement, in no particular order: * The predication of one truth on another. * The combination of controversial topics to shift attention away from both. * The choir preaching problem.
People use this statement in the context of immigration, and that's what it's about. The point is, “No one is illegal.” When you add a predicate, you automatically concede the point that there are conditions in which some people are illegal, and you make it easier to reject your premise. I no longer have to argue against your stance on immigration, I can argue against your stance on landback. Which isn't the conversation you're trying to have! It also makes it so that even if you win, you introduce other complications. No one is illegal on stolen land, sure, but now you have to defend against people saying that folks can be illegal in other conditions.
Each of these issues on their own is controversial. Combining them into one statement, attaches all of the problems of each to the other, without attaching any of the positive points. You now have people on the fence about things, talking about their perceived negative arguments about the other topic, instead of the actual point. This is about immigration, but now you've attached peoples' negative sentiments about landback to immigration. (This can happen in the other direction too, but I don't know anyway that's pro-landback but anti-immigration. This person could exist, but I can't even conceive of a strawman lol.) You're losing people that would have been an easy win, because now you've made them worried about something else.
The point of messaging is to convince people of something. “No one is illegal on stolen land” only engages people who already agree with you. I'll write a post about political activation eventually, but for now, what you need to understand is that, fundamentally, the phrase only reaches people you agree with, and then spends their political activation, while giving your opponents will to engage with their own, effective talking points. It's a bad deal all around.
No real conclusion here, mostly education about the weird dumb ways propaganda works. Focus on the points you are making, and give your opponent the fewest edges to grab on to, so that it's harder for them to distract you from the point you are trying to make.