Teri Kanefield Profile picture
Sep 22, 2020 35 tweets 11 min read Read on X
Dear Twitter:

We need to have a talk about the Strong Man Con.

My mentions today were flooded with people assuring me that Trump doesn't need legal grounds for challenging the election. He can challenge the election without cause, trigger a war, and keep himself in power.

1/
Or some variation of that. I won't add more screen shots. You get the idea.

Consider this: Thomas Rid, an expert in Russian disinformation tactics, said that the extent of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was “designed to be overestimated.”

2/
People totally forget that the GOP lost the midterms by 8.

Losing the midterms was not good for the GOP. If they could have avoided that, they would have.

They couldn't. They lost.

Now, why would someone like Putin want to be overestimated?

3/
Being overestimated is how wanna-be Strongmen appear powerful. It makes them feared and respected.

Trump is first and foremost a conman. He wants his supporters to think he is invincible.

He wants you to think that he can't be stopped.

4/
“. . .even the best propaganda cannot conceal constant political failures."

That quotation from Schulze-Wechsungen, a 1930s Nazi propagandist.
research.calvin.edu/german-propaga…

Trump has been compared to Hitler. The better comparison is Mussolini.

5/
Weber, in his classic essay, Politics as a Vocation, outlined 3 sources of authority for government: archive.org/details/weber_…
In a nutshell:
🔹Traditional (monarchy)
🔹Personal charisma (today we’d say ‘cult leader’ or demagogue)
🔹Legal / rational (democracy / rule of law.)

6/
Mussolini, like Trump, drew his authority from #2, what Weber called Personal Charisma.

Trump critics have a hard time with the charisma part. Michael Cohen explained it well⤵️


The GOP is mesmerized by the idea of a Strongman.

7/
Mussolini spun elaborate lies and presented himself as invincible.

When asked his ideology, Mussolini said, “My ideology is to break the bones of the liberals and socialists, and the sooner the better. He also said: scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewconten…

7/
Mussolini seemed invincible. He appeared to be widely adored. Then he made his error: He got greedy and wanted some of the spoils from the war he thought Germany would win, so he entered a disastrous partnership with Hitler. He led Italy to ruin.

8/
This was a problem for Mussolini because he promised "winning," and Italy did not win. When it was clear he was losing, he crumbled. (Well, let's not get into the details).

We all know Trump is a conman. One of his cons is to present himself as a winner.

9/
We also know that he got where he is by cheating, but his base doesn’t care. They think he’s a winner because of how they define “winning.”

If you think nobody has principles, the winner is the one who ends up on top.

10/
Trump’s base thinks he”wins” because he:

🔹accumulated wealth (it doesn’t matter how)
🔹fights their “enemies”
🔹breaks rules

The “breaking rules” part helps with his biggest con: Faking invincibility.

11/
Here’s how the invincibility con works:

🔹First, Trump does outrageous and shocking things. He politicizes the DOJ. He openly violates laws.

🔹The rule-breaking stokes his base. They think: “Our team will win!”

12/
The rule-breaking creates panic meltdown in the opposition.

They tremble in fear.

Trump supporters and GOP leaders see the meltdowns and trembling and they think: "WOW Trump really IS a strongman."

13/
This makes them love Trump more.

Remember that one goal of Russian Active Measures is to get people to lose confidence in democracy, because when people lose confidence, they become apathetic, cynical, and then it’s all over.

14/
Oddly, quite a few people have been insulting me today. Here's one example from @Sam86743079.

Let's just deal with this one.

My husband experienced the Pinochet dictatorship. He still has the card he had to carry in his pocket to prove that he voted for Pinochet.

15/
I'm a lawyer. My husband and spent a few weeks in a detention center offering legal assistance to asylum seekers through @RAICESTEXAS.

They needed Spanish speaking lawyers. We went as a team. He was my translator.

16/
The stories we heard were brutal. It was hard on him. We stopped going a year ago when I decided that my volunteer time would be better spent working on the election. I've done election work before. I've now worked elections in three states.

17/
Moreover, my legal practice was dedicated to representing indigents on appeal. Notice the indigents part. I have never represented a client who could afford to pay.

So spare me the insults, okay, @Sam86743079 ?

(I do accept apologies).

18/
The leaders (the true leaders) are not out there telling you it's all over, Trump has this in the bag.

Wanna know why?

Because they're leaders. They know Trumps happen. Trumps happen in every age in every country.

Its up to us now.

I wrote quickly earlier: My husband I and went together to Texas to work (at our own expense).

We both do elections work. He's in charge of a polling place in California. He's been promoted over several elections. I'm currently on the Voter Protection Committee in Georgia.
I put this one up on my website, here: terikanefield-blog.com/the-strongman-…

Well, I left out the little tirade between Tweets #15 and #18 😂
Dear New Followers: I have an FAQ on my blog addressing the most common Twitter panic questions.

I also have a page addressing very real concerns. I'll attach the links to the next tweets.

Here's the FAQ: terikanefield-blog.com/faq/
I last updated it a few weeks ago, so it may not include whatever is latest, but it should get you started.

Here's a page on what can go wrong:
terikanefield-blog.com/nov-3-what-mig…
Fearmongering gets a lot of clicks. Everyone wants to be popular. People want free news, so news organizations rely on clicks for revenue. There is an industry since 2016 built on scaring people.

Liberals understand that Fox News is about about fear. . .
They understand that Fox survives by keeping its viewers terrified and therefore addicted.

They don't see how their own fears are also manipulated for profit.

Here was one response to this thread⤵️

We should be worried . . .
But there is a fine line between healthy concern that motivates people to get involved, volunteer, and do their part to save democracy, and despair-mongering that causes people to shut down and give up.

This implies that we no longer have meaningful elections⤵️
Voter suppression is not new. It's a problem we've been fighting for since the founding of the nation. Cheating is a thing. It happens. That's why people need to get involved.

Need ideas? See ⤵️

But yes, America still has meaningful elections. terikanefield-blog.com/things-to-do/
Recall: Polling shows a steady race, with Trump 7+ points behind.

Why are people trying to persuade you that the election is fixed and Trump has it in the bag?

What good does it do, after voting has started, to get Trump critics paralyzed with fear?

Who does that benefit?
All the time spent demanding answers to these sorts of hypothetical "what if" questions should instead be spent mobilizing voters and making sure that Biden and Senate candidates win by wide margins so that the Democrats can take control and make rapid changes.
Think how much FDR was able to do in the first 100 days he was in office.

He was able to do it because he won by a large enough margin and had support in Congress. The Courts were against him, but were unable to stop him.
What makes it tricky is that fear IS warranted. What's happening IS frightening.

But panic meltdowns do not help. Making arguments for how Trump will steal the election because he is invincible does not help.

Constructive action helps.
This is an example of Democrats helping to create a reality based on a lie.

The lie is that Trump is an invincible strongman who can steal an election.

Democrats act as if he IS invincible and help hand him the election.

This is what Trump does. . .
. . . he invents a story (a fiction) and forces us all to become actors in his reality show.

The con is that he is an invincible strongman. Everyone plays along, whipping ourselves into a panic and then acting from our panic, thus creating a new reality based on a lie.
These ideas come [partly] from Thomas Rid, who I quoted earlier. Rid is an expert in Russian tactics and a Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

I should do a full thread on his book and Senate testimony.

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More from @Teri_Kanefield

Mar 11
Finished. (Whew)

As promised, all about Legal pundits and the Outrage Industry, with a few cherished conspiracy theories carefully debunked.

Click here to start:

For years, I was perplexed by what I saw on Twitter. . .

1/ terikanefield.com/can-democracy-…
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It seemed to me that the dynamics of social media were making people more authoritarian.

Then I started reading experts in political communication and it all started making sense.


2/ terikanefield.com/can-democracy-…
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I wrote parts 1 - 5 in November. I thought I was finished, but I wasn't.

There were still things I didn't understand.

Writers often write to understand, so I kept reading, thinking, and writing.



3/ terikanefield.com/can-democracy-…
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Read 5 tweets
Mar 9
Whew! I finished.



Everything I promised: How to listen (or not listen) to legal pundits.

It's also about what is dangerous about the entire industry of punditry, speculation, and cable talk shows.

1/terikanefield.com/invented-narra…

For years I was perplexed by what I was seeing on left-leaning Twitter, political blogs, and partisan reporting.

I had the feeling that, in its way, what I was seeing was comparable to Fox: Lots of bad information and even unhinged conspiracy theories.
2terikanefield.com/invented-narra…
Of course, if I suggested that, I was blasted for "both-sidesing."

Then I discovered an area of scholarship: Communications and the overlap between communications and political science.

I read these books and light bulbs went on.

3/ Image
Read 11 tweets
Mar 2
If Trump can win with everything we know about him, what make people think a finding of guilt would change that?

It makes no sense.
Also what if the jury acquits? It can happen.

I do recall the same people thought impeachment and indictment would cause Trump to crumble.
Another contradiction: when people demanded indictments RIGHT NOW (in 2021 and early 2022) the reason was, "Everyone knows he's guilty! Look at all the evidence!"

We saw the J6 committee findings.

Trump isn't saying "I didn't do it." He's saying, "I had the right to do it."

2
We all know what he did. The question is, "Do people want a president who acts like Trump?"

A lot of people do.

People show me polls that a guilty finding would change minds.

I say rubbish. Use common sense. He lost in 2020 and he lost the popular vote in 2016. . .

3/
Read 6 tweets
Feb 29
The news takes 2 minutes to convey.

"Here is what the court did." That is news.

Listening to people speculate about why the court did it and what it means is not news.

It is entertainment.

But it is a special kind of entertainment.

1/
. . . because it is designed to keep people hooked. People need to stay glued to the screen for hour after hour.

But to hook people, you need to scare them. The Facebook whistleblower testified that content that produces strong emotions like anger gets more engagement.

2/
Fox does the same thing. There is a few minutes of news, but the facts get lost as commentators and TV personalities speculate and scare their audiences.

Before you yell at me for comparing MSNBC to FOX, read all of this:

3/terikanefield.com/can-democracy-…
Read 5 tweets
Feb 29
If I write another blog post addressing the outrage cycle here on Twitter and in the MSNBC ecosystem, it will be to explore why so many people who believe they are liberal or progressive actually want a police state.

1/
Today alone, a handful of people who consider themselves liberal or progressive told me that the "traitors need to be arrested and prosecuted."

In 2019, back when I wore myself out tamping down misinformation, I explained the legal meaning of treason.

2/
Back then, I now realize, people asked politely: "Can Trump be prosecuted for treason (over the Russia election stuff).

I explained that wouldn't happen.

Now it's different. It's more like fascist chants.

3/
Read 4 tweets
Feb 29
I spent 5 years writing FAQ pages and "talking people off the ledge" each time there was a collective meltdown.

I stopped doing that because it is never-ending.

I keep saying the same things over and over.

1/
In 2021, when people were demanding indictments, I said, "Indictments are the start of a long harrowing process."

I explained that trials are harrowing.

Judges make bad decisions.

Juries don't always get it right. A person can be guilty but be acquitted.

2/
I told people to stop thinking that the criminal justice system will solve a political problem.

Eventually, I came to believe that the 10% of people who are "highly engaged" with politics are the least informed.

They will always be in a misinformation-outrage cycle.

3/
Read 7 tweets

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