New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucusgoers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.
New polling shows national Republicans and Iowa Republican caucusgoers were more interested in “law and order” than battling “woke” schools, media and corporations.
I feel like a lot of progressive ideals lately are simply plagued but godawful marketing.
Great ideas that are given a verbal shorthand that is confusing, misleading, needlessly polarizing, easily demonized, or all of the above.
Pride, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, Defund the Police, Woke, Antiwork, and lots lots more…
How is anti-fascism bad marketing?
Anti-fascism is not. But how many rank-and-file Republicans even know that’s what Antifa stands for? All they know is they’re evil violent rioters because Fox News or Newsmax or whoever says so.
I don’t see how that’s a result of bad marketing, though, just the right’s usual usual brainwashing to make people react negatively to a word, just like they did with CRT, woke, etc. If they can do it to a word like “welfare” that’s literally one of the first words in the Constitution, they can do it to anything.
The sad fact is that any words we choose are vulnerable to being poisoned and turned against us. Some words and phrases are a lot more vulnerable than others (like “defund the police”), but it can happen to any words.
It’s easily demonized.
You save one syllable, and in exchange you get a term that most conservative media consumers have never heard and have no idea what it stands for or means. Bonus points in this case because it sounds vaguely “foreign”, maybe even middle eastern.
This gives the opposition a lay up opportunity to show armed/active individuals and label them as “antifa”, and since they’re opposed to the Kool-Aid the conservative media machine is selling, it’s a trivial matter for them to set up their viewers/listeners to make the connections from “strange term they’re not familiar with” to “violent terrorists who oppose all that is right and good with America”.
The shortening simply gives the talking heads on the right an opening to add their misdirection to the conversation in a way that will resound with their base.
There are conservatives arguing that Antifa stands for Anti- First Amendment (anti-f-a), but a vast majority think it’s a new word with an ambiguous meaning.
Most people would agree to anti-facist ideas. The same people polled on Antifa would say otherwise.