After the stunning presidential election loss, the right is going to have to change its tactics. The left was able to shut down our efforts to investigate election fraud by labeling them dangerous conspiracy theories. Obviously, the first thing that needs to change is how elections are held. Republican-controlled state legislatures need to tighten up election rules and regulations. Honest conservatives need to run for state and county offices overseeing elections.
But the second, more complex factor is how we deal with the left’s attacks, shutting us down and destroying our credibility. Because the left dominates the mainstream media, Big Tech, education, the legal system and Wall Street, and because we adhere to Judeo-Christian ethics, we have to work much harder and smarter than they do. We can no longer just sit around and complain about how unfair it is that they use Saul Alinsky’s tactics against us, such as lying, because it’s not getting us anywhere.
The left has made a lot of traction in recent years by labeling our exposure of their criminal and unethical behavior as wild conspiracy theories. They operate in the dark more than we do because their ideas are so unpopular they have to sneak them through using sleazy tactics. So, naturally, we are always uncovering evidence of them. I don’t know hardly anyone on our side who is fascinated by conspiracy theories. Most conservatives tend to be very logical and fact oriented — often to our detriment because we are less inclined to get involved in the arts and Hollywood.
The left lumps in any genuine criticism we have of their underhanded behavior with conspiracy theories that have gotten people into trouble. The Sandy Hook shooting is a common one, that supposedly children didn’t really die, they were only child actors. Provocateur Alex Jones was deplatformed across the internet for discussing it and currently has two lawsuits pending against him.
Now, it is true that 20 years ago, people could speculate about conspiracy theories and weren’t banned or sued. Well, times have changed. Do we want to go down defending Jones, or do we want to distinguish our genuine questions about the election from his difficult to prove rants? We need to pick and choose our battles wisely, and until the deplatforming of Jones can clearly be shown to be a violation of free speech (so far Big Tech has the upper hand, getting away with their actions as private companies), we are wasting time on the wrong fights.
I realize the left keeps moving the goalposts; first they deplatformed people who are way out there like Jones, and now they’re targeting regular vocal conservatives. Next, they’re going to target anyone who admitted they voted for Trump. The mainstream media is going to continue blocking our messaging, and Big Tech is gradually kicking us off their platforms, so we need to start ramping up our own platforms at all levels of the internet, as I wrote about last week.
But right now they have figured out how to dismiss election concerns by quashing our objections as conspiracy theories. They’ve been able to get away with crimes by ironically convincing people that the accusations are so serious they can’t be credible.
It’s imperative that we defeat this labeling. When they accuse us of being conspiracy theorists, we need to be prepared with a list of things the left claimed were conspiracies that turned out to be accurate. Peter Strozk and his lover Lisa Page’s text messages revealed they were trying to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election. Strozk and Page changed Michael Flynn’s FD-302 interview answers to make him look guilty of conspiring with Russia. Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing that the NSA was spying on Americans. Hillary Clinton ran a personal server out of her home where she conducted business as secretary of state using a private email address and destroyed highly classified emails. None of these facts are disputed; the evidence was overwhelming. Ask the left if they want their own concerns dismissed as conspiracy theories. Watergate started out as a conspiracy theory. Should that have been ignored because it was just too incredulous?
The left comes up with harebrained schemes all the time. It’s overdue to start labeling them as conspiracy theories; put them on the defensive, wasting time trying to refute the label. It won’t be easy for us; you can’t just come up with this kind of thing off the top of your head. The left has well-paid politicos sitting around in think tanks pouring hours of time into this type of opposition research. Our side tends to rely on volunteer bloggers. Once we decide one of their criticisms is a conspiracy, we have to be ready to defend our argument with a list of evidence, including analogies to real conspiracies. Otherwise, they will defeat us with Saul Alinsky’s Rule #3, “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
Trump did better than most Republican leaders putting the Democrats on the defensive. He gave his opponents negative labels, like calling Biden “Sleepy Joe.” Those tactics work if clever and not overdone. Flood the news with articles pointing out their negatives well in advance. An article speculating “Is Joe Biden avoiding public appearances due to depression over having dishonestly won?” featuring psychologists is one example. The mainstream media bombarded us with articles claiming Trump was depressed, so why is Biden off the hook? It became painfully clear he was skipping a lot of public appearances leading up to the election.
Our side needs to stop allowing RINOs a free pass when they cave and assert it’s because of their “principles.” They have none. The answer is always, follow the money. We need to call them out every time and figure out what happened behind the scenes.
A pundit on Newsmax last week complained that we need to get back to discussing policies, not people. Unfortunately, the left isn’t going to make it that simple. Two Alinsky methods they have perfected are #12, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,” and Rule #5, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” The more top conservatives they take down, the easier it is to associate others with the victim and destroy them too. Preemptively taking down the left’s leaders isn’t as hard as it looks, because their side is so prone to lying and lacks ethics. There’s been a barrage already during the first two weeks of the Biden administration.
Along with that we need to start themes and repeat them constantly. CNN was recently caught removing its COVID-19 death counter during broadcasts now that Biden is president. Our side is terrible at selecting key themes and hammering them. The coordination that occurs on the left among its factions is incredible, most recently revealed in a Time article that came out last week. I’ve been in politics for years; in campaigns, working for elected officials and as a journalist, and I’ve never been on a list coordinating talking points on the right.
Stop wasting time down rabbit holes hoping drastic things are happening to change our country. Unless a respectable conservative news source like Newsmax has vetted a rumor, it could have easily been placed there by the left in order to make us look nutty and waste our time. Instead, look at what the left is hyping up on the Drudge Report and figure out how to turn it around on them.