A couple of folks recently expressed interest in my experience in online conservative political forums. The comment I often hear from people is, “How do you know so much about politics?”
I always find this to be a funny question because I really don’t know much about politics, at least not the way they’re thinking about it. What I know a lot about is values and how to talk to people about values. I know how to make powerful moral arguments.
The reason I do this is because social media is powerful. If you don’t believe me, just look at how it was used to influence the last election.
It’s not hard to develop powerful social media skills, but it takes thinking about things a little differently. And it takes practice, too.
To help, I thought I’d break down a recent example.
A few notes on groups
I’m going to talk about Facebook because FB is the largest social media platform, not because I have any particular love for the company. The simple current reality is that if you want to make an impact, the way to do it is through FB because it is the platform that the most people are on.
There are several different kinds of political groups you’ll find. There are groups formed around specific issues. There are groups formed for specific organizations. There are groups formed around actions. I’ve even seen political groups formed simply to insult each other.
The groups I’m going to talk about today are groups formed for political discussion. These type of groups generally have a diverse group of people in them who are all interested in politics. I often use my own FB page like this as well, because I have a lot of friends who are interested in political discussions.
The goal in a diverse public forum
Most people would agree that the goal in a political discussion is to win the discussion. But what does “win” mean?
In academia, the goal is to present the most rational argument.
I’m going to argue that your goal should really be different. You want to win hearts and minds. You want to win people to your side of a particular issue. This is the goal of an activist.
To do this, there are three audiences that you need to consider: allies, independents, and opponents.
In a democracy, this is a numbers game. You win when there are more allies than independents and opponents.
The rule for doing this is simple. You want to:
Empower your allies, win independents, and isolate opponents.
You’ll see different versions of this rule appear in just about every book on no-violent political activism. A couple of my favorites are After the Ball and Blueprint for Revolution.
Just making this switch in mindset makes a huge difference in how successful you will be in these forums.
An example
So how does this work? Let’s walk through an example.
The group I’m going to use is called Greater Cincinnati Politics. It’s a group run by our local newspaper primarily to try to spread their own articles about politics. It fits the criteria for having a diverse audience interested in talking about politics. In this group, on every issue you’ll find allies, independents, and opponents. In terms of liberal vs. conservative, the forum skews liberal but there are a lot of conservatives, a few of whom are there just to troll the forum. Most, however, are genuine activists who believe in what they see as conservative philosophy.
The topic for this particular example is education.
The post that I used to bring up the topic is a divisive one (on purpose) about a statement made by our departing governor.
Here’s the link if you’re interested in joining our group and seeing the entire discussion.
Your initial post often determines whether or not you will win. You win when you take a strong, morally defensible stance. The moral stance I’m taking through humor in this post is, if Kasich really cared so much for his fundamental restructuring, why didn’t he do it when he was governor? On this stance, I’ve already won because everyone can agree that if he cared about it, he should have done something. If anyone says otherwise, they look like a fool and it’s easy for me to isolate them as radicals. I’m already applying my rules.
This said, I really don’t care for Kasich’s ‘fundamental restructuring’ ideas. The real moral point I want to make is that we should strongly support our public schools and stop trying to outsource them. So I follow up with this point:
I could have led with this second post. But by starting with something where we all agree, I’ve started on common ground. I’ve started on something we can all agree on. Then I’ve moved to something a little more contentious: the case for supporting our public schools.
Either way, both are very strong moral positions that I know I can defend.
Then, you sit back to see who comments and look to: Empower your allies, win independents, and isolate opponents.
Empowering allies
The first person to respond was an ally. I’ll blot out the names with the color blue for allies.
It’s important to recognize your allies on social media. The easiest way to do this is to simply like their comments. So this is the first thing I did. I then went further and wrote her a supportive comment.
When you recognize allies, you encourage them to comment more, or even post in the future. And you also encourage others to comment, like, and post.
One of the next commenters was also an ally. This person went more into policy details.
This is taking the conversation in a different direction: Talking about specific policies. I suggest not leading with policy discussions because of my stated goal. The reason for this is that policy discussions tend to divide people who agree with each other morally. This person is clearly an ally though, so I want to empower allies liking and responding:
I didn’t do the best on this response. You can tell by how few people liked it. Fortunately, another ally hopped on and did a better job of empowerment than me.
The two of them then talked more about policy specifics, and I moved on to other commenters.
Isolating opponents
One of the next folks to respond had an interesting comment.
This person is clearly an opponent of my public school position, but an ally of my original post about Kasich who saw Kasich as not doing enough. Opponents I will blot out in red. This is why, even though a Republican, he claims Kasich was a failure. While it may seem confusing to anyone who knows that Kasich has always been a tea party conservative, you see comments like this often from movement conservatives. They feel that if someone like Kasich was only more of a movement conservative, he would have been more successful. He doesn’t feel Kasich is fighting hard enough. On the flip side, you’ll often see this from movement liberals as well.
I could just let this comment slide as the person really isn’t disagreeing. But I wanted to push point No. 2 further. I know from past experience that I’m not likely to win this individual. That’s not my goal though. My goal is to isolate him. You do this by making him look like a radical.
So what I did was start where we agree (our dislike for Kasich), then addressed his “socialist” comment.
You can often tell a good comment by how many people like it. Also, this demonstrates that I have people on my side. When his comments don’t, he’s isolated.
After making these comments, what I hoped would happen happened. First, another ally jumped on and helped make his point look radical and ridiculous.
I laughed at his comment to back up another ally. We’ve got a fight going, so people are going to watch. The added bonus of this fight is that it keeps bumping my post to the top of the forum. This allows more people to see it.
Then, I introduced my moral position on education.
Again, look at the likes. I’m still drawing people to me. Empowering my allies, winning independents, and isolating opponents.
Winning independents
A person who usually takes conservative positions even sides with me to some extent. On this issue though, she is demonstrating some amount of support, so I treat her like an independent.
If someone is agreeing with you about something, you want to give them credit. Acknowledge the agreement. What this person is doing with the Bill Gates comment is testing me to see if I support what she sees as “Democratic,” or if I’m serious about the issue.
I stick to my moral argument of standing for public schools and letting teachers do their jobs.
Because I stick to these strong moral arguments, it’s easy for people to side with me. And it’s difficult for opponents. Because of this, she takes my side against Mr. Capitalism Know-It-All.
Independent No. 2
Independent No. 2 is actually usually a conservative as well. His first comment is along similar lines to the previous opponent: he sides with my original comment but for different reasons. He takes my own approach from starting from commonality and then trying to make his point. His effort is a good one.
He wants people to side with him in their disgust for politicians. I consider this an independent comment because he’s not directly opposing my position.
This said, I do want to make sure people understand that this isn’t what happened. What happened is that Kasich did try to address the problem. Not only didn’t it work, but it made things worse.
An opponent tries to win over the independent commenter.
I immediately isolate the opponent.
Trolls
Trolls are opponents who try to win by simply attacking you. Often they try this through humor. When someone trolls you, you are not in a discussion anymore. They’re acknowledging that you have a better position and they can’t win through a moral argument.
So they try to change the subject. They throw out some bait and usually try to make you take it so you’re just attacking each other. In this example, the troll tries humor:
You can see how a couple opponents liked this approach. The laughter like is actually me.
My approach in this example was to acknowledge the humor by liking with a “Haha” and then responding in turn.
When you are attacked in this fashion, you can often stand up to folks by simply acknowledging that they’re being funny and then punching back harder. I could come up with funnier movie quotes than him all day, while he’s boosting my post more if he fights, so it’s a fight I’m willing to take. I’ve managed to call him out as a “Dumbass” in a clever way without getting mad (what he wanted).
I know I’m winning because more people liked my comment and someone else followed up with another movie comment meaning, that they’re willing to play the game on my side with me.
From a moral standpoint, I’m in the right too. The lesson most people have been taught is, “Don’t dish it out unless you can take it.” He picked the fight. All I did was demonstrate that I’m willing to fight on his terms and I’m better at it that he is. Meaning, he’s going to lose more if he keeps it up or gets mad. He can’t be upset that I’m joking back with him either, or he loses.
Like most bullies do when they know they can’t win, he backs down. He doesn’t comment any more.
Summary
Social media is a powerful tool for political activism. When used well, you can make your point to hundreds, if not thousands. If something happens to go viral, you can make your point to millions. In this example, since more than 100 people reacted, it’s very likely that more than 1,000 people in the forum saw the post.
Because this forum is run by the Cincinnati Enquirer, many of the local power players hang out in this group. All of our city council follows it. The chairs of both the local Democratic and Republican parties are in there as well, along with all of the local political reporters. All kinds of local activists and people interested in politics also belong to the forum. For this reason, the reach and influence of this group can be tremendous. I’ve been asked to write editorials based on some of my posts in the group, for example.
Look for groups like this if you’re interested in being a political influencer through social media. If it helps, watch what other folks do and practice for a bit by commenting on others posts. See how people react.
What you want to remember is that your goal in forums like this isn’t to win an argument. It’s to win people to your cause. It’s easy to do if you remember and practice the following:
Empower your allies, win independents, and isolate opponents.
If enough people learn how to do this in your area (and nationally), we will win on issue after issue.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (print or ebook).