PHILADELPHIA — Last week, a local Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty attracted attention for quoting Adolf Hitler in its newsletter. After the local paper reported the story, the group added additional “context” but kept the quote. Eventually, after it faced even more scrutiny, the organization removed the quote and apologized in a statement posted to its Facebook group.
That, however, was a big mistake, according to advice at the Moms for Liberty national conference’s media training session Friday.
“Never apologize. Ever,” said Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “This is my view. Other people have different views on this. I think apologizing makes you weak.”
He advised the attendees to instead make it clear that the Hitler comment was “vile” but to immediately pivot to make the point that Hitler indoctrinated children in schools and that that’s what Moms for Liberty was fighting against. Ziegler warned that any apology would become the headline, so that should be avoided.
You read that right. He said to not apologize for quoting Hitler. That’s what we’re dealing with now.
“I may be butting into a topic I don’t understand. I don’t know much about these Moms for Liberty except that I thing I’ve heard that they support trump.” I mean, it doesn’t take that much effort to go to wikipedia, but here, I’ve even done it for you:
Mom’s for Liberty is so much worse than what you’re implying here. They’re not some innocent gathering of parents who don’t want certain things taught in schools. They’re an astroturf, highly GOP connected, right wing campaign that has supported many things like anti-vax propaganda, book bans, anti-LGBT legislature, and the rest of the “normal” GOP stuff. They have an extensive history of getting caught calling for violence against those they disagree with. They have 3 separate sections on Wikipedia about the different people they have been caught threatening with violence.
From the very few references to them I’ve seen, that’s exactly what I assumed them to be.
That doesn’t excuse the behavior I see in this thread. By not addressing their points from a charitable perspective, you’re playing right into the astroturfer’s hands.
If you have real evidence to present of their true agenda, then present it. Otherwise, fight their presented agenda directly and advocate against their hidden agenda indirectly.
But most importantly there’s a comment on here jokingly kinda calling for armed genocide with as of writing SEVETEEN upvotes. There’s something deeply wrong with this community and that’s what I object to the most.
“By not addressing their points from a charitable perspective, you’re playing right into the astroturfer’s hands.”
That’s the exact opposite of how this works. The GOP astroturfers want the conversation to be about “addressing concerns of these poor mothers, whose innocent children are being subjected to XYZ” meanwhile they get to keep fear mongering and raising money. You can tell these people that book banning isn’t a good idea for thousands of reasons but that’d be meaningless. They don’t care about book banning in the first place. They care about raising money and fear mongering as a way to do so.
And now you’re accusing them of being Nazi’s. But THEY know they’re not Nazis (well those of them that aren’t nazis think they’re not nazis). So who are you trying to convince? Yourselves? Now they’re worried because people are lying about them and what they want and then they’ll just donate to the astroturfing organization that’s protecting them from the unhinged lunatics accusing them of being nazis.
You need to fight on both fronts, you have to use a charitable approach to slow down grass roots recruiting. AND you attack the values and falsehoods behind the hidden agenda.
They have their public claims and they have their behind closed doors claims. You combat their public claims directly and proactively promote the counterarguments to their behind closed doors claims.
You also indict them for ACTUAL poor behavior that they’ve done.
This is the best source I could find for the original context for the Hitler quote. Sticking strictly to the context of that image, it’s classic: Hitler did this thing that the government is doing, that’s why we have to fight against it.
I don’t have the actual original before the yellow box was added, so I can’t say if the yellow box was the only change. But now all you’re doing by attacking them on this nothingburger of a Hitler quote, is you’ve given them ammunition to talk about how irrational and unreasonable the people opposing them are.
The accusation of ambitions similar to that of Hitler could be true, but your evidence doesn’t support it at all. All you’re doing is whipping up your side to an irrational fervor which will get noticed by the other side and then they’ll do the same thing.
You’re making things worse, not better.
I don’t know. That’s how I do advocacy, maybe it’s ineffective. I think it works on the people where something can work and doesn’t work on the people where nothing worse. This more unhinged kinda of advocacy is pushing away the people on whom it can work, helps turn the people on your side into lunatics and helps to turn people on the other side into even worse lunatics.
