Get in the habit of correcting misinformation and pointing out Russian propaganda. The most recent example going around is a video of “Ukrainian” soldiers shooting a fuse that then lights a mannequin with a Trump hat and t-shirt on fire. To anyone at all familiar with the conflict this is obviously fake, but to anyone who is not it might seem believable.
REALLY IMPORTANT: Being right is only half of the battle, the way you sound and the way your message comes across matters a lot too. You MUST tailor the way you make your point to the audience(s) you hope to reach.
In this case, we would tailor our message to outraged Trump supporters. The most important factor with this specific audience is to never let them think you are mocking them with a smug self-satisfied tone. That’s what motivates the “owning the libs” attitude. They feel like the urban/coastal elites don’t care about them and are talking down to them and if they hear that in your response they won’t listen.
The second thing is don’t sound “feminine”, especially as a man. I know that that is ridiculous, but the association among trump voters that liberals are “pussies” and that they are emotional and talk around what they mean instead of “saying it like it is” is actually an important factor in why they don’t listen (especially for young men). It would be better to tell them to their face “your retarded” or if you can’t bring yourself to use a slur, “you’re a moron/idiot/etc” then it would be to imply that they’re stupid. If you’re going to call them stupid (high risk high reward way to flip the exterior audience) you can’t use condescending implication, you need to say it with your chest. You have to say everything with your chest.
You’re not talking to other people who can see through the propaganda on their own, so you should only ever call the person stupid once you have demonstrated to the other people who would have believed it why they shouldn’t believe it and that they can identify more with you than with the first person. That’s what I mean by high risk high reward.
Safe Example:
These are Russians pretendending to be Ukrainians.
Non-Eastern Europeans aren’t used to seeing Russian Propaganda but here is how you can tell:
- The soldiers only have 1 patch, the one that identifies them as Ukrainian, real soldiers have many patches, such as their unit, and battalion etc.
- The “Ukrainian Patch” is perfectly centered in frame as if that’s all they ever wanted you to see.
- Their faces are covered so no one can confirm who they are and which side they’re on.
- There is no location data to identify that they are in Ukrainian controlled territory.
- An earnest display of anger would be directed at the politician, not his supporters, Ukrainians don’t hate Trump they love any/all Americans for all of our allyship, but they do hate Putin, so they shoot targets with Putin’s face or his generals’ faces, not his civilian supporters’ faces\effigies. The only reason anyone would target civilian supporters (even in effigy) would be to turn the people of a country against you. Which Ukrainians don’t want from the Russian people, let alone the American people.
- Now that Trump has one Ukrainians have no incentive to anger trump or trump supporters. They rely on American support, they know that; they don’t want to anger any American politician or American People. As a side note that is also why it’s unfair to blame Zelenskyy for anything to do with American politics, he has to be very careful not to anger either side for the sake of his people, and that may be part of why he had to placate Democrats in case they won.
- Do you know who does have a MASSIVE incentive to convince Trump or his supporters that Ukrainians hate him/them? The Russians who benefit massively if we give Ukraine a bad deal or stop helping the Ukrainians
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