Countering Karl Rove’s Troll Strategy

This morning, I posted on Facebook a short “playbook” for right wing social media types, attributed to George W. Bush’s operative Karl Rove. Here are my thoughts on counter strategies and tactics.

To counter these tactics, first, study your right wing opponent. Understand the values and strategic principals of right wing conservatism, then think about how to frustrate them. Their two primary strategic principals are narrative control and domination. Both come out of a value assumption that natural hierarchies exist, and that conservatives, by their wealth and whiteness have the right to rule and dominate. Their narrative control depends two corollaries from these principles. One, anyone who challenges their narrative and dominance must be cast as not only factually wrong, but crazy and defective. And two, they have no obligation to tell the truth. In fact lying to sustain their narrative is a strategy for asserting impunity, the power of the dominator to avoid being held accountable.

A few underlying principals first.
1.) Although changing the narrative and course of American politics is serious business, arguing with right wingers needs to be taken as a game. Play it joyfully in the spirit of fishing on light tackle. Every once in a while, you’ll catch a whopper. Never let your emotions overrule your intellect and always have a principle and purpose in mind.

2.) Never lose awareness that you are engaged with another human being who, although they may be doing their best to hide them, has weaknesses, faults and insecurities. They exploit yours by projecting theirs. Understand that their attempts at dominance are really betrayals of their own weaknesses and insecurities. Treat them more humanely than they treat you, not from weakness, but from the position of strength that you know your value, and the strength and truth of your position and have no need to dominate to reassure yourself.

3.) Conservatives play a win/lose game called “debate” which is less about exchanging information and solving problems than it is about shoving their opinion down your throat and driving you off the playing field. More enlightened people use “conversation” as a way of sharing information and deepening understanding, acknowledging that neither has the whole truth and all the answers and recognizing that knowledge is a greater value than power. One approach to conservatives is to look for the values beneath their statements, leading them on to state a value you can agree with, and then building your case founded on this common value. It’s actually fun when it works, because the conversation ends in mutual respect.

4.) Play the game on your terms. There is a concept in board games like chess and the Japanese version, Go, which has to do with initiative and control of play. In Go, it is called “sente” and “gote”. A sente move is one that requires a response from the opponent to prevent a greater loss. A gote move requires no response, giving your opponent the opportunity to play a sente move of their own. In conversation and debate, it’s about controlling the subject matter and direction by making statements that demand response. Conversations with right wingers are necessarily power duels, because their self worth is based on power relationships, on their place in their assumed natural hierarchy. Ignoring challenging assertions and distractions is an important tactic in retain your own control of the conversation and the narrative. Playing sente moves by making statements they will feel obligated to respond to gives you control. *

5.) Watch for changes of subject. This is the whole “What about…” gambit. One way to avert defeat in a debate is to shift the focus to a weakly related hot button issue. Recognize when this is happening and make a choice whether to go along or continue the original thread. You can also use this tactic back with devastating results by recognizing when your opponent has revealed a positive value that is contradicted by something their current Administration is doing on the ground and play that back to them.

6.) Pace yourself and conserve your energy. Many right wingers enjoy being abusive assholes. Liberals in their mind are fair game for abuse. They see politics as an arena of verbal violence for the purpose of domination. Their playbook is about being abusive, demeaning and demoralizing. They are intentionally draining. Balance dealing with them by doing nurturing, sustaining activities with your own people to renew and reassure yourself. This is important.

Engage:

Rove: Demand an elaborate, time-consuming comparison / analysis between your position and theirs.

This is a double edged sword for the right winger. We can play engage almost better than they can, but you need to have your facts and sources at your fingertips. You also need to have a really thick hide and be committed to ignoring all of their taunts, threats and other attempts at crazymaking. The goal with counter-engagement is to create cognitive dissonance between their assumption of dominance and disrespect, and your respect in return. Challenge their assumption of hierarchy over you by earning their grudging respect. But beware!! This is a fishing game. They think you are the fish on their hook. Turning the tables can be great sport, but when they clearly aren’t biting, cut bait and walk away.

Entangle:

Insist that the Liberal put their posts in their own words. That will consume the most time and effort for the Liberal poster.

They will be unable to spread numerous points on numerous blogs if you have them occupied. Allowing a Liberal to post a web link is too quick and efficient for them. Tie them up. We are going for delay of game here.

Rove is upfront about this as a delaying tactic. Provide your documentation in links and refuse to continue the conversation until they read them. Ignore their continued comments unless they contain intelligent discussion of the content of the link.

Demoralize:

Dismiss their narrative as rubbish immediately.

Do not even read it. Once the Liberal goes through the trouble to research, gather, collate, compose and write their narrative your job is to discredit it. Make it obvious you tossed their labor-intensive narrative aside like garbage. This will have the effect of demoralizing the Liberal poster.

Ignore dismissals. As the author of a post, you have the power to delete comments and block commenters. Use that power “liberally”.

Attack:

Attack the source. Any Liberal website or information source must be marginalized, trivialized and discounted. Let the blogosphere know that Truthout..org, thinkprogress..org, the nation and moveon..org are Liberal rubbish propaganda. Discredit Liberal sources of information whenever possible.

This is about dismissing sources. Use the most conservative source you can. Wall Street Journal is a wonderful source to use. Also Washington Times. Lacking those, hammer with multiple sources. My response to the common, “CNN: Fake News” trope is, “I don’t even have dish or cable. I don’t watch TV.”

Confuse:

Challenge the Liberal position with questions, always questions. The questions need not be relevant. The goal is to knock the Liberal poster off their game, and seize control of the narrative.

Once you have control you can direct the narrative to where you want it to go, which is always away from letting the Liberal make their point. Conversely, do not respond to their leading questions. Don’t rise to their bait.

Recognize this being played and ignore it totally. Never surrender control of the conversation. Hold it on your terms. Walk away if you need to.

Contain:

Your job is to prevent the presentation and spread of Liberal viewpoints.

Do anything you must do to prevent a Liberal poster from presenting a well-reasoned argument or starting a civil discussion.

Don’t allow a Liberal to present their dogma unchallenged EVER.

Their goal is to prevent the discussion and dissemination of liberal or progressive arguments. Make your arguments clear and concise. Use the dialog to deepen your understanding of your arguments. Consider the argument a “fishbowl” exercise where the right winger is a foil for you to use to develop and expand your arguments for your readership.

Intimidate, Insult their Movement and Demean:

Taunt the Liberals. If you find yourself in a debate with a Liberal where you are losing a fact-based argument then call them a name to derail their diatribe. Remember your goal is to prevent a meaningful exchange of views and ideas which may portray Liberalism in a positive light.

Your goal as a conservative blogger is to stop the spread and advance of the Liberal agenda. Play upon any identifiable idiosyncrasies, character flaws, physical traits, names, to their disadvantage. Monitor other posts for vulnerabilities you can exploit. Stay on the offensive with Liberal wimps. Don’t let up.

Assign as many character and moral flaws to Liberals as you can. You must portray Liberals as weak, vacillating, indecisive, amoral, baby killers, unpatriotic, effete snobs, elitists, Leftists, Commies, sense of entitlement, promiscuous, union lovers, tax raisers, Welfare Queens, Socialists, lazy, sex-obsessed, druggies, Jesus haters, moochers, troop hater,.etc. Always use these negative epithets when referring to, or describing Liberals / democrats.

Always refer to the other side as Liberals, Lefty Liberals, Libbies. Never assign them the status of a bona-fide political party. Hang Liberalism around their neck like a burning tire. Make Liberalism appear as a moral turpitude or a character flaw. They are NEVER, NEVER to be referred to as the Democratic Party. At best it is the democrat party. Never assign them respect.

This is their fallback if they are losing control of the narrative. Only, they use if from the get-go to wear you down. By using abuse as a political tactic, they are demonstrating the have no obligation to abide by the social norms of civility because they are above that in the social hierarchy. This is an assertion of impunity and unaccountability. They grant themselves the right to debase conversation but will hold you to the same norms they violate with impunity.
There are a number of options here, based on the understanding that the right winger is speaking from a playbook and actually acknowledging defeat by going personal. First, never take the bait. Personally, I find the most effective strategy is to totally ignore the taunts and insults and respond intelligently to any scrap of arguable content embedded in the insults, as if the insults never happened. Another approach comes from teaching teenagers in a classroom for 20 years. My comeback would be something on the level of, “Is that the best you’ve got. You can do better than that. Gimme something I can work with.” Their goal is to trigger you and shift your focus from substance to defending yourself, returning control to them. There is a caution here: some bullies enjoy simply being abusive. Don’t patronize them. Set your limits, delete their comments and walk away. Unfriend and block them if the abuse continues.

Patriotism:

Always claim the high ground of pro-military, low taxes, strong defense, morality and religion. We own those virtues. Learn how to exploit them when debating.

If this is their concept of patriotism, we know better. Challenge these as seductive propaganda rather than real values. They are the core Movement Conservative principals going back to William F. Buckley Jr.’s books from the 1950s, based on Frederick Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society’s neoliberalism from the late 1940’s. Understand how they have been deployed to destroy our country for the benefit of a small minority, which fits with the right’s concept of a natural hierarchy. Don’t waste your time on moralizing. Their concept of morality has to do with individual personal and intimate behavior, not how policy impacts people’s lives. Like Vito Corleone, policy to movement conservatives is “not personal. It’s just business.”

Challenge valuing the military in terms of wasting the lives of troops on failed adventurism. Challenge low taxes by citing the prosperity of the 1950’s when the marginal tax rate was over 70% and how cutting taxes consistently results in recessions. Demand to know how a strong defense protects American values. Ask for examples. Challenge them on the morality of putting kids in cages and watching them die on closed circuit TV. If they bring up Religion, have some Bible citations and quotes handy. Quote the Beatitudes from Matthew. Compliment them for following a brown skinned rabble-rouser who washed the feet of prostitutes.

Opportunity:

Be alert for ways to insert our catch phrases into your narrative. You will receive your daily list of talking points and topics that we want you to cover. Consistent, persistent repetition and inculcation will drive our talking points home and so will neuro-linguistic programming. Stick with it and our talking points will become truth. If they debunk your talking point, ignore it, and move on as if you didn’t hear it.

In education, when administrators would come out with the latest buzz phrases they learned in a conference, I would call it a buzz word avalanche. The goal is meme propagation: inculcating certain language into the culture as a way of controlling the framing of events and political positions. One counter is to ask them to explain the buzz words in detail. Feign lack of understanding. Let them think they are controlling the conversation and give them rope to hang themselves until they have spun a clear, obvious and incontrovertible contradiction. Then hit them with the contradiction and ask them to explain it. This is playing “Engagement” back at them.

Finally, embrace “Social Justice Warrior” as an emblem of pride and courage. These are difficult people to deal with who are destroying our Nation for the profit and privilege of an elite few. Treat them with compassion but don’t wear yourself down on them.

*If you want to explore the science of power and control in duels, verbal and other, explore John Boyd’s OODA Loop, a powerful iterative framework developed by an Air Force Korean war flying ace.