Explosive social media campaigns might seem like an effective way to take a stand, but what if they are standing in the way of actual change by distracting people from other, more politically shifting issues?
Two articles about online manipulation in politics have been published this month. The first, a BuzzFeed article surrounding leaked email conversations between Steven Bannon, co-founder of the far right news site Breitbart, and Breitbart employee, Milo Yiannopoulos.
The exchange delves into how Yiannopoulos spent months talking to leaders of white supremacist groups, Bannon, and other Breitbart employees to draft an article titled “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” The same article would later help the alt-right gain power and influence, while it simultaneously denied any connection to white supremacy.
The second article was a New York Times piece titled “How Russia Harvested American Rage to Reshape U.S. Politics.” The article cites how Russian hackers used content written by Americans to create groups with titles like “Blacktivist” and “Secured Borders.” According to the Times, a review of thousands of posts concluded that “one of the most powerful weapons that Russian agents used to reshape American politics was the anger, passion and misinformation that real Americans were broadcasting across social media platforms.”
Both of these articles provide evidence that there are people who, seeking power, use the Internet and social media to influence politics and disrupt people’s beliefs in order to advance their own agendas. This shouldn’t be surprising because this is also modern day advertising. There are entire departments within ad agencies that are dedicated to monitoring data in order to subtly shift people’s behaviors and interactions with brands.
Keeping the masses distracted with emotionally charged debates
In an attempt to take a stand against behavior like that alleged by accusers against former media mogul Harvey Weinstein, a viral #MeToo campaign was launched on Facebook. It preys heavily on the emotions of women, men and people who disagree with their participation. As a result, a number of emotional arguments have ensued while little intellectual discussion has been had over how to create a world where there is no acceptance of any person who uses humiliation to gain strength over another human being.
These emotional outbursts come at a cost. Once the heat of arguments heavily fueled by feeling dies down, so too does the momentum to take action. But actual change doesn’t happen over a 15-second Facebook post or a weeklong argument on social media. That kind of change takes time, persistence and extreme focus. And the problem is, while we are distracted with the feelings that people who are seeking power have created, those people aren’t even listening. Because they don’t care— their real focus is elsewhere.
Consider this: while Yiannopoulos was painstakingly working on the alt-right article that would eventually have a major impact on politics, he also wrote an article titled, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”
In the meantime, Bannon was using Yiannopoulos to help define his idea of “the movement” behind the Trump presidency. “Just get into the fight---u r Social Media and they have made it a powerful weapon of war,” Bannon wrote in one email. Previously, Yiannopoulos had stormed his own dose of belittling from Bannon. “Your [sic] full of shit,” he wrote Yiannopoulos in one email, referring to the tech site that Yiannopoulos was responsible for managing as “a total clusterfuck---meaningless stories written by juveniles” and calling Yiannopoulos “marginalia.”
But as an openly gay man who claims ties to his Jewish heritage, Yiannopoulos was a strategic game piece. It was Yiannopoulos who made calls to leaders of white supremacist groups to define the alt-right movement — an article that Trump would later reference in a public speech. Both parties would still claim that there was no link to their beliefs and white supremacy.
This all occurred 17 months before the Charlottesville protests that brought white supremacy back to the forefront of the nation. A week before that, social media was charged up over James Damore, a former Google employee who suggested that many women were not “biologically” suited for jobs in tech. Following Charlottesville, more emotional debates would arise over the removal of statues and Trump’s dismissive statement that there was “blame on both sides” during the protests.
Distractions mean no actions
Days after the Charlottesville protest, Bannon was fired as the chief strategist and top advisor of the White House. After successfully reigniting white supremacy as an explosive issue, he said in parting words to the Weekly Standard, “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over.”
Before the alt-right article, people were distracted by Yiannopoulos’ birth control piece. Before Charlottesville, people were outraged over Damore. Charlottesville was brewing long before any protest occurred, but its roots were failing to receive public attention. And afterwards, instead of breaking down the issue and going back to the root of the problem, more emotional debates on Facebook ensued over how awful the president was, how wrong confederate statues are and the political correctness behind “Black Lives Matter.”
The Black Lives Matter campaign is a particularly effective example. Look at how many people have become entrenched over Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter. It’s become an incredibly, emotionally fueled debate that has little to do with the actual issues anymore. It pits minority groups against each other and distracts them over an argument that will always have multiple attitudes and views but no actionable solutions. In the meantime, the people creating these arguments and using the weaknesses of others to gain strength maintain focus on key strategies that they invest months and years into. They maintain control.
Getting lost in the past vs. building a new future
What happened to those issues that we were so emotionally invested in? And what was happening in the background, while we were so distracted? These are questions we must face. We were angry over Damore, but did we do anything actionable to change the status of women in tech once the hoopla died down? Or did we further segregate ourselves by defining conversations that men shouldn’t have in front of women, without give them enough reason not to have them at all.
Did we disrupt the politics of the alt-right with facts, science and histories that would put them to shame? Make them seem overly emotional and bizarre? Or did we give them an upper hand while arguing over a few statues and trying to get a football team to change its name. It’s not that the statues can’t be an issue, it’s just that— there are a lot of statues. We can spend years trying to get rid of them all or focus out attention on policies that will ensure that kind of history will never be repeated.
Share This Article
