The lies that we usually hear about in the media are the little lies. For example, the comprehensive list of Trump lies published by The New York Times. These are the lies that are okay for the media to “fact check.” What we hear a lot less about are the lies that corporate special interests use to get enough of America to believe that their agenda is in the best interests of Americans.
As the year wraps up, I thought I’d take a stab at a top 10 list of corporate special interest group lies, how they’re used, and how to reframe the conversation when you hear people repeat the propaganda. Corporate special interests understand that lasting legislation is grounded in social movements. That is, policy change starts at ground level with social change:
Social change -> political change -> policy change
They invest so much money in media because if they can shape peoples’ ideas about how things should work optimally, then legislation will have support. And politicians will have to talk about these ideas in order to get elected.
It’s very similar to advertising. They sell the American public on ideas about how America should work. These ideas are often contrary to what would actually be in the best interests of Americans and more and more they diverge from reality.
This said, here’s my take on the top corporate special interest group lies of 2017.
10. Reform
Any time you hear the word reform these days, warning lights should go off. Education reform. Tax reform. Pension reform. Social security reform.
“Reform” has been picked up seemingly ubiquitously by corporate special interests who are trying to privatize a public sector function.
As Matt Taibbi writes about pension “reform”:
In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities.
What goes largely unreported in almost all cases are the actual causes of <insert problem here> and who is being paid or stand to profit from “reform.” When you can, follow the money and point out who’s being paid for “reform.”
9. Freedom
Freedom falls to number 9 this year as it seems to have fallen out of favor after being overused by the tea party. Another group that has rebranded as the “alt right.” Both preferably better with Joe Public than Neo-Nazi.
In the corporate special interest group world, ”freedom” is used to sell us that what will really make our lives better is more consumer choice. It is often used to try to get rid of regulations designed to protect the public from predatory practices. For instance, we don’t need the consumer financial protection bureau because it adds regulations that “interfere” with “free” markets.
The tea-party version of “freedom” is apparently doing so badly that religious lobbyists have replaced “religious freedom” with “religious liberty.” Either that, or they felt it sounded too much like the Jeffersonian “freedom of religion.” Religious liberty by the way tends to mean discrimination against people some religion doesn’t like.
I think freedom is ripe for taking back. I often use it to talk about how one of the things that makes us really free is being financially secure. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech is a great read that can help you talk about freedom.
8. Tax cuts create jobs
As you may have guessed, we’ve heard a lot of lies lately about the economy because of the recent tax handouts Republicans passed for corporate special interests.
Lies about the economy are particularly important to corporate special interests as they can be reused over and over to sell different “products.”
Here’s President Trump repeating this view:
What actually creates jobs is demand. When demand increases, supply needs to increase and this is what creates jobs. If we really cared about jobs, our policies would create a stronger middle class that would drive consumer demand. Consumer spending (demand) drives 70 percent of the economy. Consumers must be in sound financial shape to drive the economy. Basically, this means not in debt or overburdened.
7. Guns are people, too
Okay, this item is a category rather than a specific claim. I mention it because the NRA is probably the second-most successful corporate lobbyist in the country (after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce).
A few of their top hits include:
- Guns don’t kill people; people kill people
- Obama (or insert scary liberal here) is going to take away your guns
- Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun
- Gun “rights” (replacing “peoples’ rights”?)
- Holy shit we’re all gonna die unless you have a gun
The NRA makes the list because when it comes to instilling fear in Americans (who are already terrified of people who don’t look and act like them), few do it better.
We will likely continue to live with mass shootings in the future until we can start to unelect politicians connected with the gun lobby.
6. The “liberal” media
This is a lie that goes way back. It has many purposes but probably the biggest one is that what corporate special interests want is often significantly at odds with research on the subject and/or what the public wants.
The simplest example here is global warming. The scientific community agrees on what’s causing global warming. The media has a duty to report accurately on the subject.
When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When they’re not on your side, attack something else. How corporate special interests do this is by accusing the media of a “liberal” bias. This is, of course, ridiculous. Especially since 90 percent of the media is owned by 6 multinational corporations.
Most media is a corporate for profit enterprise. That is, more often than not what you’ll see in the media are stories designed to get you to buy their paper, or watch their show, or listen to their radio station. If it bleeds, it ledes. This is why the media is concerned with scandal, celebrities, gossip and fear.
When it comes to politics, mainstream media rarely takes a strong standpoint on issues unless it is being paid to take a standpoint. Most media would prefer to be an arms dealer to all interests rather than risk offending any one corporate special interest advertiser.
5. Economic growth benefits everyone
We hear this in several forms. More often than not what we’ll hear is that we want economic growth. It’s good for the economy to be growing.
The assumption in this premise is that economic growth benefits everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats.
While economic growth tended to benefit more people in the past, the data suggests that increasingly all the benefits go to a few people at the top. This isn’t necessarily to say that growth in and of itself is an undesirable thing. The problem is that in the past it benefited many and now it’s not.
4. “Small” government
Small government moves down a few notches to occupy the fourth spot after falling somewhat out of favor with Trump propagandists. It still, however, is one of the top frames repeated to help corporate special interests get what they want.
In this case, what they want is twofold: 1) to pay less for our country and have more for themselves, and 2) to get rid of regulations that they don’t want to abide by.
The idea, as I’ve heard it repeated countless times, is that we need to give government less power and the belief is that it somehow translates into people have more power.
What’s really going on, however, is that certain corporations are getting so big that they’re actually starting to act like their own governments. They want to write their own rules and they don’t like any pesky interference from “We, the people ...”
I like to reframe this by talking about democracy as what we really want. That is, I would rather have a government that works for people than a corrupt government that works for corporate special interests.
Put people on one side and corporate special interests on the other and talk about what’s really best. Capitalism works best when paired with democracy (rather than when it’s an extraction economy that only benefits a small group of people).
3. The wealthy “create” jobs
The Job Creators Network is actually a corporate special interest think tank founded by former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus. The idea is that the wealthy are the ones who somehow “create” jobs. Owners seem to like to market themselves as “job creators” because then the idea becomes that we need to give them more if we want to create more jobs. I’ve heard this rephrased by many these days as “Have you ever gotten a job from a poor person?”
One way I’ve found that works well in reframing this is asking the question: Why are more people hired around Christmas time? It’s a softball question where everyone knows the answer. It’s obvious. People are shopping. There’s increased demand. Demand creates jobs.
As John Harvey, professor of economics at Texas Christian University writes:
Why do all the stores at the mall hire extra workers over November and December? Because profits rose in October? Of course not, it’s because they expect extra sales over the holiday season. The rise in sales increases employment and investment–and then profits go up. You can’t reverse the order and expect the same results.
After you set things up like this you can then ask: Why do you think giving corporations or the wealthy more would “create jobs”?
Currently, corporations are sitting on $2.3 trillion in cash reserves. If they’re not creating jobs now, they’re not going to create any jobs if we give them more.
2. Trump is a populist
This entry is new in 2017 with the election of Trump but one of my favorite lies. You’ll hear this in news organization after news organization (see “liberal” media above). Here’s NPR talking about “populist” Trump.
This is an example of Hitler’s “the big lie.” Take a narcissistic billionaire who only cares his own “deals” and let’s call him a populist. A populist would work in the interests of people.
In reality, as we’ve seen most recently with his tax plan for billionaires: Trump is the establishment. As he bragged to his Mar-a-Lago crowd recently:
You all just got a lot richer.
1. Both “sides” are the same
I can’t give the top spot to Trump, however. Not even when it comes to lying. The top spot rather goes to a more insidious lie that I heard most during the 2016 election that I fear will return in 2018 as corporate special interests sharpen their spin with some new techniques gained from Russian propagandists.
This idea is that no matter how bad Trump and the GOP Congress are, any alternative is going to be “just as bad.” Corporate special interests use this narrative to discourage people from voting. The idea is that your vote won’t matter anyway so why bother?
Of course they personally work to make sure that people who support corporate special interests turn out to vote. They fire them up with wedge issues and they tell their base that we even need to elect pedophiles in order to enact our agenda. If anything, this is how we should know that voting matters.
Remember this in 2018 because it’s a lot easier to convince people who agree with you (even if it’s not on everything) to get out to vote than it is to try to change hardcore conservative minds. Let’s convince some people in 2018 that if we really want to change things we not only need our own social movements, we need to elect better representatives.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).