Thread by @timethief

🧵DYK Conservative communications expert advice from Arthur Finkelstein is the common thread running through the recent history of the Republican Party, from Ayn Rand to Richard Nixon and on to Donald Trump? Finkelstein is famous for turning the word "liberal" into a curse word

Simple but effective.
#Finkelsteinformula: every successful political campaign needs an enemy
#FinkelThink: trademark someone as liberal, slander them, repeat endlessly
#Finkelsteinmethod: use fear as a motivator #ragefarming: causing one's opponent to lose critical votes

#Finkelstein created #negativecampaigning do not talk about the benefits of electing your own candidate but project all kinds of evil onto your opponent #demonizing them in order to destroy the confidence of his/her voters #rejectionistvoting.

Arthur Finkelstein died in 2017 but his conservative politics of fear and machiavellian manipulation live on.
In one of his last public speeches in Prague in 2011, he said: "I wanted to change the world. I did that. I made it worse."
via @YouTube

Finkelstein anticipated the rise of Donald Trump. "Personality voting is very very important because it’s the one vote that overwhelms structure and issues. If I like you, I might vote for you even if I totally disagree with you and you’re not my party.."

CEVRO Institut Forum / Arthur Finkelstein / English via @YouTube

1/2 “The most overwhelming fact of politics is what people do not know,” he told the college students in Prague. “In politics, it’s what you perceive to be true that’s true, not truth. If I tell you one thing is true, you will believe the second thing is true.

2/2 A good politician will tell you a few things that are true before he will tell you a few things that are untrue, because you will then believe all the things he has said, true and untrue.”

Finkelstein acknowledged a generation ago that truth was fungible. "The phrase truth is fungible means that truth is, at least to an extent, not absolute, and can be made to be whatever one wants it to be."

Finkelstein and many consultants who follow him led to populist politics and Trump who created a #fakenews culture in which elections are won and lost by #gaslighting" manipulating (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning.

#Populists focus on differentiating between ordinary citizens and #elites (top socio-economic classes). They demonize elites during their political campaigns, but once elected introduce tax cuts that only benefit those elites and reduce govt services for the lower-income brackets

#Classicalconservatism is a #rightwingideology in that it tends to be elite and focuses on issues of the state, rather than on social issues of the citizenry.

#Libertarians agree with classical conservatives about the danger of social engineering or using the state to produce desired outcomes.

#Progressives hold that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on advancements in science, technology, economic development & social organization.

1/2 Political scientists demonstrate the demand for populism does not necessarily come from economic hardship per se, but from #perceivedunfairness and from the activation of other ideologies, such as #nationalism.

2/2 #Rightwingpopulism is essentially a combination of populism and #nationalism. It invokes the pure people or as a unified and homogenous national identity and claims that this identity (and perhaps also the nation itself) is under threat.
Sound familiar?

Classical conservatives support social programs aimed to benefit businesses & corporate elites. #Fiscalconservatives advocate tax cuts, reduced government spending, free markets, deregulation, privatization, free trade & minimal government debt.
Sound familiar?

Stephen Harper, Andrew Scheer, Erin O'Toole and Pierre Poilievre

@ThreadReaderApp Please unroll this thread.

#conservativepolitics #ragefarming #machiavellianmanipulation