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catbyte

(34,408 posts)
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 10:45 AM Feb 2020

How should Democrats fight back against Trump's billion-dollar "Death Star"?

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has built a $1 billion disinformation machine. Here's how to beat it

Bob Cesca
February 11, 2020 1:00PM (UTC)

They're calling it the "Death Star." While supporters of the various Democratic candidates for president pummel each other online, Grand Moff Brad Parscale, Donald Trump's campaign manager, is deploying this appropriately nicknamed $1 billion disinformation machine with the real potential to obliterate even the most perfect Democratic ticket this fall. For starters.

Among other things, this raises an extraordinarily important question: How exactly do the Democrats fight back against what amounts to a nuclear arsenal of lies and kooky conspiracy theories? We'll circle back to that.

McKay Coppins' terrifying new article for The Atlantic, "The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President," about Parscale's Rosslyn, Virginia-based agitprop factory, the "Death Star," is a stop-the-presses moment for this election. Frankly, the size and despot-scale cynicism of Parscale's project is almost too much to comprehend, rendering the myriad other Jenga pieces in this election small by comparison.

In essence what Coppins exposes here is everything we've heard about the nefarious, Robert Mueller-indicted Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia, but knocked off and weaponized domestically by Trump and Parscale, with the purpose of brainwashing millions of American social media users, poisoning their minds by polluting their Facebook feeds with laser-targeted, customized propaganda designed to make sure Trump gets a second term.

Coppins calls it "the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history."

snip

https://www.salon.com/2020/02/11/how-should-democrats-fight-back-against-trumps-billion-dollar-death-star/
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Well, this article certainly did not brighten my morning. Yikes.

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Cicada

(4,533 posts)
3. Register voters in Michigan, PA, Wisconsin Minnesota
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 11:13 AM
Feb 2020

Random assignment experiments show it costs about $31 to register an additional voter. If we register from heavily democratic areas 200,000 in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and 500,000 in Pennsylvania then we win those states. Cost say $50 million. Turn out? Hire performers popular with our low voter turnout people, book shows next to voting places, offer free ubers to and from the performances. Bloomberg has $700 million left. Cost for registration and shows? $100 million.

NewJeffCT

(56,828 posts)
4. It's not just about registering voters
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 11:22 AM
Feb 2020

between 2012 and 2016, voter registration surged by around 50 million - from 150 million to over 200 million.

However, turnout only went up a fraction of that increase - about 7 million.

It's getting people out to vote.

Cicada

(4,533 posts)
10. I agree with you that turnout is more important
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 12:21 PM
Feb 2020

I wish it were legal to pay people to vote. A morning drive time DJ in LA when I was there used to have parties for listeners. He always gave a must get laid guarantee for all who attended. I’m not sure we can do that. I wish we could. But I would like to try free performances next to voting precincts to get young voters out.

CaptYossarian

(6,448 posts)
5. The GOP (Govt. of Putin) is trying to eradicate 200,000 WI voters right now.
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 11:32 AM
Feb 2020

If our side doesn't win the case, we need to replace them. This was based on mailings sent out to see if people were still residing at the addresses where they were registered to vote. If there was no response, they were put on the "kill" list to be removed. Some may be legit, but a lot may have not been delivered in some blue districts.

Another idea is to drive people to their polls--wherever the polls have secretly moved to. Put ads in grocery stores, gas stations, and laundromats on their corkboards--with permission. A local college would get younger, Democratic-leaning voters (hopefully) to the polls. Maybe a letter to the editor in the local paper, because an ad would cost money.

My community is small (under 2,000) and has its only voting place in the Community Hall 1,000' from my front door. Plus, we only use paper ballots.

Malmsy

(297 posts)
7. By electing a POTUS that will fight the military industrial complex
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 11:51 AM
Feb 2020

and refuse to approve any funding for it!

blugbox

(951 posts)
8. They really reeaaaalllly want to be the Empire
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 12:00 PM
Feb 2020

Parscale is calling their disinformation campaign the "death star"

tRump Jr. is calling Democrats the "resistance"

When does tRump march out the storm troopers?

More importantly, when does he fucking fall into the power core of his stupid death star and blow the fuck up??

ooky

(8,924 posts)
12. It is a real challenge to have to fight off all their lies.
Tue Feb 11, 2020, 12:51 PM
Feb 2020

It's one thing for Democrats to produce ads pointing out the truths, but when the Republican plan is to just blatantly outright lie in response, well, that's hard to know how to counter. Now you not only have to run ads to get the truth out, but more ads to dispel their lies about the truth. It's nuts. And it's a shame the moral and ethical value of honesty has so disappeared in our society that this is a tactic that should even work on some voters, much less an entire party of voters. It really stinks.

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