Robert Reich is right about the Right, but AI could help fight back

Summary of: Four ways the mainstream media is quietly helping Trump and his Republican allies

by Robert Reich 27 Nov 2023 (subscribe here for Robert Reich’s emails)

1. False Equivalence Between Trump and Biden: The media often compares Biden’s age to Trump’s criminal indictments, overlooking the fact that Trump’s age and increasingly erratic public remarks may also be a concern.
2. Balancing Coverage by Criticizing Democrats: Media attempts to balance reports on Trump and Republicans’ neofascist tendencies by highlighting faults in the Democratic Party. This creates a perception that all politics is corrupt, overshadowing Biden’s accomplishments.
3. Presenting Dysfunction as Bipartisan: Mainstream media portrays political dysfunction in Washington as a problem of both parties, failing to emphasize the GOP’s rejection of legal norms, democratic principles, and the legitimacy of opposition.
4. Feeding into the Strongman Narrative: By blaming both parties for political chaos, media narratives inadvertently support Trump’s authoritarian narrative, suggesting that a strongman is needed to govern an “ungovernable” nation.

This is an excellent piece of analysis by Robert Reich and underlines how successful the Right has been with its culture wars. In part because of the pathetic lack of critical thinking and dearth of philosophical tools and discussion in the UK (and to a slightly lesser extent in the US), it is quite possible that this strategy will succeed (or, some might say, continue succeeding). Reich’s last point that Trump et al claim that nations are now ungovernable and therefore need a strong man (ie a Right-wing one, ideally a fascist) is very powerful.

Amongst the easiest responses: we should all be talking about politics and philosophy, the lies of the Right, and trying to disseminate the tools that can help fight the culture wars strategy and the propaganda of the Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph, Sun, etc, and in the US, Right-wing hate radio, Fox News, etc. The trouble is, people get very upset when they are challenged so it has to be done delicatedly. I have also argued that combating the Right takes a huge amount of knowledge as well as carefully chosen strategy and it is not fair to expect most people to have this knowledge and skill (but the Right knows this and they train people in how to be knowledgeable and skilful in their own ghastly and vicious arts). This is a place (fighting the superior knowledge, skills, analytical sophistry, and strategy of the Right) where AI, and especially LLMs, can help immensely because they do have huge knowledge and their analysis can be amazing.