this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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[–] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They put in the work because the oligarchs are aligned with them, so they have a basically unlimited firehose of money to pay people to shill for them.

Meanwhile, leftists have to rely on volunteer labor.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That can be part of it. But it isn't the whole reason. They're engaged. They do strategize and organize much better.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because it's literally their full-time job.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No it isn't their full time job. That's making excuses for why they're more effective. They're more effective because they had orgs that figured it out while they also had enough social awareness to understand the assignment given to them. Defend your party. Succeed. Create content. Share content.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No it isn't their full time job.

So you're saying the staff at orgs like the Heritage Foundation aren't getting paid? Where's their $108 million in expenses (according to Wikipedia) going, then?

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry, you're right in that case. Heritage foundation does. But the guy driving around my neighborhood with decals and posting online with his multiple "own the libs" groups is not full time. He's an electrician who's probably autistic.

The Internet is a massive force multiplier. This is why groups like the heritage foundation works to research how best to utilize it. They don't focus their people on public protests or half the shit the left does. They utilize that Internet. They take advantage of people who are not full time but are passionate.

Just think for a minute how many people have shown up to protests across the country for the past 10 years. Think of what they could accomplish if they instead created content like this. We need eyes and ears catching this stuff, distilling it down, creating it and then sharing it.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJe5IKDvJsv/

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The Internet is a massive force multiplier. This is why groups like the heritage foundation works to research how best to utilize it. They don’t focus their people on public protests or half the shit the left does.

That's my point: the left doesn't have the equivalent of groups like the Heritage Foundation to figure out how to do that force multiplication. It takes resources to do that, and the only people supplying the resources are doing so in service of capital, not against it.

Just think for a minute how many people have shown up to protests across the country for the past 10 years. Think of what they could accomplish if they instead created content like this.

A protestor and a trained think-tank analyist who does propaganda as their full-time job are not interchangable. You can't just tell protestors to create content like the right-wing bot farmers instead; they don't have the skillset for it. They also don't control the platforms like Murdoch, Zuckerberg and Musk do, for that matter. There are many, many strategies that make right-wing propaganda so effective that left-wingers simply cannot replicate without a fuckton of money, no matter how much unskilled volunteer labor they have.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What the heritage foundation and others do is not special. Everyone can do it. That's what makes it so effective. Listen to me, you don't need to pay millions of dollars in research. Heritage foundation is not on my bridge or putting stickers on my neighbors car or creating Facebook groups or taking over Reddit communities. They nudge things but it's the people doing it. Heritage foundation steers. But there isn't anything mystical or impossible to figure out here. But the left have to get on the same page. Coming online every day to read another article and then still waste time commenting and reading other comments is just not going to cut it. We need to call this stuff out as often as possible. The next election is around the corner.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Really? Okay then, how do I do this myself? Or how do I do this myself? Or how do I do this myself?

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That first one, anyone can do. Just like how a real estate agent created a libsotiktok. Those are small instances of what the right are doing. Almost all of it you can do yourself.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That first one, anyone can do.

Really? Anyone can order local TV news stations across the country to read scripted propaganda of their choosing? You're just going to straight-up deny Sinclair Broadcast Group's unbalanced political power exists?

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't think that's what you think it is. Instead of paying multiple individual script writers for the same story across multiple small stations they probably have one script writer whose script gets reused for each station. I bet news stations buy scripts from each other all the time to save money and time. The anchors are not just speaking off the cuff. Someone has to write the script. Why reinvent the wheel. If you have a larger station fully staffed, use those resources and trickle down to the smaller stations who don't have the resources.

I was speaking to the fact that someone cut that up and implied it's some secret brainwashing effort. I'm saying anyone can take clips and infer whatever they want to people. It worked on you

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

I'm really not sure what point you think you're making. Of course they're all reading from the same script; that's obvious! In fact, my point was that right-wing propagandists have the power to write the script and force it to be read, while left-wing people don't because they don't own a fuckton of TV stations.

I feel like you're being intentionally obtuse. Stop it.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago

Dems fall apart, Reps fall in line.