Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists
Conned, the conversion of the GOP conservatives into right-wing extremists
It is called, Narrative Warfare
TAT readers,
Welcome to another week of our perpetually hotter summers. No, today’s essay is not about Climate change, but about those who deny that it exists. Like Climate change, there are a whole stable of false narratives or conspiracy theories. That they believe these blatantly false realities, is due to being, “conned” by Narrative Warfare, executed by a combination of Russian/ MAGA influence operations, that have taken control of their identity. Today, If America has a chance to survive this Trumpian era of Yellow Journalism, 2.0, we must understand how our voters became radicalized via Narrative Warfare, but still falsely believe themselves, “conservatives.” We must also, expertly bring them back to the reality of truth, whether they will admit it their absence… or not.
The point isn’t to re-indoctrinate all of those lost from family and friends, but to recover as many of our family and friends from their conspiracy theory “brainwashing” as possible. Most are unaware of how they have been victimized by enemies of democracy, via Narrative Warfare. In fact, most of those under the spell of conspiracy theories, have no idea that they are being conned. As a recognized expert in Narrative Warfare, I believe it important for professionals in my field and the average American voter, to better understand that “identity” is the core factor and that our MAGA lemmings’ identity cannot be “reset” to accept reality, without professional expertise in Narrative Warfare. This is the only way to reach our woefully lost family and friends. The US national security community has been clueless about this issue, for four decades and still are.
For nearly forty years, the US national security community has been an abject failure in the general topic of influence operations. Narrative Warfare is the core of all influence operations because narrative, is in simplest terms, how human beings make meaning of whatever they are experiencing, based on their own unique identity. Once formed, identity is difficult to alter. Identity controls how we perceive everything that we experience, hence, what is and is not true. This is why a couple of generations of FOX and similar viewers, will never see truth and conversely, many on the left, over select issues.
Our family and friends’ self-imposed ostracization from large segment of our lives, is due to having their identity, slowly “conditioned” by the influence campaign operators, like as noted, FOX News and their ilk, Russian influence operators, immoral politicians’ marketers, etc. The worst-case scenario, is when these influencers, collaborate, as they have since before the 2016 election and still do. This occurs on both sides of the aisle, but due to the GOP’s intent to alter our constitution irrevocably, only the right is an actual threat to national security.
In lay terms, all of this means is that those under the influence of Narrative Warfare, are easily controlled and yet, still believe that they are acting independently and honestly. In modern terms, this means that MAGA voters, will go to the polls in higher percentages than all others. They, like Pavlov’s dog, have been “conditioned” to do so. They are also conditioned to accept the false realities of all of MAGA’s conspiracy theories, such as;
That they are patriotic
That Trump is some sort of messianic savior of America
That Putin, the genocidal aggressor, is not bad
That White Christian Nationalism is in sync with American values
That a handful of price-gouging oligarchs are good for America,
That the 2020 election was stolen
That MAGA has achieved anything of value for anyone other than its leadership
etc. etc. etc.
Today’s MAGA GOP, while under the spell of Narrative Warriors, believe their beloved conservatism, to represent support for Putin, Oligarchy and White Christian Nationalism. While that these destructive forces have very nearly hastened the end of our constitutional republic, today’s GOP still believes them to be so-called, “conservatism.” Nothing could be further from the truth. To enable readers a better understanding of how vastly different, MAGA ideology is, from conservatism, I wrote a very long and detailed essay comparing the preeminent principled conservative’s presidential platform in 1956 and the 2022 Texas GOP’s Midterm platform.
Using source documents and comparing copy and pasted content from both, the truth shows that there is zero “conservative” about a modern MAGA platform. I simply used my home state of Texas’ platform, because until just recently, the GOP had not written a national platform since anointing Trump king, in 2016. The new 2024 GOP Platform is really just Project 2025, with slightly different verbiage.
Background on our nepotistic and failed elements of the national security community, charged with protecting our nation and allies, from influence operations.
Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations (truthaboutthreats.com)
On the battlefield of influence, the US is unarmed (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security Community has left us a critical vulnerability in US national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US always fights the "last war," instead of the one we're in. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security community is incapable of managing mis/ disinformation threats (truthaboutthreats.com)
A Five Point Strategy to Oppose Russian Narrative Warfare (truthaboutthreats.com)
We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence (truthaboutthreats.com)
The dangerous content of MAGA’s ideology, is spread, largely due to the gross incompetence of national security entities, who are charged with protecting us, physically and cognitively. Due to roughly forty years of their failures, MAGA, and Trump conspiracy theories, along with their supporting narrators and dissemination systems, have been allowed to sprout roots and grow, dangerously so. That such un-American narratives even exist in the US, is a failure at multiple levels. For example, modern media is owned by but a handful of primary corporate oligarchs and their tightly controlled empires. Between their profit driven dishonesty and our national security community’s failures, our constitutional republic has been holding on by a thread, since 2015. Things are no better today, than at the time of Trump’s, infamous escalator ride.
At this stage of MAGA’s extremism, it will be very difficult to reconfigure the mutated identities of MAGA’s lemmings, back into identifying with American constitutional values, rather than the fake patriotism of MAGA. The GOP now is made up of MAGA conspiracy theory believers and former principled conservatives afraid to reclaim their party due to being labeled, RINOS (Republicans in Name Only) and shunned by the party. Let me be very clear, long-time, supporting narrators of MAGA conspiracy theories are entities like FOX News and the now burgeoning ranks of far-right media, in a wide variety of forms.
AM radio is dominated by the extremist prophets of false, far-right narratives. Cable News is broken up into hyper-partisan “personalities “that spew ideology, ever more prominent on the right. So-called political narratives come at all viewers, almost 24/7 and have for at least, 30 years. In the simplest of terms, Americans are drowning in daily propaganda. Both sides are “brainwashed” and “conditioned,” to accept certain talking points, regardless of their veracity. Again, I wish to make it as clear as possible, only the hard-core right-wing media is a threat to our republic.
No matter how one feels about left-wing media, at least they keep their musings, between our constitutional guardrails. The right vomits daily doses of un-American, fake patriotism. The extreme right, runs the GOP while the left, keeps their fringe elements marginalized. Just in the past couple of weeks, a couple of members of the so-called, “squad” have been eliminated in primary runoffs. The right only adds more far-right extremists to their congressional caucus. They outright refuse to tell the truth.
My congressman, Tony Gonzalez of Texas District 23, is infamous for this. Tony loves to go on TV and play a “nice guy” but then turns around and lies to us, his constituents constantly. Uvalde is in my district and initially, Tony refused to vote for the minor gun reform bill passed after the disastrous murder of Texas schoolchildren and their teachers, until public pressure from parents, family and community became too much. He lies constantly about the southern border, of which my district includes the largest section of our Texas border with Mexico. He voted for impeachment of President Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas, without a shred of evidence, against either. That is dedication to party extremist ideology by definition. He knows not to challenge the well-established false narratives that make up MAGA’s extremist ideology.
So, how do we recognize these aberrant family members and friends? I will share a couple of clear markers of a compromised patriotic identity. For one, they simply can never back up their crazy, with a credible source. In nine years of fighting back against MAGA’s dangerous fake patriotism, I always ask them in social media to provide their credible sources. I have never once in nine years, had them take me up on that request. The typical response is to toss out two or three schoolyard insults and then run away in a huff.
They are also, serial posters on social media. Every meme or FOX, NewsMax, OAN, Breitbart article published, makes its way into their feed. Again, when challenged, they choose a variety of responses, such as;
A third-grade level insult
A declaration that a challenger is a “leftist, communist, snowflake, Marxist, woke, liar, etc. etc. etc.”
They refuse to provide credible sources
They either change or attempt to change the subject
They misquote our true American values
A good example is their absurd claim that America is and was born, a White Christian nation. All manner of White Christian Nationalist content is a regular and dominant feature of MAGA ideology.
They quote with fake quotes
They are fully ignorant of our history
They refuse to acknowledge what we all have witnessed with our own eyes and ears.
They know or have hidden whatever they learned in Civics class in order to perpetuate their conspiracy theories.
A good example here is that they refuse to acknowledge the First Amendment/ Establishment Clause, by insisting that there is no “separation of church and state” in our constitution or our Bill of Rights.
This is just the short list, but I am certain that anyone who looks at social media recognizes these and other tactics to propagate their conspiracy theories. Another definitive trait is that they tend strongly, to make everything political, regardless of if it is a movie, sports event, which part of town they live in or even which schools are good bad or indifferent, for their children. They are fooled by labels and trendy culture war words and phrases like, the economy is terrible or that the border is being overrun, both long-dispelled conspiracy theories. Their lists of grievances are exhaustive, and their solutions… nonsensical, bordering on a break from reality. Here, the idea of an effective border wall is pretty much the poster child, for living in an alternative reality universe.
Speaking of facts, it is common knowledge in my profession that fact-checking has no impact on them. The same is true of counter-narratives.
Since our national security community is ignorant regarding Narrative Warfare, let me explain succinctly, about the failure of Counter-narratives. Unless the narrator, such as the US national security community, has a pre-existing significant narrator’s voice in the narrative space, counter-narratives fall on deaf ears or are simply blocked out. This is the reason that our national security community must have a regular, narrator/ audience relationship.
If anyone recalls the daily threat briefings after 9-11, we received detailed updates about all manner of violent extremist threats, along with the famous, “stop-light” chart that told us at a glance, what the threat level was. Now, we very rarely if ever, hear from the FBI or Department of Homeland Security about the now dominant violent extremist threat, American far-right extremists, especially the endless list of militia type organizations like, the Proud Boys, 3%ers, Oath Keepers etc. All were present at and charged with felonies connected to January 6th. Leadership of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty to Seditious Conspiracy, related to their armed assault on the US Capital. Make no mistake about it, this coup attempt was at the direction of a sitting US president, in an attempt to keep power.
Every January 6th conviction and everyone one voting for Trump and his MAGA anti-patriots is on some level, sufficiently conned to make decisions based exclusively on the conspiracy theories that they have internalized. This means that those conspiracy theories, are now part of their identity. Once this link is established, that identity will continue to act on behalf of those fraudulent narratives.
So, let’s get back to FOX News for just a couple of minutes. Over thirty years ago, FOX News broadcasts have conditioned their audiences in baby steps, to accept an alternative reality of patriotism. Once internalized, their fake patriotism becomes real patriotism in their minds, and they will act on them. In Narrative Warfare, understanding your audience’s identity is the key to predictably triggering it to do as you wish.
There are only two ways to know such an identity and that is to know how to do the analysis via professional, in-depth learning and training or, and has FOX has done. The latter is a generational project. That explains why it has taken FOX, thirty years. Their audience is now, largely and irrevocably unrecoverable unless, the US national security community decides to do their job and embark on what I call, ethical Narrative Warfare. This is not influencing Americans to adopt a political stance, but to have them refocus on truth, not propaganda attached to false narratives. This is the only way to make informed decisions. The rest of the MAGA crew are now the proverbial lemmings that will follow their dear leader off of the cliff, taking all of the rest us with them.
In many ways, I feel sorry for those under the influence of immoral Narrative Warfare. They are our family and friends, those we work with and those that sit in our elected offices. Still, they are damaged goods until we can recover them. The only answer is via narrative and to be frank, we should not expect any assistances from an entrenched and failing national security community. Like my recent book on Narrative Warfare titled, Modern Day Minutemen and Women, Narrative Strategy: A voter guide, by The Athina Press, we are going to have to save our family and friends ourselves. We also must help them if we are to save our republic.
The US national security community shows no intention of altering the trajectory, of their forty years of failure. It was the everyday citizens, Minutemen, that rallied a moment’s notice to protect our rights, on April 19th, 1775, at Lexington and Concord, at the beginning of our republic. If we don’t do the same now, MAGA and Project 2025 will see to it, that our hard-won republic, is no more.
Just like during our primary and secondary education, it was always painful to accept that we had been conned or effectively mislead. It is embarrassing, to say the least. Still, the only way out was to gather your strength and accept it, via admission. Typically, the next step was for that “admission” to become an apology. The last and most critical step in recovery though… was another “A” word… atonement. Yes, to take steps to make up for any and all harm caused by our misjudgments. It’s really about simply being a decent human being and being willing to interact with our fellow citizens, honestly. It may be difficult to alter well-entrenched false narratives, but it is not impossible. Being an honest and polite human being, is a great start if you want that crazy uncle at Thanksgiving, back as an accepted member of the family. The worst thing possible is to shut them out completely. Please, keep the door and window, cracked open just a bit.
I hope this gives everyone some food for thought and some ponderous reading with Saturday or Sunday’s coffee, tea or these days, even a Bloody Mary is acceptable.
Cheers all,
Paul