Blue MAGA may dominate legacy media (which is done by design because it sets the limit to how left-wing you are allowed to be), but the GOP all the way to the most bloodthirsty psychopaths have a monopoly on new media. It is making our youth think violence, hate groups, and nazism is "hip and cool" while tolerance is seen as something for losers.
PragerU, Ben Shapiro, Richard Spencer, Jordan Peterson, Nick Fuentes, /pol/, these people are considered to be omniscient and are among the media icons of milennials and gen z (yes, I know Peterson is much older and PragerU isn't a person), but the problem is these people have won the culture war just telling people what they want to hear. We are outnumbered and as much as I want to challenge these views, I don't think I can reliably do that.
To anyone that has converted a younger hog, how did you manage to do that? I've had speculation that if I was friends with one and had one-on-one chats in let's say an Overwatch team chat or whatever they'd be more likely to listen. Alternatively, we could try to use any burner accounts and subscribe them to any leftist channel on Youtube or Twitter and see if we can skew the algorithm less in the right's favor.
Other than that, I would say that the left could do with better PR and steal some tricks from the right on how to get better publicity. Cherry pick the cringiest MRAs, the most ungrateful landlords, etc.
Idk, I get that this is an unrefined thought, but I don't really have the language to put this in better terms.
There's a point to be made that the Alt-Right is within the range of acceptable viewpoints under a capitalist hegemony, and therefore won't face similar suppression to left wing groups. And since they're the only group calling out some ghouls in the public consciousness, for as cynical reasons it may be, there is movement towards them.
On the other hand, we kinda do have a bit of a breakthrough in new media :azan:
Owning the platforms seems like the big key. Otherwise, whenever leftist ideas start getting popular enough, the rules start shifting until they go away.
Unfortunately a lot of people see this problem then decide to go off chasing decentralization, federation, and other interesting technical problems that are tangentially helpful, instead of focusing on the harder, more important social work. Getting enough people on board to build a cooperative, running enough of a business to feed your workers so they can work on it full time, advertising until people are on the platform. It's all hard, scary stuff.
(And yes, I am doing something in this space myself, but I can't go into any detail at all, because it's all under my humansona.)
running enough of a business to feed your workers so they can work on it full time, advertising until people are on the platform
Petition for Hexbear to start selling Hexbear Gold and using the revenue to pay for devs and advertising on other platforms.
If we can stomach China selling to Israel, we can stomach a bit of monetisation, wage labour, and advertising.
At the end of the day, it's still a matter of funding, and that can't really be fixed by a neat trick. There are already plenty of charismatic leftist content creators, they just lack volume and that can really only be fixed by pumping in money that just doesn't exist.
I think you may have a skewed perception about what kind of media the average internet user actually consumes.
I'd say the vast majority of people just straight up do not consume political media, left or right. Sure they get their doses of ideology from whatever slop they're watching right now but most of them just do not care about politics and ideology explicitly.
Just look at what's most popular on youtube. It's probably music videos, some milquetoast gaming and makeup channels or that Mr Beast guy. Or look at Facebook, the most popular political groups get maybe tens of thousands of likes but cat videos get literally millions. The "new media" is mostly just time wasting slop, just as capitalism wants it to be. People that actually give a shit about politics to a meaningful degree are a minority.
A key thing to recognize is that right-wing media focuses heavily on emotions.
The best example I have heard is the idea you have an elephant with a man riding it. The man symbolizes our logical reasoning, the elephant symbolizes our feelings.
Liberals (or for the sake of example, leftists) want to appeal to the elephant rider because he represents logical reasoning and they want him to guide the elephant. Conservatives however, ignore the elephant rider and appeal directly to the elephant itself, because all they need to do is manipulate the elephant and the rider is unable to do anything. Our emotional thinking usually overpowers our logical reasoning and conservatives exploit this for political gain to its fullest potential. Much of everything they do and say is about making people fearful and angry. Conservatives despite usually being privileged people are made to feel like they are under attack. It resonates emotionally and they don't think about it any further.
A possible solution? Follow their example but use it for left leaning ideas. People feeling disadvantaged, under threat, or frustrated are likely to feel cynical about the motives of others. So instead of trying to recite marxist theory to a co-worker for example, sell it to them like this: "Your boss is stealing your labor".
It's simple, effective, and difficult to twist the meaning around into something else. Simple ideas that are immutable truths of leftism will be more effective at converting people than trying to explain the intricate nature of leftist theory. Theory does have its place though, it is when they start asking more follow up questions that they are more open to hearing logical argument. To have what was initially an emotional feeling reinforced by logical reasoning is what really starts to change peoples minds.
Basically sell simple, digestible, emotional reasoning upfront with theory in the backseat when they ask questions. Another example: "Cops don't protect people, they protect money."
The aesthetics and mechanics of (western) socialist propaganda have yet to properly be:
- Aligned
- Articulated
- Implemented
1 & 2: Left Unity needs to be achieved. People new to being a leftist don't know what to think for a solid 1-3 years; they bounce around leftists spaces getting completely contradictory messaging from all of them. Is China a model of modern socialism? The answer is Yes, No, Maybe, No, Yes, Yes, Maybe. Eventually these people stop getting banned from leftist communities (or rather they finally stumble into the one that doesn't ban them). But now they have to start learning proletarian theory and history - and while learning this they have to avoid all the irony-poisoned joke answers / memes which they might take at face-value and they also have to dodge all the psy-op misinformation / veiled counter-revolutionary propaganda. This process takes ages to happen organically and for every comrade that finally fucking figures it out 5-10 got frustrated and gave up despite sincere attempts to enter. This problem is similar to teaching people anything that is complex - let's use coding as an example: there are a ton of online communities that are designed to take someone who knows fuck-all about anything technical and speed-run them into being proficient at coding/programming. This is what proletarian education so badly needs - we need to have a program that catches people up to speed on the movement once they've taken the first step and expressed an earnest will to learn. What does this have to do with left unity? Well, MLs or Anarchists (or Maoists, Trots, etc) could each try to develop their own programs in parallel and then compete against one another to win the hearts and minds of the masses but this wouldn't escape the problem of people being so confused about what is the proper thing to be learning. Once again, to compare this to coding, this would be similar to people who never load up their first text editor because they've been bombarded by highly opinionated people about which language is the best to start with. We need to figure out what socialist tendencies are serious about left unity and start developing a program that accommodates them all - this means that there needs to be consensus on how the historically divisive topics are going to be traversed and judged. Democratic centralism could really shine here to bury the hatchet on these topics once and for all.
3: Once an educational program has been conceived, designed, and deployed and all involved parties are invested in it, it is time to get the word out. Trying to counter or dominate the media narratives on capitalist platforms is mostly a waste of time. Similar to election participation there should just be some basic material on such platforms that steer people off of them and onto platforms that are maintained by leftists or at the very least entities that are ideologically neutral (platforms that exist for the purposes of countering censorship, for example). We all know there is a ton of great socialist content regarding theory/history/organization on the internet already but it's all constantly at risk of being purged - we need a solid platform for it to exist on and even then solid back-ups scattered across a multitude of geographic locations. Once they are housed safely they need to be professionally curated so they can be readily accessible. We've got dense information in spades, but that style of content is next to useless for engaging the masses. We need a model for agitprop and it needs to be rhetorically refined to be easily digestible (examples: A , B , C , D). Videos, audio recording, physical graphics - we need agitprop cadres curating material that can be deployed en masse by anyone as they go about their day. We need stickers to slap on bathroom mirrors, recordings that can be blasted over wal-mart intercom systems, and video clips that can be deployed to any one of the thousands of televisions we are constantly surrounded by - as these actions will be at best frowned upon by the owning class we also need people trained on how to safely deploy them without risking their livelihood. The agitprop sparks the interest - the programs and online archives of content are there to do the work once the interest is sparked.
Everything I've stated is currently within the realm of possibility and could even be done by an entirely online community. Once it was completed anyone (even in a completely atomized society) could participate in praxis on a daily basis with little to zero personal risk and accessibly by providing a current of proletarian education wherever they go during their daily routines.
The left is censorship-happy and will ban people at the drop of a hat. If you don't know all the shibboleths or step in one of the many minefields, you're out. People with the wrong ideas are not to be engaged with, they are to be ostracized.
Of course you're not going to convert many people like that. The moment they unknowingly say the same thing that Trotsky said in a speech in 1924, bam they're permanently gone.
Idk it just doesn't seem to work to tell people they have to do a lot of hard work and self criticism. Maybe the left needs to promise unlimited vapes and Starbucks?
A very fine group of people just hosted a series of talks/discussions they’ve called Journalism for Liberation and Combat (JLC)
Jared A. Ball (iMiXWHATiLiKE, Black Power Media)
Too Black (Black Myths Podcast, Black Power Media)
Erica Caines (Black Alliance for Peace & Hood Communist)
Kelly Hayes (Movement Memos & Truthout)
Brian Nam-Sonenstein (Beyond Prisons & Shadowproof.com)
Brandon Soderberg (coauthor I’ve Got A Monster)
Brooke Terpstra (Oakland Abolition & Solidarity)
Jared Ware (Millennials Are Killing Capitalism)
I’m only in the middle of part 2 out of 4 and haven’t looked at the syllabus, but it’s been great so far.
How they describe it:
The course will:
- Explore the history of corporate media in the US and the concept of “emancipatory journalism” Explore the importance and functions of an autonomous, liberatory media within the larger framework of culture, movement building, and daily life.
- Comparatively examine multiple cases of emancipatory or revolutionary journalism within the past century as well as recent struggles to cultivate it.
- Feature a panel of veteran journalists who cover the violence of police, the state and Capital and also cover movements and culture through a radical lens. These panelists will discuss both participation in independent and autonomous efforts and navigating other media contexts.
Requires some time investment, but I think the people are very serious (not in it for Patreon bux or getting popular and shit)
