Yves here. We have a fair number of activists in our community. I would be curious to get their reactions to the article below. I have not been an activist, but I have read a pretty considerable amount of work on what makes for effective sales strategies, and was even hired by a finance firm to reverse engineer the sales practices of what they saw as the most effective commercial sales force, drug detailmen.
One of the things I find surprising in the recommendations below is nowhere does it suggest asking questions of the persuadee and listening them to try to establish rapport. Nor does it recommend having a strategy for quickly and politely ending the discussion with those who clearly will never come around to your point of view, such as a Kamala canvasser encountering a hard-core pro-life voter. One of the not-sufficiently acknowledged finding in the sales management literature is the most productive salesmen do not try to win over every target. They instead spend time qualifying whether the possible customer’s needs are a good fit for the company’s wares. They quickly terminate sales calls to poor fits and spend time on those who have high potential to be converted to sales.
Now admittedly the author David Fenton would argue that his recommendations are strictly for activism via media and not interpersonal. But most people conceive of activism as having a very strong individual component, such as showing up at protests, and one-on-one or one-on-small group persuasion.
I am also not comfortable about the recommendation to tell stories with good and bad guys. The relentless propaganda and PR stoking of Manichean thinking has been a big driver of the US inability to talk across political lines or do diplomacy.
By David Fenton, a long-time environmental activist. In 1982, he founded, Fenton: the Social Change Firm. This book excerpt from The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons from 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator (Earth Aware Editions, all rights reserved) is distributed with permission by Economy for All
For more than 50 years, I have been a progressive media activist.
During my half-century of activism, I’ve learned how to use the media for social change, starting in the late 1960s, an era when idealists, activists, and utopians did so brilliantly, even dominating popular culture. Alas, today that’s all changed.
Reflecting back on a lifetime of media organizing, here is what I have learned, the precepts that can power progressives to success. Unfortunately, today’s Republicans apply them much more effectively than Democrats and progressives. Please note: Good ideas do not sell themselves. Use the following principles to advance your cause.
I started thinking about all of this as a high school dropout in New York City. At that time, Martin Luther King was choreographing television to spread the moral imperatives of civil rights into every home. Anti-Vietnam War campaigners and draft resistors often achieved equal billing with the war itself, using brilliant tactics to get news coverage. The Black Panthers were on TV resisting police violence, spreading Black pride, and feeding breakfast to poor children. In 1970, millions turned out for the first Earth Day, leading to landmark environmental legislation. The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and so many other musicians spread progressive values—and personal liberation—to huge audiences.
In the 1960s, political and cultural progressives often dominated popular culture and the news. But then, the left started to lose its connections with the U.S. public, while the right eventually triumphed with think tanks, talk radio, Fox News, and a sophisticated online disinformation machine. We built no such infrastructure. So, we went from flower power to President Donald Trump. The accomplishments of the ‘60s have been lasting and profound: greater personal freedoms, more rights for women and the LGBTQ population, the end of Jim Crow segregation, the election of the first Black president, almost the end of pot persecution, greater sexual freedom, freedom from stultifying religious and cultural norms, and the end of drafting hundreds of thousands of soldiers to fight against popular uprisings abroad. We still have a long way to go on these issues, but we have made so much amazing progress. However, the failures of the ‘60s still haunt us. We totally failed when it comes to the most important political imperative of all, gaining power.
Reactionary, right-wing monopoly corporate forces are more in control of our country today than ever. They have brainwashed a large portion of the population. (As Jane Mayer concludes in her important book Dark Money, “What the Koch brothers really did was pay to change how Americans think.”) And now they threaten our democracy and even the very survival of humanity by attacking science while profiting from heating the globe with fossil fuels. All for a few companies and billionaires, while systemic racism still dominates America.
Why have progressives and Democrats been so much less effective at public communications than the right? Partly because people on the left look down on the idea of “selling” ideas. People from the liberal arts (or law or the sciences) are inculcated with the false belief that the facts persuade by themselves. They are up against people on the right who go to business school and who, to advance their careers, have mastered marketing, communications, and cognitive science to sell products and services. Ironically, they have triumphed by using communications principles we pioneered in the ‘60s, then largely abandoned.
Now, we are in a new era of activism, as young people rise up to conquer racism, protect science, ensure a livable planet, and fight for economic, racial, and gender justice. If we pay attention to the principles on the following pages, I am convinced we can win again. To ensure civilization’s very survival, we must. The great free-form radio newscaster of the 1960s, Wes “Scoop” Nisker of KSAN in San Francisco, coined a slogan we could all try to live by: “If you don’t like the news, go out and make your own!” So, I did.
Communication Rules for Activists:
Craft simple messages everyone can understand.
Use short, clear, and unpretentious language already in common use. Avoid jargon and wonky technical terms, and above all, avoid rhetoric. Not: “We have to cut carbon emissions.” Rather: “We have to stop pollution.” We may not like “Make America Great Again,” but it worked.
Speak to the heart first, the mind second.
Don’t just recite facts—they only work in stories that touch people’s emotions through moral narratives. Whoever holds the moral high ground wins. Not: “We have to get to net zero by 2050.” Rather: “Our children deserve a future, so we must act against polluters.”
Stories need good and bad characters.
People learn from stories about people. Think climate activist Greta Thunberg against the “blah, blah” politicians doing nothing.
Repeat, repeat, repeat your messages.
People learn from incessant repetition, which sticks in the brain, changing its very circuitry. Therefore, only the repetition of simple messages changes public opinion. Only when you are sick to death of saying the same thing over and over do you have any chance of breaking through. Repetition also creates political pressure on leaders. They know one-time messages or actions, like a demonstration, go away. Repetition forces leaders to pay attention.
Practice framing issues your way.
People think in what linguists call frames—existing circuitry in the brain formed by years of exposure to language. So, frame issues to activate people’s existing neural wiring. For example, when you say “pollution,” everyone thinks “bad.” When you say “carbon,” most people don’t know what to think, as there is little existing circuitry attached to the word. Also, don’t get suckered by responding to the other side’s framing, you’re only helping them if you repeat it. Not: “We aren’t taking away anyone’s jobs.” Rather: “Those who block climate action are allowing extreme weather to destroy our economy and jobs.”
Use symbolism.
Incorporate familiar images and phrases with cultural resonance (another form of framing). An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Three strikes and you’re out. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Pick symbols that are sticky, and hard to forget. For example: How much heat energy is climate change trapping on Earth? The same energy as exploding 600,000 atomic bombs a day.
Tell the truth.
Spin is deceit. Expect your opponents to lie and mislead—don’t do it yourself. The truth is more powerful, and it’s the only ethical choice. You can simplify the truth but do not distort it. If you make mistakes quickly admit them and move on.
Ensure you are reaching people by using advertising.
Don’t assume your message is reaching the public. People can only act on information that reaches them. While you may not like a world awash in advertising, that’s the world we live in. If you’re not buying attention, you risk getting none. Digital advertising usually costs far less than most progressives think. You can also drop advertising bombs to change narratives and make news.
Recruit celebrities, influencers, and cultural figures.
They attract attention and have large followings. Recruit athletes, actors, rock stars, CEOS, and YouTube and Instagram influencers to promote your message. Think Lady Gaga on LGBTQ+ rights, Leonardo DiCaprio on climate, and John Legend on criminal justice reform.
Fight falsehood and disinformation immediately.
If you don’t, it can stick in people’s minds, enabling a big lie to become truth. To fight it, double down on all of the directives above. If a journalist is regurgitating disinformation, complain respectfully to them and their bosses too.
It’s who you know.
And who you get to know. In the media, as elsewhere, relationships are crucial. Get to know journalists, editors, social media decision-makers, and broadcasters. Most are inclined toward progressive ideals but need to trust activists. Take them to lunch. Throw parties. Go drinking with them. Unless they work for right-wing phony media like Fox, never treat journalists as the enemy. Understand the culture of news and news hooks. Use them to hook media coverage.
35 comments
Comments are closed.
May be a bit related:
Chris Hedges with a text on meeting a friend of his, activist of the first hour, Roger Hallam:
“Burn the Planet and Lock Up the Dissidents
The fossil fuel industry, and the politician class they own, have no intention of halting the ecocide. As the climate crisis worsens, so do the laws and security measures to keep us in bondage.”
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/burn-the-planet-and-lock-up-the-dissidents
“Roger, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “causing a public nuisance without reasonable excuse.”
He and his four co-defendants, who each received four-year sentences, were convicted for hosting a Zoom call in 2022 to organize activists to climb onto bridges over the M25, the main motorway that circles Greater London. The short-term aim was to stop traffic. The long-term aim was to force the government to stop new oil and gas licenses.”
We need fewer activists, and far more organizers.
The lines between the two cross…
Sometimes all you need is one organizer and lots of activists.
Multiple organizers can lead to confusion unless there’s a high degree of cooperation, shared goals, styles.
Best…H
I think the big weakness of the activism of younger Americans is a notable lack of inspiring, dare I say trust worthy, charismatic leadership. Organizers are good at the local level but at the national or international level having a leader who puts together all of these concepts and provides direction to the organizers makes a huge difference for some movements. This has been sorely lacking or undermined. .
The list makes sense to me but I would reorder this sequence-for really effective change, unfortunately, it really is who you know.
Activism doesn’t really need leadership but political formations do if they are to gain any power. In the post-Thatcher/Raegan era TPTB have been very successful in either co-opting or decapitating leadership in left politics that’s legitimately popular.
I’m not even sure activism fully counts as politics. At best it is a step towards politics. Like it or not, our situation demands relatively stable political formations to exert real power, so I agree with Michael about needing more organization.
The framing of this post is lacking. It assumes that people are only or primarily moved to action by persuasion or marketing. While this is one important element in social revolution/change, it is by no means decisive. Look at the many decades failure of marketing progressive ideas to fundamentally change the US. People already know that our wars, health system, economy, politics, etc. suck. The question is, how do we change from this course.
It is instructive to look at US history when systemic change was threatened. I would argue that most recent time was the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s and the labor movement of the 1930s and 40s. The anti-Vietnam war movement could be added as a lesser third example.
These citizen movements did not principally engage in marketing or sales, though that was a part. What these movements did was to actually build power among the participants. They built power independently of the political/economic forces, and forced the elites to meet many of the participants demands. This is in fact the opposite of the underlying theory of activism: make the decision makers come to you.
How did they do this? Structure-based organizing is the short answer. Jane McAlevey spells this out in her important works (both from an academic research and from a practical ordinary person perspective). In her seminal “No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age,” McAlevey lauds activism but critiques it as it falls short of being complete. She writes on p. 4 about power mapping elites, then says this: “what is almost never attempted is the absolutely essential corollary: a parallel careful, methodical, systematic, detailed analysis of power structure among the ordinary people who are or could be brought into the fight.”
And this is just a foundation to form strategies for campaigns. As McAlevey emphasizes that advocacy (lawyer/staff/lobbyist advocates for someone else who has little agency) and mobilization (large group action that does not necessarily build organization: often seen as “activism”) are important tools in the toolbox, but they often build the wrong structure, as almost no nonprofit will work for real change.
McAlevey demonstrates that real change will be a result of organizing, especially structure-based organizing. She says this about organizing on p. 10: “. . . organizing places the agency for success with a continually expanding base of ordinary people, a mass of people never previously involved, who don’t consider themselves activists at all – that’s the point of organizing. In the organizing approach, specific injustice and outrage are the immediate motivation, but the primary goal is to transfer power from the elite to the majority, from the 1 percent to the 99 percent. Individual campaigns matter in themselves, but they are primarily a mechanism in bringing new people into the change process and keeping them involved. The organizing approach relies on mass negotiations to win, rather than the closed-door deal making typical of both advocacy and mobilizing. Ordinary people help make the power analysis, design the strategy, and achieve the outcome. They are essential and they know it.”
Good examples to learn from: the resurrection of both the Chicago Teachers and the United Teachers of LA unions. And there are others.
“as young people rise up to conquer racism, protect science, ensure a livable planet, and fight for economic, racial, and gender justice.”
What the fuck good does any of that do when they can barely afford to eat, have to live in parent’s home, find they can’t get hired because of the color of their skin, the three gig jobs they hold is not enough to ever buy a home or live independently and start a family? Really?
In other words, the dog’s vomit list at top is to fight someone else’s battles with their limited energy so they can accrue power and wealth on the backs of young peons.
Simple messages – yes. Simple goals as well.
Heart over mind? Yes – sort of. IMO it’s more about finding something in common, even something small. Establishing some sort of connection makes a huge difference for everyone, yourself included.
Good / Bad characters – not exactly. The subject of good and bad is tricky, depending on your perspective – mine is we are all creatures of darkness and light, the battle of good vs evil is inside ourselves. “We are good and they are bad” is all too common. I prefer to discuss actions vs results, leaving room for the possibility of error or misguided intentions. Or simple unawareness. I love this quote from Wendell Berry: “What we’re up against is an extractive economy, run by a tiny minority of the wealthiest people, and from that the impoverishment, poisoning and pollution of our natural world, the complete disintegration of all human community, and damage to individuals and families.”
Here’s some of my personal list:
Activism is service.
Ask yourself – why are you an activist? Be sure you know what you’re trying to achieve.
Be honest – and professional.
Be thoughtful and peaceful rather than angry. If angry, avoid making it personal.
Choose great examples of activism to learn from. MLK, St. Francis, Wendell Berry.
You are most effective in person.
Confrontations are opportunities. Don’t shy away but keep your emotions in check.
You never know what good things will occur at a gathering.
Make something happen.
Show up early and meet the folks putting the event on.
Build community.
“Move towards the bleeding” – meaning if you can help, help. If you can’t, stay back and wait until you are needed.
Network for your network, not simply for yourself.
I focus on others who are activists, like exec committee members in local county parties, other party leaders. But – some of the most powerful insights come from those who are living the problem, like those who are a few bad paychecks away from becoming homeless, or those who live paycheck to paycheck.
Best…H
Thank you!
Another thing I try to remember and need to learn in a deep way is: my actions will have unintended consequences — everyone’s do. I strive to be humble and aware enough to recognize these and adjust accordingly. This is hard to recognize when time — mine and everyone else’s — is so short.
Never been an activist but I would add this suggestion-
When all members are present, ask everybody there who is prepared to commit violent acts against public officials to further the aims of the organization. Anybody that puts their hand up you throw out of that meeting straight away as those are either the fed informers or uncontrollable lunatics. And no, I am not joking.
Anyone who asks such a question of a group would be tossed as on obvious infiltrator.
Having said that, while what you say may be true for now, I think there will be a time more and more would conclude they have no choice but to commit said violent/destructive acts, that there is no other way. I also think the general population will likely come to agree.
Respectful disagree Yves.
Activism is not sales. The statergy of picking potential converts is appropriate for political organizing. But activists must harbor a different approach. The point is to get people who don’t agree with you to unite towards a common goal.
– Howard Zinn
I again have to differ. Persuasion is persuasion.
I believe it was Chas Freeman who defined diplomacy as getting people who don’t (generally) agree with you to (selectively) do what you want. But with national interests, you have a complex menu of issues you can trade with.
By contrast, activism is advocacy and expenditure of effort to effect social change. Activism is focused on specific issues, like a higher minimum wage or no gun controls. You will not get people who do not agree with you on gun control or my example, abortion rights, to “unite towards a common goal” save to oppose you, which is not what I believe what you meant here.
Persuasion, sales, marketing are all losers when you’re doorknocking. All are recognizable approaches and the respondent’s guard will be up and will stay up.
None of the tricks work anymore. Joe Blow and Jane Doe may not have read Lakoff, but they have an unerring instinct that lets them know when they are being Lakoffed.
You want fresh volunteers (any age whatever but they must be sincere and we’re past the point where it can be reliably faked). Doorknockers should be able to look people in the eye and establish a rapport. If you don’t, all you just did was bother someone who didn’t appreciate having their life interrupted.
No one wants to argue with you OR be sold yet another bill of goods. What should you talk about? Whatever they want to talk about. Yves is right about that: the more the respondent talks, the more you win. Even if it’s just to stand there while they yell at you, you’re still ‘closing.’
This is also where Trump’s 10×10 kicks in. If you have any kind of genuine interactions with your inner circle of friends, they know where you’re coming from. If they know you are sincere, your opinion matters more than that of any stranger knocking on your door.
Lefty activists and organizers can’t do this. Srsly, we have no friends, just allies. We don’t hang with people we disagree with. We can’t do 10×10, only real people can do that. In olden days they were called volunteers and they had a huuuuuuge impact on voters. As Trump realizes.
They don’t have to be young (young is good but not critical). Sincerity is everything. You can’t pitch when no one wants to catch what you’re throwing.
And no, I have not in any way told you how to change voters’ minds. Because there is no collective right answer. It’s all about the rapport and then closing appropriately. If you are the candidate, look them in the eye and ask for their vote. Everyone else should politely thank the person for their time and then state in some way that they hope that person gives the candidate some consideration. And as you walk away, say “good luck with VARIABLE.” At some point in any meaningful conversation they’ll list some complaints. Let your best wishes for that situation be the last words out of your mouth as you’re walking away.
Really hard to walk away from this comment as every part of me wants to close with a pitch for ending the forever wars. And by saying this I broke the minispell I just created and you’re now awake and checking to see if your wallet’s still in your pocket. Because I’ve been selling you on how to sell by being persuasive but no really, this was all about you. And good luck with that thing we were talking about : )
Just heard him talk about this a couple of days ago. It’s what you describe, and starts with listening to the other. Then building a genuine relationship, and trust. Only then can you point out opportunities. The example was Blinken, who does none of those things.
Oh, I’m in agreement with Yves. Some of these “communications rules” are of dubious value, and some of them are flat-out bad ideas.
First and worst would be “Stories need good and bad characters.” This is a phenomenally terrible idea. The reason for this is you can easily make new enemies of out people who aren’t really out to hurt anybody. It’s difficult to think of a way to anger somebody more quickly than to falsely accuse them of bad intentions. We should remember Hanlon’s Razor always.
For example, look at me. I work in the power generation sector, designing equipment that goes into power stations. I’m on the generator side of things, which means that my stuff is rather agnostic to the primary source of energy going into the turbine. You can find my equipment in hydroelectric stations, nuclear stations, gas-fired stations, and coal-fired stations. Am I a “bad character”, worthy of condemnation, because I work really hard to design reliable equipment that will help keep the lights on?
Next worst is “Craft simple messages everyone can understand.” Climate change and energy policy are stupendously complex topics, and there are very real and serious trade-offs that have to be acknowledged when evaluating proposals. If you do things wrong, you can hurt a lot of people. Just look at the consequences of these pollution-blocking measures in China. They were terribly disruptive and never repeated again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/19/china-blackouts-energy-efficiency
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42266768
If your “simple messaging” fails to mention the trade-offs, somebody else will do so. They might not be on your side. It’s a good way to end up looking incompetent or dishonest.
And “celebrities, influencers, and cultural figures”? Pfft. Again, as a person who works in the power generation sector, I can tell you that these various figures command zero respect in the industry on these topics. Why would we listen to people who have no idea what it takes to keep the grid energized 24 hours a day? And don’t even get me started on the sad frustration of being told to listen to celebrities whose personal carbon footprints exceed my own by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude.
I read this observation a while back.
Change in the US (and in the world) has been made when a group wants something positive: to be judged by a jury of one’s peers; to receive equal pay for equal work; to be a free person and not another person’s property; to love whom one choses, regardless of gender; to own and read the Bible oneself, in one’s own language, not Latin; to own land and a dwelling, and a firearm.
So much of the climate movement has been framed as stopping or preventing something or someone: Don’t drive a car, don’t use plastic, don’t fly, don’t turn up the thermostat in winter, don’t turn it down in summer, don’t use herbicide to kill weeds in your lawn, don’t have a lawn. All of these demands are perceived as lowering our quality of life.
Can we frame this movement as demanding positive outcomes? We want to breathe clean air. We want to drink clean water. We want the security of knowing that our house will not be destroyed by next year’s hurricane, or washed away by a flood, or burned down by a wildfire. But then, the ‘opposition’ will counter by pointing out that it is ‘personal choices’ that determine where we chose to live. And if a person is stupid enough to to buy a house on the west coast of Florida, then …… And, somehow the theme of ‘resiliency’ must be countered, as in: this community has rebuilt (with insurance and government aid) after the last five hurricanes, or wildfires, or floods, and we will do it again!!
As our hosts have constantly pointed out, a reduction in our sacred ‘way of life’ and ‘standard of living’ is the only way a path to a future will be achieved, and that is absolutely contrary to our holy narrative of the American (or European) Way.
>>recommend having a strategy for quickly and politely ending the discussion with those who clearly will never come around to your point of view
As a volunteer door to door canvasser in the Bernie Sanders campaign, in the modest amount of training we got (a seminar and some articles), they did emphasize that a lot of people will waste your time with long conversations.
The whole thing was more like marketing than sales because you can’t really seal the sale in a world with a secret ballot.
A lot of this list is basically taking staple techniques employed in effective propaganda and “using them for good rather than evil”. For example, the concept of simple, direct slogans repeated a thousand times across all kinds of media was one of the Goebbels trademarks, and that was nearly a century ago. Ditto appealing to hearts rather than minds, though the article above does not take this far enough; the best “hearts and minds” slogans speak to one of two specific emotions, greed and fear. This is exactly what Trump had tapped into – his speeches are part “I will give you goodies”, and part “those OTHERS are out to take away your goodies”.
So that’s fine. The two items on the list that bother me, however, are “always speak the truth” and “always fight falsehood”. I suppose the “truth” one does not so much bother me, as it just does not fit with the staple techniques around it. Propaganda, just as marketing, need not be truthful in the least to be effective. So this is more like “we are the good guys, really” type of thing. But “always fight falsehood”. That’s a problem, including from a propaganda standpoint. Because the goal of a propagandist, or a marketer, because these are really two sides of the same coin, is to transcend the rational and to embed an idea as either a belief or a subconscious response, and once that belief or response takes, you get the effect of – any contrary fact just makes the original notion stronger, not weaker. It’s almost like coming up to a devout Fox News watcher in the early 2010s and telling them Obama isn’t a Muslim and is an American citizen. It won’t take, and they’ll reject anything you say outright, either consciously or subconsciously. [Or both – I am of the view that behaviorist and cognitive techniques are also two sides of the same coin, but some will disagree here.] Meanwhile, disinterested “independents” observing from the sidelines will just see two sides throwing slogans at each other, and might take an a pox on both your houses kind of a stance.
There is no magic silver bullet solution here. Either the person is forced to have a hard brush with reality that forces them to re-evaluate things, like what happened to some Germans after Stalingrad and many more Germans after the summer-autumn offensives (in both the East and the West) of 1944; or you have to patiently “corrupt” their belief, slowly bending them until they themselves face some contradiction and “snap out of it”. But neither is really scalable when it comes to retail politics, which is what the article above is really about.
I suppose, of course, one could learn from Lenin-the-pragmatist, who, in 1917 and for some time afterwards – he really was out of politics by 1922 – had a knack for shifting his political doctrine to fit what the non-communist majority wanted. This is partly why the wholesale restructuring of the economy and society that began in 1928 was so inevitable, though one may argue about methods and pacing, because the bolsheviks during and following the civil war did NOT do much of what they’d wanted, but instead settled on what “worked” for a majority at that place and time. To the point of claiming other parties’ ideas as their own, for example the Land Decree was straight out of the Socialist Revolutionary party platform, and had nothing to do with the bolshevik view of land reform.
So perhaps instead of saying something like “Trump is a liar” and so forth, the game may be to seize on MAGA and say – yes, let’s make America great again, and go FURTHER than what Trump wants, and then you slot in some of your own propaganda. Something like that.
Trump is already going further than MAGA by turning RFK Jr loose with Make America Healthy Again (MAHA).
Agree that you cannot fight falsehoods on the campaign trail. EVERY learning experience I’ve had in this century came from trying to factcheck someone and then finding out they were right all along. Doorknockers should never engage over falsehoods or resort to whataboutism. Never works, just reinforces opposition.
“Hard brushes with reality” are your invitation in. “How do you think govt could have better helped you with that?” is a great way to get a real conversation going.
Last comment on canvassing: If you’re not really good with animals, do something else. Not saying you should fawn over people’s pets, but you need to be animal aware. I once had a sturdy chain stop a rottweiler just inches short of biting off my face. When the owner came out my first words were, “that’s a GOOD dog! He almost got rid of me for you” and of course a big smile on my face then I apologized and said the dog had the right take that yes I was yet another political doorknocker and I was sorry for taking up their time as I handed them some literature and then I left because all I could really do at that point was to ‘man’ up and go about my business as if vicious dogs were an every day part of life. I didn’t get that vote but I earned some respect that hopefully rubbed off on the candidate.
Another tip.
Be mindful of your appearance and how you come across to others. One great way to appreciate that is to have someone film you standing, sitting, talking, listening.
Not just facial expressions but body language, tone of voice, message delivery and response, and listening. Effective selling pays attention to those in addition to the words, context and venue.
Practice in front of a mirror, another time-honored method.
That this entire piece is framed in consumerist terms tells me it was lost before it started. The liberal left is a paradox, exemplified by the Democratic Party. The reason the true left is so ineffective in the US, is that it wants to be liked. I recall questioning how it was not leftists, but bourgeoisie libertarian interests storming the capitol on Jan. 6, as if they were disaffected veterans from WW1 in the heat of the depression… mind numbing; but Trump understands that when the game is designed for you to lose (no allusion to the democratic process here btw), the only way to play is as the bad guy.
I’m not an activist, haven’t been for years, but I was quite active in the 1980s and I pick up a certain note of doom and own-goal defeat in this article.
Firstly: yes, in order to get people’s attention you have to start with simple stuff. The trouble is that the actual issues are complicated. “Troops out of the townships” was a nice simple slogan, but then we had to address issues like, on one hand, people are getting horribly killed in the townships and it was hard to explain to white suburbanites that these were horrible people who deserved to die (and sometimes this wasn’t true) while on the other hand, taking the troops out of the townships meant sending them to kill people in Angola which wasn’t exactly better. The heart and the mind are not separate things, they go together. Reducing your message to inanity in order to appeal to what you think of as your ignorant audience almost guarantees you won’t easily educate your audience and it may well lead to reducing the good sense of your own message.
I think perhaps the worst advice offered here amounts to demonise your opponents and glorify yourselves and your supporters. That is the royal road to turning yourself into something like the Democratic Party. Granted, the Republicans are awful. So was the South African Defence Force High Command and the apartheid regime. But simply saying that they are bad people and must be opposed on that ground is not just crude, it runs the risk of tying yourself into the notion that your own side is perfect. I was an incredibly annoying young man on the issue of South African politics in this days, self-righteous as anything, but I was well aware that the side I supported had its flaws. In effect this advice is an implicitly totalitarian practice — perhaps, actually, explicitly.
Repetition? Yes, obviously repeat things if you can; all publicity is good. But reciting the same slogan over and over not only runs the risk of turning your audience off (“God, not that garbage again”) but also reduces your opportunity to educate your audience and press your message towards greater sophistication. What you want is to get your audience thinking your way. Similarly, frame everything according to your own side, but remember that the opposition has their own frames and if you leave no room for them to understand what you are talking about, they will very probably simply leave you to it. Notice how the two sides in the US have all but ceased communicating; they can’t listen to the other side’s frames and no longer really try. At least we in the anti-conscription movement tried to debate with our enemies, inviting pro-military journalists to meetings and talking to groups of ex-conscripts. It didn’t always work, but it kept us on our toes.
I think using celebrities and “who you know” is an astonishingly stupid idea. If prominent people want to get on board, fine. But running after people who have their own agenda and offering them platforms if they’ll agree to appear to endorse you — that, I suspect, is bound to lead to diluting your message. If you need a pretty face or some tight stomach muscles to get your message across, there’s probably something wrong with the way your communicating it. Worse still, very rich people have usually got to those people first, so you will end up under their thumb. Especially in a world where celebrity is manipulated by a decidedly corrupt propaganda system, this is an incredibly dangerous and destructive tactic.
I agree; fight falsehood, and its corollary, always tell the truth. However, in order to understand what these things are, you have to know what the issues are and why your opponents believe what they believe. Most political statements are in part false — most utterances made by activists contain the seeds of a lie. Beware of the self-righteous bigotry which comes with believing “I am utterly right and my enemies are completely wrong” because we know what kind of regime that leads to.
Sorry to bang on, but some of this actively upsets and worries me.
It should be communicated who will be in charge of the bail money, too.
“Fight falsehood and disinformation immediately”… well… gaslighting and intellectual dishonesty are the norm now… it’s the basis of legitimacy of government in the United States, and this has translated to culture). Every little engine of wealth, i.e. individuals, at all levels of sophistication, have become politicians at best, and internet trolls at worst, and I cannot imagine what it’s like having to either work a retail job, or manage the American employee in 2024. Narcissism is the new religion, but parades as ‘self-care’, ‘freedom’, ‘trans-rights’ etc, all divorced from any concept of social responsibility. There is no society. Throw in Ai and the automation of disinformation (‘hacking
electionssocieties’), and this policy of dignifying the ludicrous will very quickly exhaust your movement.In fairness to Americans, those who embody (and weaponize) neoliberalism at the atomic level are in the minority, but the same race to the bottom we witness in commerce, you will encounter in your most intimate experiences, from shared childhood memories, right up to sexual interests, and the pressure to conform is truly overwhelming. As such, this minority has been empowered to dominate the landscape; where your systems select for wickedness, the wicked shall succeed.
“Activism is not sales.” That was my first thought, too. On and off, I have done activistic things for maybe 40 years. No nifty formula for success exists; you are, after all, dealing with human beings, which resembles the herding of cats, except cats are easier to herd (open a can of tuna fish, etc.) Uncle Karl said that revolution depends on objective material conditions, or something like that, which is really begging the question; that is, we don’t know why or when certain things will happen. Do something you believe in — you may be stuck with it for many years.
David Fenton stated “But then the left started to lose its connection with the public…”
So true, what are the elements responsible for this increasing loss of connection?
One possible element is that the then persuasive anti-authoritarian message of the 1960s and 1970s is inadequate for 2024 because this message has become the status quo both politically and culturally.
Another possible element is that the contemporary Left is afraid to really engage with its opponents (the populist right)–it seems to accept a-priori that there is and never can be any commonality.
Such a rigid assumption, in my opinion, almost guarantees its continued loss of connection with the general public.
The instinct that it is a waste of time to try to win over your supposed enemy may be correct but the knowledge and insight gained in such a genuine attempt could be priceless.
Interesting article, I believe he makes sense in the direction it was intended, media communications.
In my observation most of the rules he details are being used on the ground (picket signs/chants/talking points if media puts a mic in your face). I can only speak on the Bay and LA, both of which lean on the influence of Black radical legacy which largely shapes local protests.
Yves had mentioned establishing rapport/ending discussion. We have people flyering crowds and passersby, they typically have talking points and enough knowledge to persuade someone with an open mind. As for ending the (negative) discussion security will move our folks along to prevent conflict.
So the capitalist elites take a leaf out of marketing’s Eddy Bernaise playbook, namely subverting our base instincts and seeding anti-intellectualism. This brings us to a point where facts don’t sell themselves, because an environment has been cultivated where critical thinking has been excoriated and gut-feeling is held as the measure of what is true. So now these middle class wankers who call themselves activists believe the solution is to use the same techniques to instead trick the mindless into supporting their version of right thinking. Wow. Nothing but contempt for the peasantry. Yippies make me sick. The guy was so inspired by direct action in the 60’s that he founded a corporation dedicated to social change. Why not instead start an SS battalion for the protection of Jews? Or a foundation that protects vulnerable children by bringing together the high morals of catholic priests with the PR skillset of hollywood directors?
A great outline of the standard old-fashioned American Communication Studies approach to comms/information (and yes, plus Bernays style PR/propaganda). And these principles are extremely common among activists (mainstream ones in any case). And all pretty problematic. It’s such a regressive, and limited understanding of what communication even is, and can be. And exactly what’s limiting so much right now. There’s a kind of arc, which you find in a lot of liberal, dare I say crudely modern etc culture, which assumes there is an elite set of reasoners/persuaders, working via “reasons”, accompanied by useful, crudely sketched affect and narrative, to get others to think and do something. The saddest thing about it all is that this doing doesn’t usually amount to much really. Rather the social is seen as a kind of blancmange, and this a kind of medium, through which to influence some other aspect of the elite. Which imho is not a. a good way to treat actual, everyday people or b. very effective. There are so many counter-examples to this kind of thing. People actually engaged with other people, in all the complexity and richness of that.
I don’t think this is an article about effective activism. I think it’s a guide to being an effective pawn for empire.
“ Recruit celebrities, influencers, and cultural figures.”
Why ally myself with empty sycophants who leech off of the status quo?
“It’s who you know.”
“[…] Unless they work for right-wing phony media like Fox, never treat journalists as the enemy.”
The converse of the above is that journalists are the enemy if they do not agree with your position. I suppose that’s why the IDF considers Palestinian journalists legitimate targets. And why Europe and the U.S ban Russian journalists.
I suppose in a sense I do see journalists as the enemy, in the sense that I view all of corporate media as being complicit in the ongoing crimes and atrocities committed by the powers that be.
From the context clues I surmise this article is directed at “Democrat” activists and it serves to further fuel my hatred towards that party and its supporters.
Well I don’t know, but would chalk these up to symbol manipulation. In the US in the 60’s life for the young was less desperate; you could go to college with much less money, debt was not such an overwhelming burden.
I’d say things have changed systemically to make radical advocacy too costly. And that change was intentional.
As far as climate advocacy, getting people to choose less is difficult in a society defined by consumerism. We failed, I failed. Tried all sorts of things.
JFYI, Motivational interviewing was a technique studied by physicians to persuade difficult patients–like addicts who didn’t want to quit using, heart patients who didn’t want to diet and/or exercise, etc.
It says that to have disagreement while remaining effective, here are conflicts in order of increasing effectiveness. :
– Fights,
– arguments and
– partnership
There’s actually literature (Motivational Interviewing) with suggestions about becoming partners, even with those who disagree.
Having patience with the clueless is actually difficult, at least for me. I have to calm way down and not smack the tar baby when it’s offered. Angry peaceniks need to do the same.