Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.

Your Behavior Doesn’t Matter. The Republican Right Wing will Escalate Anyway.

I keep hearing the dumbest take from the “not-right-wing” imaginable. They keep saying stuff like, “Don’t get violent, cause they’ll use it against us,” or “Don’t show up in black, cause it’ll look like the armed resistance they need.” “Don’t give them what they need.” Truly stupid crap like that.

Of course we should not start any violence?—?absolutely that’s true, and it almost goes without saying. But the rest?—?why is it stupid? It literally could not matter less what you do, or how you look, or what you say. It’s the “because”?—?the expressed consequence of bad behavior. No. It does not matter if you behave “badly” or wear the wrong color or style of clothes, but numbers do matter. Stop dis-inviting people because they wear the wrong clothes. Understand what is happening.

The Right Wing has an entire media ecosystem, a messaging strategy, and an echo chamber, and nowhere in any of that is there a concern for reality. They will simply say you did something, they will say you said something, they will say you looked a certain way, or that you dressed funny, and then repeat it over and over again. They’ll show stock footage of unrelated events from foreign countries, or from 20 years ago. They’ll use AI to fake the footage they want. YOUR BEHAVIOR CANNOT IMPACT THEIR DECISIONS.

You have to understand the game. Understand the media landscape. Understand social media algorithms. Understand how the messaging works to persuade and mislead. This is the dumbest take I keep hearing from the “not-right-wing.” It’s pervasive, reinforcing ignorance. It’s a doubling down on willful weakness.

Your behavior cannot impact Republican decisions here. It could not matter less how peaceful your protests are, they are going to claim it isn’t anyway. Fox News, and Breitbart, and the 200 other right-wing media talking point factories they call “think tanks” they’ve built up over the last 50 years, are going to claim it’s an insurrection regardless of the truth. The truth does. Not. Matter. Not to them. Facts don’t matter. Your civil behavior?—?DOES NOT MATTER.

I hope you are ready, because they are going to escalate, not matter what we do. Don’t wear black? Get serious. It simply, does not matter.

The way to fight back is broader than reactive-protesting. Have a strategy, mindfully promote an alternative point of view?—?win the persuasive arguments, don’t just react to whatever hateful crap the Right Wing is doing. Yes, we are hopelessly behind in building a media landscape to match a vast right wing media machine, but there are paths forward. Start a youtube channel, write on Medium, start a sub-stack, all of that?—?build on strategy, not just reactive tactics. It starts from understanding the game.