Mass Psychology
I was thinking about a post here I read a few days ago which was titled "Labelism/Labelist ", don't remember the user's name who wrote it, but it got me thinking a bit.
I was initially quite skeptical about how merely "Labelling" someone or some ideology can be useful in any way. But looking at some instances in recent times, it actually seems like a very effective tool, considering most people nowadays (arguably more so in the past) have no willingness to even read a complete article, let alone fact check the details provided to them, they are happy with simply reading headlines and moving on. If the headline is from a reputable source, they'll most likely trust it without cross verification or looking up other sources to check if the details match (fortunately it is changing though, thanks to CNN and others massive failures).
So what is the best way to drive your narrative home the quickest, in minimal words?
Labelling, of course. Shock value helps too, gets the people talking and hearsay becomes "fact", of course no one is going to verify all that information, maybe to them it's not worth the effort or maybe they just like being lied to, I will never know. And the media outlet sure as hell is not going to apologize and correct their "mistaken" reporting. The half truths, or complete lies, get ingrained in people's memory as facts, even if they get debunked later, its definitely not reaching all of those people, let alone reverse their stance. Despite what they say about public memory being stupidly short, first impressions are usually lasting.
For example, most people still believe Trump raped some woman because it was trending around the elections time, at the heat of the period when Trump was being slandered left and right. This was later proved to be a false accusation but I doubt it even had 10% of reach the original reports had, primarily due to the shock value and confirmation bias it carried. Simply put, people want something to be true, it will get popular much easily.
Once he got labelled "racist" and "rapist", it was extremely difficult to undo that opinion among those who hated him.
Another thing the governments do very well is shutting down skeptical thought by discrediting conspiracy theorists. They pick a few manifestly untrue claims and take them apart, popularize them in the mainstream culture; thus totally destroying their credibility in the eyes of public and can therefore "get away" with not giving a platform to actual conspiracy theorists with substance. No one wants to hear from them anymore. This is the worst.
Labeling works so well, people use "Conspiracy theorist" almost synonymously with "delusional paranoid" like how "Hitler" is used synonymously with "evil" .
-create strawmen
-label a person/movement/ idea
-obnoxiously repeat it everywhere until it starts becoming a meme (Dawkins idea of a meme)
-watch as your rhetoric is being further strengthened as the meme gets shared and spreads rapidly
-congratulations you've managed to suppress legitimate thinkers by getting them under an umbrella term that doesn't go too well with public.
Occupy Democrats are the worst in this regard (if they can even be called a "news source")
All with just a LOUD voice and sheer reach, no evidence, reason or logic. Media is arguably the most powerful institution in the world at the moment.
Excellent text @josephd, that deserves to be seen. Use tags as @stevescoins suggested, and you will certainly have better results. Steem on!
nice post; I'm going to link this in a list of Steemit blogs concerning #fakenews and #informationwar.
Labeling is a double edged sword; it can be both a tool of propaganda and a valid method for classifying positions. Obviously, sometimes when it is is used for propaganda, it isn't valid ;>
I totally agree with your overall assessment, although I wouldn't use this line of thinking to defend Trump but rather to call out all major factions, the media, the left, the right, the Trump train.
The easiest way to undermine someones position is to label them because then you can associate the foolish acts of others who are lumped into the same label and appeal to peoples narrow minded stereotypes. This is true for both sides, "Trump supporters are all racist" ridiculous! "Black Lives Matter is a hate group" , even more ridiculous!. Labels basically serve the agenda of people who spout BS from either sides and create a stronger concept of "the other".
I'm not saying labels are useless, but we rely on them too easily. They work when you are studying demographics and talking about certain trends but do we really need to create a term for someone who is somewhere between straight and bisexual? Can't someone just say "I'm kind of in between?" Do we need a label for everyone?
The ones who get the worst treatment are usually people who are not entirely capitalist in their philosophies. We associate the words socialism and communism with countries that are anything but and are much closer to authoritarian in nature (they self identitfy as such and the US reinforces the label, both for their own benefit), and so the words have become derogatory when they actually stand for certain ideas that few people take the time to really ponder. Not many people know that the views of Noam Chomsky is a lot closer to many anarchists that “chaos and destruction" and riots.
Haha I got pretty carried away in making this reply, I originally wanted to make it really short