Interested in these emails?
Do us a favor and click on one of the links (any one will do). That’ll tell us you’d like to keep getting updates.

Indivisibles,

Welcome to the monthly newsletter that Leah and I take turns writing. You
got me as your author this time -- sorry about that. Worse, I’m going to
take author’s privilege to drift a bit further afield from our normal
topic of, “what the hell is Congress doing right now?” and instead share
something big we see happening outside D.C. that’s quietly but
substantially changing political reality. It’s not all bad though, and at
the end of this, you’ll get a brand new pic of Zeke at nearly 18 months
old!

As always, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter ([ [link removed] ]@ezralevin)
directly with your own baby pictures or thoughts on democracy. 

And, yes, I watched the new Beatles “Get Back” documentary, which inspired
this email subject line. Still, I suffered for this edition of the
newsletter -- now it’s your turn.

How the right-wing answers the two most important questions in politics: 

Let’s start with these two all-important questions:

“What is the most important thing happening and who’s to blame?"

If you have the power to answer these two questions, then you have the
power to control what the media is talking about, what Congress is talking
about, what constituents are talking about, and what voters are talking
about. Before a piece of legislation is introduced or a voter is
registered or a polling location is opened, you set the terms of debate. 

And that’s what the right-wing propaganda machine is built to do. 

I’ll get to a real-world example in the next section, but let’s go over
the three basic components of the right-wing playbook. 

 1. Pick a strategic fight locally. The right-wing doesn’t pick fights on
deregulating ExxonMobil or cutting taxes for their rich donors --
those are loser issues for them. Instead, they pick fights to distract
from their unpopular policy agenda. They pick fights that don’t just
resonate emotionally with their right-wing base, but that resonate
emotionally with the broader population -- and particularly fights
that activate or stoke division along lines of race, gender, or
sexuality. The goal is to create conflict that distracts from real
issues, supports their wacko worldview, and benefits them politically.
Sometimes, there is legitimate reactionary grassroots energy on the
issue; sometimes, it’s pure astroturf; often, it’s a mix of both.
 2. Amplify those fights with your propaganda machine. Whether it’s a
viral rant from Ben Shapiro on Facebook, an opening segment from
Tucker Carlson on Fox News, nationally-regurgitated talking points on
a Sinclair-owned radio station, or just Russian-funded disinformation,
the right-wing has developed a truly impressive (and scary) propaganda
machine. Before the New York Times or CNN or your other mainstream
news source covers their chosen local conflict, this propaganda
machine kicks into gear relentlessly and repetitiously amplifying the
strategic fight.
 3. Spread the conflict to the mainstream. There are two biases in the
establishment media that the right-wing exploits brilliantly: a bias
for conflict (“if it bleeds, it leads”) and a bias for treating
Republicans and Democrats as two equally-likely purveyors of truth
(bothsidesism). The right-wing knows this, and they take advantage of
it. Most modern elected Republicans are, to use a technical term, full
of shit -- every reasonable person paying attention knows this. But
most of the establishment press is intestinally incapable of treating
right-wing claims as any more suspect than others. That these
right-wing talking heads are talking about some emotional local
conflict -- well that makes the issue just about irresistible for
mainstream coverage.

And then they’ve answered those two all-important questions: the most
important thing happening in the country is this made-up and irrelevant
but emotionally charged issue, and it’s those damn elitist, condescending
Democratic politicians who are to blame for it.

What this looks like in the real world:

This is not just theory or history -- the right-wing is running this
playbook in this very moment to define the political reality we all live
in. The dominant version today is the “EdScare” (it’s a take on the
McCarthyite “Red Scare”). If you don’t know it by that name, you might
know it by: “Critical Race Theory” or “CRT.”

Last year, throngs of angry people started showing up at local school
board meetings, concerned that something called “Critical Race Theory” was
being taught. And, in their minds, any school material that acknowledged
the existence of racism or the history of anti-Black oppression qualified
as CRT. Within a matter of months, Critical Race Theory went from a school
of legal thought to a central rallying cry of the right -- and an issue in
the November elections. Similar panics about gender and sexuality
followed.

How does this happen? Let’s run this through the playbook above:

Pick a strategic fight locally. The right-wing picked a strategic fight
intended to divide us, and particularly to fuel white peoples’ anxieties
about being perceived as racist. Local groups formed with the support of a
massive, right-wing, dark-money infrastructure capable of resourcing them
and amplifying them (as Media Matters has painstakingly documented
[ [link removed] ]here). Their relentless policing and harassment of school boards and
teachers helped to produce the content necessary to fan the flames of a
panic. All of this added up to a story of parents vs woke bureaucrats --
perfect for packaging as part of the broader national right-wing frame.

Amplify those fights with your propaganda machine. Let’s just look at Fox
News: In all of 2018, 2019, and 2020 there were about 80 mentions of
“Critical Race Theory” on Fox News. In a 3.5 month period in 2021, there
were more than 1,300 (again, Media Matters is brilliant on this [ [link removed] ]here
and [ [link removed] ]here). Right-wing “think tanks” like AEI criticized CRT coverage as
too liberal ([ [link removed] ]here), which right-wing news outlets like National Review
then amplified ([ [link removed] ]here).

Spread the conflict to the mainstream. By the summer though, it wasn’t
just Fox News talking about CRT. You could tune into Terry Gross on NPR
([ [link removed] ]here) or crack open The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek,
USA Today, Wall Street Journal -- everybody was talking CRT -- clearly the
most important issue of the day, right?

And then just like that, it suddenly stopped. Coverage evaporated after
the GOP ran the table in Virginia’s 2021 elections -- “[ [link removed] ]Fox News
Coverage of CRT Plummeted.” If you’ll recall, the exact same dynamic
played out in 2018 with Trump’s manufactured “migrant caravan” crisis --
coverage “[ [link removed] ]nearly stopped after the US midterms.” Or go back to the
midterms before that in 2014, when the GOP manufactured Ebola crisis
coverage…and then also dropped the issue almost entirely after the
election -- “[ [link removed] ]Ebola Coverage…Plummeted After Midterms.”

That’s how it works. The right-wing never actually thought the real top
issue in the country was Ebola, or the migrant caravan, or CRT, or
whatever manufactured, strategically emotional conflict they came up with.
The point is building right-wing political power by distracting, dividing,
and conquering. And it works. As David Smith of the Guardian reported last
week, “[ [link removed] ]Republicans’ midterms pitch: never mind the policy, here’s the
culture war.” The midterms are back, and the culture wars are back --
amazing how that works.

So what do we do? No retreat, no defense -- only offense.

The diabolical brilliance of this right-wing strategy is the trap it sets.
Suddenly, an emotionally charged issue is all over mainstream media. This
gives all of us living in reality two options: we can engage in the debate
of their issue, or we can try to talk about something else. Both are loser
strategies. The right-wing picked the issue for us to lose on -- if we
engage directly, we lose. But they also picked this issue to be
conflictual, sexy, front-page material. If we try to change the subject
(Infrastructure! Recovery! The Biden agenda!), the mainstream media won’t
bite. It’s tails -- the right-wing wins, heads -- we lose.

So if you can’t play defense on their turf, and you can’t just ignore it
and hope the media covers something else, that leaves one strategy: going
on offense.

We see some of this playing out in real-time with great effect. I’ll give
three examples:

 1. Election win: In New Hampshire (a GOP trifecta state), anti-book
banning locals coordinated an aggressive response to the anti-CRT
attacks. They didn’t shy away from the issue and they didn’t just play
CRT defense. They launched a serious campaign AGAINST right-wing book
banning, censorship, and extremism. And they won: [ [link removed] ]How Progressives
Won the School Culture War—in New Hampshire.
 2. Advocacy win: In Wyoming (another GOP trifecta state), the
right-wing-dominated legislature attempted to pass an anti-CRT bill
earlier this year. But one brave legislator didn’t stay silent, nor
did he go on defense. Rep. Andy Schwartz railed against a bill that he
argued would force teachers to teach history “neutral and without
judgment.” How can you teach the holocaust in a neutral way? How can
you teach forced Indigenous American migration without judgment? He
won: [ [link removed] ]Wyoming House Rejects Critical Race Theory Bill.
 3. Congressional win: Rep. Raskin, in the pantheon of the top democracy
defenders in all of Congress, used his position as a committee chair
to directly fight back against the surge in right-wing book banning
campaigns. [ [link removed] ]Democrats must hit back hard at GOP book bans. Here’s a
start. Legendary civil rights leader Ruby Bridges testified on her own
books being banned: “Why are we banning any books at all? Surely we
are better than this. We are the United States of America with freedom
of speech” ([ [link removed] ]here).

We don’t yet have all the information about how best to fight back against
these GOP distractions, but a first step is identifying that they’re
happening and preparing for our response. Stay tuned from Indivisible as
we consider options going forward.

Some quick feedback:

These are some of my observations, but I want to ask you: reflecting on
what you’re seeing, reading, and hearing, in your own community and
nationally, does this resonate with you? This is a simple one-click
survey, but if you’re willing to provide more thoughts, click through and
provide them -- I will read through everything I get. We’re learning
together here. So, again, does this analysis above resonate with you?

[ [link removed] ]Yes

[ [link removed] ]Sorta?

[ [link removed] ]No

That’s it for this month’s newsletter. Looking forward to reading your
responses and defending this democracy together.

In solidarity and with Abbey Road playing in the background,

Ezra Levin
Indivisible, Co-Founder

Ps: And you made it! Here’s your monthly (and my daily) moment of zen,
Zeke at just shy of 18 months old hanging out with Leah on a dinosaur (his
newest obsession).

[19]Leah and Zeke riding a big purple dinosaur at a playground

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Facebook

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Twitter

[ [link removed] ]Indivisible Instagram



You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time:
[link removed]