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Will Stancil Profile picture
Will Stancil
@whstancil
I research metro policy and civil rights, focused on housing and schools. Proud member of Do-Something Twitter.
24 subscribers
Oct 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The moment I heard that Puerto Rico line, I messaged some Dem friends and said "This is gonna be catastrophic." And right on cue, Trump's fascist rally is ballooning into a full-blown campaign crisis. The reason why is that it's a perfect storm: Image
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Image -shocking racism that hasn't been on a US political stage in 100 years
-basically every electorally important group was a target
-so bad that the GOP actually ran for cover, creating permission for press to chase the story
-perfectly validated weeks of Dem attacks on Trump
Oct 22 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
My working theory for What’s Gone Wrong is that the plethora of media sources have enabled extremist ideologies - not by LIMITING people’s exposure to ideas, but by INCREASING it. This enables people to select whichever narrative supports their inner emotional universe best. Ultimately most of these extreme ideologies are about intellectual laziness and indulgence - substituting prejudice and simplicity and emotion for the hard work of thinking through complicated problems, confronting uncertainty, and developing a consistent set of beliefs.
Oct 21 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
It's insane that the main policy proposal of one major-party candidate is "Carry out the largest domestic purge in history by a factor of twenty, and no, I won't be telling you exactly what groups will be removed" and the media is like "Cool! What's your plan for health care?" If Trump follows through on his plan to remove 20 million people (again, he won't say who, because there aren't even 20 million undocumented immigrants in this country) that means one in every 15 Americans will be disappeared. Every workplace, every classroom, every street
Oct 18 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
the structure of media has changed, and it's changed what kinds of political messaging successfully reaches and persuades people, and democrats are the ones that have been getting left behind HOW HAS THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIA CHANGED?

primarily, it's vastly more fragmented. instead of large centralized outlets, media consumption is fragmented across an incredibly wide range of TV, print, online, and social media outlets
Oct 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
One thing the Harris campaign seems to understand, explicitly or implicitly, is that you should perform the emotions you want the audience to feel, not tell them how to feel. Don’t tell them to be mad at Trump - actually be angry at him. Don’t tell them he’s too old - mock him. Democrats are really bad about this in the often and I think it’s been terrible for them. People don’t want to be informed, they want to join in. This is why the right’s bullying is so effective - it models an interaction and encourages people to join.
Oct 17 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This moment has gone viral because it's the most important question of the election. What's incredible is that it had to be asked by a construction worker because the political press refuses to focus on these questions or hold Trump's feet to the fire. January 6 was a "day of love"? Trump tried to overturn an election with a violent mob. He encouraged the mob to invade the Capitol, and refused to call them back. As we speak, a court stands about to release evidence of Trump's utter contempt for democracy.
Oct 11 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
My crazy idea is that Obama should take the shocking angry bit from his rally speech last night - “so many people are failing America making excuses for Trump instead of talking about what he is” - and spend three weeks blitzing every TV program and newsroom he can with it Uniquely among all private Americans, Obama can walk into any room and immediately command attention. If anyone could single-handedly get the media to refocus on the terrifying stakes posed by Trump’s character and record, it’s him
Oct 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Sort of, but it doesn't really work. I suspect the vast majority of political media that reaches a lot of people is what might be deemed "earned social" - neither direct campaign communications, like ads or podcasts, but also not traditional mainstream news. That's the thing that Trump and MAGA have gotten really good at: earned social chatter. It's nonstop, it's everywhere, it filters into every little pocket of social and digital communication, it's unavoidable.
Oct 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
people keep responding with things like "there's nothing changed on the ground! there's just people on social media feeling doomy" and guys, yes: that's the vibe shift! that's my point! we're all sharing a brainwave these days regardless of whether it affects the voting or not (I vote "it probably affects it a little, but not a lot") you can sort of feel the wind change. because as much as we like to think we're thinking about this stuff independently of each other, we're not at all.
Sep 30 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
"Reality" as you perceive it is mostly an image you've constructed in your head from secondhand reports; an increasing share of those secondhand reports for most people are social media posts intended not to accurately report reality but to go viral, mostly by making you mad "But my lived experience!" - the blunt truth is that you do not have, and indeed it is almost impossible to have, lived experience of most things, and your perception of the things you DO experience is necessarily framed around your understanding of the larger world
Sep 27 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Yes it’s this! It’s literally social media! Everyone’s sophisticated classes analyses and economic analyses and so forth are just overcomplicated bunk. It’s angry people, predominately men, finding an organizing forum where they could easily proselytize and propagandize others. The far right is an ideology of emotional indulgence, finding rationalizations for hatreds and prejudices that feel good, that get people’s blood pumping. And on the internet, there is essentially no obstacle between indulgent claims and massive audiences.
Sep 14 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Honestly kind of furious at Democrats too right now - people like me have spent years trying to get them to take the far-right pressure cooker on social media, and especially Twitter, more seriously - and have been mostly scoffed at and treated as overly-online hysterics Now we have a VP candidate who has melted his brain with pro-Nazi gutter racism memes, and is actively trying to cause an anti-immigrant pogrom in his home state. ONLINE IS REAL LIFE. TAKE IT SERIOUSLY
Jul 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Not to state the obvious but the GOP’s obsession with mass deportation doesn’t come from any interest in improving policy outcomes but because it’s a rationale for large-scale state terror against a population the GOP dislikes. It’s a pretext to hurt people for fun Anti-trans laws? Impossibly vast deportation programs? Attacks on college campuses and protesters? What it all has in common is that it’s a pretext to target a perceived set of enemies and derive pleasure from their pain
Jul 10 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The religious zeal that surrounds the anti-Biden obsessives is really frightening. Not even the slightest hint of doubt about the remarkably reckless course of action they're demanding. Being a few points behind in the polls after two weeks of saturation-level media panic isn't great, but Trump was much further behind in 2016 and still won. There have been last-minute candidate switches before and they ended in disaster.
Jul 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Let’s explain this in very simple terms:

-the media right now is publishing many stories about how Biden should drop out

-those stories are pushing his polls down among swing voters, endangering his campaign

-why shouldn’t/couldn’t they publish the same stories about Trump The main difference here is not that Biden and Trump have different swing voters - that doesn’t make sense.

The difference is that when Biden does something bad, media says “he should drop out” over and over, but when Trump does, media says “his voters won’t care” and moves on.
Jul 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is an open threat from a far-right account with 2.5 million followers. This is where we are: these fascist goons are so emboldened by our rogue Supreme Court and Donald Trump that they're openly threatening to kill liberal politicians. Image This guy appears on stage with top Trump luminaries. He is indistinguishable from the worst kind of homicidal Trump troll. These people have just given themselves the power to prosecute, jail, and assassinate their enemies - the point of my tweet - and now are planning to do it.
Jun 28 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We’ve spent eight years waiting for the political elite in this country to wake up to the fact that Trump is a true authoritarian threat who must be confronted directly before he destroys the foundations of constitutional government and here we are, still waiting He’s a liar, a thug, a demagogue, and he wants to be a tyrant. You have to fight people like that DIRECTLY: you say what they are, you put them in jail, you keep them out of politics, you resist them with whatever it takes. You don’t rely on them losing a policy debate
Jun 17 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
every single day false memes suggesting biden is senile get pushed out by the RNC, are instantly shared across half a dozen national news outlets, are repeated by through hundreds of sinclair outlets, and get hundreds of millions of social views

dems: "why is biden unpopular??" the other side has built an enormous, nation-spanning propaganda network, where everywhere you turn you see people presenting far-right ideology and anti-Democratic propaganda as truth. Dems have ALMOST COMPLETELY IGNORED this, because they figure their policy is more popular
Jun 10 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Two days ago, a Nazi account posted one of the most racist things I’ve ever seen, using my name. I have a record of it but it’s indecent to share so I’ll try to describe it instead. It started out with a swastika and a voiceover: “This message is endorsed by Will Stancil.” And then: “KILL ALL N____S.” Then it played a song describing in detail all the ways “n____s” should be killed. Behind it was real footage of black toddlers and children being massacred.
Jun 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
You call for Trump to step down because you have a winning argument that it’s totally inappropriate for a party to nominate a guy who received 34 felony convictions five months before the election. Half of Americans already agree! Force the GOP to defend him. He’s not actually going to step down (although it wouldn’t be good for Republicans to lose their cult leader to scandal right before the election). But Democrats are half the political system, they have to make the argument he shouldn’t be in the race, or no one will.
May 23 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Trump would get a huge boost, not because anyone cares about "cumulative inflation," but because the massive far-right and far-left hysterical freakout about how prices "feel" too high would instantly cease the moment he won People do not actually have a detailed registry of price increases over time in their heads, they are just continually told that prices are too high (often with fake or exaggerated numbers) by their social media feeds, by the TV, by newspapers. If that stops no one will care