Pushing Back on Propaganda

"People tell us, 'oh, my top issue is the economy.' The temperature-taking approach is 'guess we gotta talk to them about the economy.'  But the job of a good message isn't to say what is popular; it is to make popular what we need said. And so what we need to understand - and the Right already does - is not 'where are people at?' but 'where are they capable of going?'"

- Anat Shenker-Osorio on the Anti-Authoritarian Podcast

Maybe two weeks ago, maybe three, it struck me: I don't know the most effective ways to push back against propaganda. I have spent decades writing about political subjects, but I could not rattle off "the five most effective ways to counter a narrative," or "two things to avoid when trying to take down your opponent."  Those seem like things we all need to know right about now, so let's get fucking empowered.

Don't repeat their words

To begin, here's Jonathan Day from an article about smear campaigns:

First, never repeat your opponent’s smear. This is true even if you want . . . to refute the smear, and it’s for a very good reason: repetition cements the most emotive words in your audience’s mind. For example, let’s say . . . the government calls you a 'foreign agent who is a traitor to the country.' If you reply by saying, 'I’m not a foreign agent and I’m not a traitor to the country, I’m just defending the rights of freedoms of everyone' . . . the words many people will remember are 'foreign agent' and 'traitor.' You end up doing more harm than good.

This makes immediate sense to me, as I hope it does to you. Over the next couple of days, however, listen to members of the media. You'll hear experienced journalists doing this way more than they should. 

While covering for Lawrence O'Donnell on Friday, March 21, 2025, for example, the very experienced Ali Velshi repeatedly referred to the Right's claim that people showing up at town halls are paid protesters sent by George Soros - and Velshi used those exact words, more than once, giving oxygen to an anti-Semitic dog whistle.

Honey, Let's Make Sandwiches

Instead of taking that approach, Day advises building a message as a “truth sandwich.” He explains:

You begin your response by underlining what you stand for – the causes you are promoting. Second, allude to (but don’t repeat) your opponent’s attack and explain why they are attacking you – exposing their malign motives helps discredit them. Finally, offer a solution and ask people to support you. (Emphasis added)

To make this as clear as possible, I will number the parts and paraphrase the substance:

1. Underscore your position, the point you want to make.
2. Nod to the attack from your opposition and expose their "malign motives" (I love that phrase!)
3. Propose a better way.

Political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio, whom I quote in the headnote above, agrees with the sandwich model, adding this important element: The layers should be positive, negative, positive. And the final layer of the sandwich should point us to the way things could be, a brighter future that seems doable and possible. 

Following this combined advice, here's the message I created:

1. We see from town halls springing up all over the country that Americans reject DOGE. 2. Republicans who claim these town halls are not authentic clearly  haven't been to one. People are really scared and really angry. They don't want Elon Musk blowing up the federal government like one of his test rockets. They don't want to lose their health care or travel 75 miles to a Social Security office so that Republicans can give more tax breaks to the ultra-rich 3. The people want government that works - not for some, but for all.

In my third layer, I tucked in something I think is really important: People want government.  We want an organized body of people looking out for us and facilitating things like healthcare for veterans, Social Security payments for our elders, and Medicaid for those living in poverty.  Republicans representatives need to hear that message.

Don't accept their framing

I often find myself frustrated with the American media, and by frustrated I mean cutting myself off mid-scream. There seems to be an unwritten rule that the Left must be considered extreme while the Right is considered reasonable.

We have a moral obligation to push back on that, but not on the Right's terms.

The Right is currently hawking the narrative that the federal government is rife with "fraud, waste, and abuse."  Over and over, I hear Democrats begin by saying, "Of course we should address waste and fraud. No one objects to that, but." Or "Obviously we should eliminate waste when we see it. That's just common sense, but."

Stop right there, please. Don't start off by agreeing with your opponent's sales pitch.  And don't accept or reinforce this idea that Republicans are reasonable. For fuck's sake, their favorite quote about government is "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."  I know I'm not alone in being disturbed by that, but WOW have I always been disturbed by that.

For Republicans, government is the villain, not because of the centuries of racist violence at home and abroad, not because of Dred Scott or Andrew Johnson or Tuskegee, not redlining, forced sterilization, the abduction of Native children, union busting, the Lavender Scare, McCarthy, Vietnam, Kent State, and Reagan's refusal to help Americans with HIV/AIDS. Not any of that.  

For Republicans - for Grover Norquist and his bathtub fantasies - government is the villain because it taxes the rich to benefit the people, and the rich don't want to do that. Of course they can't say that, so Republicans say other things instead. For example. They say programs that benefit the American people must be restricted because they are rife with fraud.

That is not our cue to start debating how much fraud there is. That accepts their framing and puts us into an unproductive battle where we lob statistics at them, and they lob statistics at us, and we don't gain any ground, largely because "fraud" and "abuse" are dog whistles in the first place. The existence of "fraud" and "abuse" requires there to be fraudsters and abusers, low-down, no-good people receiving benefits they haven't earned and don't deserve. As we know from Reagan's grotesque, racist "Welfare Queen," the fraudsters are racialized. From that implication - from the implication that some (Black / immigrant) people might be - defrauding the (somehow always white) taxpayer - the program becomes an appropriate target for reduction, restriction, and added humiliation.  

"A few people are cheating maybe! Let's punish everyone!"  Are we a fourth grade classroom or are we a free and prosperous nation?

Americans across the country are struggling in deeply serious ways with poverty and food insecurity.  They need elected representatives ready and willing to have serious conversations about wage stagnation, hunger, and maybe the food deserts created by the government's refusal to enforce the Robinson-Patman Act, which once allowed local grocers to compete comfortably with large nationwide retailers. 

Under President Biden, the simple act of giving people money during COVID reduced child poverty by 50%. 

What's more important for America as a society, giving more money to rich people because they want it, or giving assistance to children in poverty because they need it?

That's the kind of conversation we can have when we use our own words.

Love is Love: Engaging the base

Let's turn back to Anat Shenker-Osorio. On her Substack, she describes herself as the host of Words to Win By, "a podcast about progressive victories around the world and how we achieved them." I first heard her being interviewed on the Anti-Authoritarian Podcast and was dazzled.

One of her many excellent insights - quoted on the front page of her company's web site and mentioned in the interview - is "Engage the base, persuade the middle." On the podcast, this is how she puts it: "You have to have a message that the base doesn't just agree with and find kind of inoffensive or palatable; you have to have a message that they actually want to repeat."

What the base wants to repeat is something energizing, something real and uplifting, like "Love is love" (her example). Speaking of "Love is love," I would add that we don't just  "repeat" a message with our mouths. Stickers, patches, buttons, posters, t-shirts, memes - all of these are repetitions. When messages are good, we want to speak and display them, wear them, share them however we can.  Good messages put us on our front foot instead of our back foot. We feel confident. We believe we can gain ground. 

Hate is hate: Losing our way

At the risk of turning suddenly dark, I would add that in the absence of good messaging, we can lose ground very quickly.  In the absence of lines we want to repeat, sometimes the base will fall largely silent. That's how the Right gets traction for their ridiculous white supremacist narratives about things like CRT and trans athletes. First, (white) people are so gobsmacked by the factual falsity of the propaganda that we act like it's going to short-circuit on its own absurdity. (As in, CRT is graduate-level content taught in law schools.  Kindergarten teachers are not using CRT to indoctrinate five year olds. It is laughable that anyone thinks this.)

ALL propaganda is untrue, though, and it rarely turns out funny in the end.

Second, we benefit from good messaging in the same way that hikers benefit from trails.  Sure, we could probably maneuver over sticks and big rocks and dead leaves, depending on the wheelchair we're using or the kinds of shoes we're wearing, but we don't know what's under there. Snakes? Poison oak?  A decomposing frog? We're quicker and more confident on a path. We don't hesitate because we see how it moves forward.

Under Biden's administration, to use an example from this exact moment in time, the government did some good things to enshrine the rights of trans Americans. The right wing, unhappy with this progress, began to invest more and more time in anti-trans fearmongering, ultimately spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads to make pronouns and trans athletes some of the defining issues of the campaign. In response, Democrats didn't so much drop the ball as quietly set it down in the corner behind the bleachers where they hoped no one would look at it. Most of them didn't want to talk about the subject on the Right's terrible terms - which, good call, except they hadn't developed messaging of their own, leading them to do the classic (and extremely obvious) pivot to another subject, one that pollsters had told them "really mattered" to the American people. 

Leadership did not "engage the base, persuade the middle" for trans Americans, and they largely accepted the Right's framing of immigration, leaving two vulnerable groups of humans hanging all alone in the wind. Both are now being aggressively scapegoated, targeted, and harmed by this administration.

You know what, though?  This is go-time, and we don't require leaders to know that we can't leave anyone behind. Maybe we can't travel to El Salvador and break people out of prison, but we can sure as hell put our heads together at the local level to develop good messages for our own communities. We can make sandwiches!

Making your mark

People move through a variety of family and community spaces: Churches, dinners, block parties, book clubs.  You can message to a community, if for example you want to engage fellow church members, or you can brainstorm with a community, if you and your neighbors want to speak to your county, region, or state.  

If you are in a rural area or can't easily leave your home, gather people virtually on Teams or Zoom.  

If you feel un-creative and need help picking a topic or words:

• Go to a town hall or watch a good recording online. People will knock your socks off with their sincerity and their eloquence.  
• Peruse the signs at a local protest or online. If you want to be super-ethical, ask their creators if you can post the signs to social media.
• Go back to a book or essay that's been speaking to you. Is there a dynamite quote in there that sparks something for you?
• Host a guerilla messaging potluck. Have people bring messages they hear and struggle to refute. Workshop a couple of messages and create one-sheet explainers to display and distribute.  As a bonus, enjoy the good feelings that come from working together.

Once you have done your brainstorming work: 

• There are loads of places online to make affordable stickers and buttons. Ask 10 friends for $10 bucks and spread them around.
• Make 8x10 signs to put up around your neighborhood or downtown.  (As many have advised online, use wheat paste or something else that dissolves to adhere them to posts.)
• Distribute one-sheet explainers at protests and other gatherings. (I am very much indebted to Mariame Kaba for this excellent idea.)
• Have a sign-making party. People can take their creations back to their neighborhoods or trade them.

These are just small ideas, but they can go big places and help real people.  Who knows - you might even dream up the next big thing!

Appendix: Sample Brainstorm on Cuts to Medicaid

I am including this sample for those who would feel better with another example of how to break down propaganda.  My recent piece on trans athletes, by the way, is a longer-form version of breaking down propaganda, and I appreciate the positive feedback from those who have read it.

If you don't need another example, hie thee hence! Start texting friends!

The propaganda (quoted from an AP article):

"Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has floated the idea of tying work to Medicaid.

'It’s common sense,' Johnson said. 'Little things like that make a big difference not only in the budgeting process but in the morale of the people. You know, work is good for you. You find dignity in work.'"

 

Break it down

Write everything you think of. You can pick and choose after you brainstorm.

What kinds of assumptions are packed into these comments?

• Some number of people receiving Medicaid can work but are choosing not to (ties back to fraud / waste)
• Work requirements are an effective means of getting people to seek and hold jobs (nope - Googled it)
• It's easy to be poor and use Medicaid to access care, which is why someone would deliberately choose that "lifestyle" over employment
• Don't people in poverty actually have shorter lives?  MIT study
• People deserve healthcare only if they labor (an idea already implicit in our system of tying healthcare to employment)
• People who don't / won't work have no dignity
• People who don't / won't work have low morale, which in turn is bad for them / their health
• If they worked, their health would improve on its own
• Being lazy / not laboring is making them sick(er)

Now you can talk it over (or think it over) and decide which of these points will be most effective. You can even set up a poll online.

Avoid the temptation to use their words / framing

• You will want to argue about work in ways that could easily get you into a battle of statistics
• If you feel like the work message will be powerful in your community, keep it general and unassailably accurate - e.g. the majority of people on Medicaid who can work already do

Honey, let's make a sandwich

1. Sixty years ago, we created Medicaid so that Americans living in poverty could go and see a doctor.
2. Now, Republicans want to cut taxes for the ultra rich, and they want to pay for that by taking Medicaid from the poor. Living in poverty is so difficult that poor people live have a shorter life expectancy. Republicans want to make that experience even harder so that being rich can get even easier? I don't think so. 
3. Elected representative should protect and defend their constituents by supporting and even expanding access to healthcare.