In the two-plus decades that I have been writing about liberal bias in the media, I’ve focused heavily on the unholy alliance between major “news” outlets and the Democratic National Committee as they craft, disseminate, and perpetuate false narratives. They’ve been doing it for a very long time, and they’re really, really good at it.
So, the last thing they need us on the Right need to do is help them.
Almost as long as I’ve been complaining about the Democrats’ prowess with false narratives, I’ve been lamenting the Republicans’ weakness when it comes to messaging. In fact, until recently, there’s been a general lack of coherence with messaging on the Right. The central flaw in the approach is believing that because we have facts, reason, and history on our side, everyone will eventually figure it out.
Sometimes everyone needs some help getting to the same place though.
I should note up front that this is not a general criticism of conservatives in media, or even all Republican officials. Yes, I’m fond of sweeping generalizations, but that’s not what this column is about.
Leftists are brilliant at duping people into effortlessly adopting euphemisms to distract from what they’re doing. Two of the most common — and insidious — are substituting “revenue” for “tax,” and “pro-choice” for “pro-abortion.” From “pro-choice” they were able to make the leap to referring to anything abortion-related as “women’s health.”
To someone who doesn’t spend as much time thinking and writing about the media, the power of this kind of word trickery may not seem obvious. These euphemisms, however, are the primary drivers of some of the most dangerous false narratives being sold to the American public today. People who aren’t voracious consumers of online political news can quickly get comfortable with the euphemisms because they’re bombarded with them everywhere in the media.
After Jim and Jan Undecided in St. Louis hear, “Republicans are trying to take away women’s health care!!!!” for the five thousandth time it starts to stick.
For this reason, it’s imperative that we on the Right — whether in media or not — never fall into the euphemism trap. Ever.
Over the years, I’ve seen and heard far too many elected Republican officials use “choice” instead of “abortion.” I honestly don’t think it’s even intentional much of the time. But it does damage to everything we on the Right hope to achieve.
One recent slip-up I’ve seen on occasion recently is referring to illegal immigrants as “migrants.” That is, of course, scaled down from “immigrants.”
It’s true that there are some people at our Southern border who are attempting migrate here legally. There are a lot more who are taking advantage of Team Biden’s lunacy and bum-rushing the border. They’re still illegal immigrants, no matter what the New York Times and AP Style Guide say.
Here’s the deal though: using the correct terminology red flags the tech censors and gets us demonetized. I’m not going to change my ways to appease the leftists. I’m merely going to write more VIP columns when the trigger words are involved. Using the promo code SAVEAMERICA, you can become a VIP member. With the code, your annual membership will cost under 50 cents a week for the regular membership, and around 85 cents a week for VIP Gold, which gets you access to all of the premium content on every Townhall Media site (PJ Media, Townhall, HotAir, RedState, Bearing Arms, and Twitchy). We’re not just committed to not letting the censors shut us down; we’re committed to making the alternative affordable for everyone who still seeks the truth.
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