Turning off Facebook
In the very first Messaging Matters post, nearly nine years ago, we wrote: “Republicans have placed a ‘matrix’ over this country” with the help of “news media [that] are largely controlled by giant corporations,” as well as an organized Republican “messaging machine.” Based on recent revelations, it turns out that Facebook is part of this Republican machine too. As a result, we’re unplugging from the Facebook matrix.
Facebook, under fire for right wing extremism
Yesterday, Facebook announced that, beginning next week, it will begin enforcing “a ban on praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism on Facebook and Instagram.” Facebook’s statement indicates that, while the company has always sought to target “white supremacy,”
[w]e didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity.
Wisconsin pro-union protest
In many areas of the U.S., as has been reported anecdotally, stores, restaurants and other commercial establishments are airing Fox News at all times from a single TV. We’re not talking about an office building that airs multiple TV news networks from different TVs, or a sports bar that may have 50 TVs, including one tuned to Fox News. This is a conscious decision by the business owners to air only this point of view. It is thus impossible for a customer to avoid hearing and/or seeing the Fox News broadcast at these locations. What should you do when you walk into such a business and are not a fan of the divisive, false Fox propaganda channel?
There are several possible options for the non-Fox consumer in this situation:
Puerto Rico devastation from Hurricane Maria
Back in February 2011, we published Messaging Maxim #1: Go On Offense. Perhaps some folks need a refresher course. In that post, we wrote, “If you’re fighting a political battle on the other side’s rhetorical turf, you’ve already lost.” At the time, such advice was referring to phony cultural issues like “Ground Zero Mosque” and “is President Obama a Muslim?” that Republicans had ginned up and repeated everywhere they could (see Messaging Maxim #2: Rinse and Repeat). With their herd mentality, the mainstream media then picked up these issues and focused their broadcasts, cablecasts and column space on them.
Fast forward to today. Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing the same thing again, and it’s working. Currently, the phony cultural issues are: “Kneeling NFL Players” and “Harvey Weinstein.” To those, you can add, “NBC and CNN Licenses.” By next week, expect different cultural issues.
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