Comms Under Fire
We’re all navigating a dumpster fire of federal policy chaos – Trump’s avalanche of executive orders and operational memos to implement the authoritarian vision of Project 2025, from publicizing immigration raids to slashing health/human services.
The good news is that Trump and his minions are overreaching and the American public – including some GOP voters – aren’t going to accept certain things, whether it’s pardoning violent criminals who attacked the U.S. Capitol, revoking birthright citizenship or elevating billionaires over average people, especially when this results in higher prices at the grocery store and less access to services they use.
So our short-term advice is to prepare what you can ahead of time and formulate contingency plans. If you haven’t already worked on your values-based messaging for various scenarios, do that now so you’re not scrambling when something happens. Identify the everyday people and leaders who can be on standby to advance your response and/or proactive plans. Produce the graphics, photos and videos that will let you tell your story and inspire action, regardless of the fine details of possible policy changes. If all of this is ready, you’ll be better positioned to think strategically about how and when to pitch media stories, share on social media and place paid ads.
We’re also strategizing for the long haul. Our current information ecosystem has made it easy for propagandists and other bad actors to manipulate the public. In our January DEI session (take that, Trumpsters!), we analyzed Shanspeare’s excellent video on the manosphere to tease out how right-wing crusaders have groomed their online audience – mostly younger men – to embrace a worldview that redirects personal and economic insecurity into rage against women, immigrants and the last administration.
Social media platforms are teeming with right-wing content designed to radicalize and ragebait children. There’s more right-wing content competing for attention than progressive content, largely due to the decentralization of content and “clipping” conservative content as a viable means of making a few bucks online. Also, conservatives are algorithmically advantaged; these platforms are owned by billionaires after all.
Despite this, we consider the platforms contested ground and believe progressives can still win over right-wing content online. The part we can control is how much content we’re posting in the medium that people care most about: vertical video, which we’ve been advocating for to whoever would listen. We don’t encourage you to create vertical videos just because it’ll boost your engagement, but also because it allows your messaging to take up more space and directly compete with right-wing content.
From a messaging point of view, we need to focus on the fact that the source of young men’s economic and personal woes is profiteering mega-corporations and CEOs rigging the system, not women and people of color (who are also getting shafted by the broligarchy). Predicting some degree of anger if Medicaid cuts kick their grandma out of the nursing home or their work buddy is deported without due process, some of these folks will likely search for answers when the suffering of others has yet to cure their misery. At that point, we hope that progressive messaging communicating good, popular policy can offer redemption.
Building a network of progressive digital media institutions and influencers to compete with the extreme right feels like a monumental task. It’s going to require mind-numbing amounts of cash and a whole lot of work. It’s beyond what one little P.R. firm in Colorado can do, but all of us need to join together with folks across the country and make this happen.
It’s gonna be a difficult four years but we’re going to do our best to fuel a backlash in the mid-term elections in two years and a full-on pendulum swing in four. Are you in?
