I was a student at UC Berkeley during the 2000 presidential election. The propaganda at that time was that Al Gore and George W. Bush were exactly the same candidate wearing different ties. There was no difference between them, so you should vote for Ralph Nader.
In 2016 the propaganda was Bernie Bros—and going both ways ("Hillary is an establishment candidate! You're not a real liberal if you don't vote for Bernie!" and also "Bernie will never win! If you EVER supported Bernie you're not a real liberal!").
This time the propaganda was Gaza. "How can you vote for a candidate that is a part of an administration responsible for GENOCIDE?!"
The thing with propaganda is it's always true—kind of. You can go right down the list and see the truth in all of these things:
Both Al Gore and George W. Bush were establishment candidates. Al Gore was the sitting vice president and a career politician and George W. Bush was the son of former president and vice president George Bush, who himself was vice president to Ronald Reagan.
HIllary Clinton was an establishment politican, the wife of a former president, and the sitting secretary of state. Bernie Sanders didn't have the party support to become the Democratic Party candidate on account of his history of independence.
Biden and Harris were in office during the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the US government has offered continued support to Israel in its couteroffensive.
Those things are true. But the true things were being used to distract the distractible from other arguably more important true things, e.g. that Al Gore's actual policies were more liberal than George W. Bush's; Hillary Clinton's policies were more liberal than Donald Trump's; and a Kamala Harris-led government was going to be better for Palestine than a Donald Trump-led government.
The goal with the propaganda each time was exaclty the same. It wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate or change policy or help Gaza.
The goal was to get liberals not to vote.
And it worked. Every time.
It'll work again, too, if we don't teach voters how to recognize this. It's pretty obvious though. If it's near an election and it's a wedge issue between liberal voters and ultra-liberal voters, that's the propaganda.
And it is 100% active and alive here on Tumblr.
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
snowghoul
areudirty
origamiaround
2087
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
