7 Rules for Narrative Discipline in the Time of Trump

The next period in U.S. politics will be won on the battlefield of narratives. The recent presidential election was lost on that battlefield.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is always pointing out, the American people support progressive positions on many issues: Medicare for all, funding education, taxing the rich, gun control. And yet those were not issues in the recent election. Winning elections will involve creating and disseminating narratives that speak to those who don’t always already vote for Democrats.

Our country is roughly divided into three groups. First are those who have fully bought into the MAGA narrative, often for reasons having to do with white nationalism and a politics of resentment. As white cultural hegemony is declining and people feel a loss of a sense of themselves as the center of our national identity, few in this population are likely to be moved by anything our side does.

We are living in a time of an epistemological crisis, where it is very difficult to keep a clear sense of what is actually going on in our world.

Then there is the third of the population who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris. That is a wide-ranging group made up of people who truly believe in the neoliberal agenda of the mainstream corporate wing of the Democratic Party, people who believe in “the system” and wanted to save it from fascism, and those in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and on the left who voted pragmatically against U.S. President Donald Trump. That third votes reliably and always for Democrats.

Finally, there is the third who didn’t vote for president in the recent election, or who might have voted for either party, but who are not entrenched in their support. Many of them are against “the system” and don’t like either major party. Some see both parties as catering to the rich, to the global capitalist elite, or to the military-industrial complex. Many don’t vote because the whole election conversation doesn’t speak to them in ways they find compelling. That is the population that needs to be focused on if we are to defeat the right at the ballot box.

And winning them requires that we have narratives that speak to their interests and concerns. We need to engage with media in ways that don’t just flatter our own sense of righteousness, but rather that engage people in that moveable third.

Our opponents are very effective at using narrative and social media. Look at the TikTok war. Trump started it as a piece of anti-China rhetoric. Democrats and Republicans worked dutifully to come up with bipartisan legislation to ban the popular app. Then as the new administration was about to come into power the president said he would save TikTok. Users of the app got a menacing message saying it would go dark in the U.S. Then they got one saying that Trump had saved it. Now millions of people in the anti-system third of the electorate have Trump to thank for something tangible in their lives.

Similarly, I expect that as soon as the immigration raids continue, they will get a lot of publicity. People who care about immigrants will be horrified and heartbroken by that news. People on the other side will see the raids as a victory. And forgotten will be that immigration raids happened regularly under the Biden administration as a routine part of mainstream policy. But that won’t matter. The new administration will be seen as doing something bold to rid our country of people who have been vilified by the right and ignored by the liberal mainstream.

Immigration is one issue where progressives are deeply out of step with the mainstream. It is probably one of the biggest narrative failures of the recent election. Rather than reminding people that immigrants contribute positively to the country, that U.S. foreign policy and the climate crisis make people’s home countries unlivable, or even, on the anti-immigrant side, that former President Joe Biden had cracked down on immigration in his last year in office, Democrats rolled over and allowed the scapegoating narrative to take over.

And in mainstream and social media it was worse. The vicious and slanderous story told against legal immigrants who helped revitalize Springfield, Ohio was repeated over and over in the mainstream liberal media and on the comedy shows. In mocking its slander, liberals spread its vicious images and associations further. Some on our side tried but did not have any breakthrough narratives about the positive impact that Haitian immigrants have had on their community, and our country as a whole.

Even when we spread our outrage at the absurd statements of the current administration, we can inadvertently feed their power. The president’s absurd statements are compelling. We love to hate them. And that is why they exist. They feed the sense that the president can say and do whatever he wants and is unconstrained by any social structure, history, norms, or common sense. That image of him as transgressive actually enhances his power. And, the more we are outraged, the more those opposed to us take joy in the fact that someone has “owned the libs.” While absurd statements are candy for the outrage centers of our brains, they are distractions from the things that actually shift the balance of power and resources and impact people’s lives in this country.

We are living in a time of an epistemological crisis, where it is very difficult to keep a clear sense of what is actually going on in our world. Our shared sense of reality and ethics has been brutally undermined by the current tech-oligopoly dominated social media hellscape. When we focus on the absurdities and illusions rather than on real things that impact people’s lives, we are feeding the trolls.

The first few days of the administration being in power saw much attention to the president’s executive orders. I was surprised that in my feed there was very little on the overturning of Biden’s lowering of prescription drug benefits. I wanted to see devastating memes about the price of prescription drugs.

A Republican plan is circulating that would pay for the president’s tax cuts by cutting Medicare for 600,000 people. I want memes, satire, and news about that. We need to focus on helping people to see that the current administration is not on their side, to see the damage being done, and to see that there are alternative policies that actually would meet their needs and build livable communities.

If we are strategic and disciplined in how we communicate, we can help shift the common-sense notions people have of what is going on in our world and we can create counternarratives that help make the world make sense for our perspectives. We need to be smart about how we communicate on social media and in legacy media.

Here are Seven Rules for Narrative Discipline in the Time of Trump:

1. Don’t respond to the absurd things that people in power say;
2. Don’t give any more attention to the president as a person and personality than is necessary to make a point;
3. Amplify and spread news of the terrible things the administration does: policies that are changed, rules that are violated, money that is spent. Focus on ones that impact people’s everyday lives;
4. Amplify and spread news of our victories in the courts, on the streets, and in our communities;
5. Remember that the future belongs to those who speak to those who didn’t vote for Democrats, but who might;
6. Create and spread counternarratives that shine a positive light on the things you support; and
7. Above all, don’t feed the trolls.