A vast middle-wing conspiracy

February 6, 2021 5:14 AM

What a lot of people did (mostly left, but also some on the right) to make the election run smoothly and honestly. "There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy."

It's easier to predict disaster than to estimate the resilience in the system.

posted by Nancy Lebovitz (51 comments total)

It seems a little tone-deaf on Time magazine's part to use the word "conspiracy" here. A vague agreement between labor and capital? This article has just enough fodder for people to spin it into whatever conspiracy theory they want.
posted by Idle Curiosity at 5:36 AM on February 6, 2021 [36 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. This is what I fervently hoped my fellow Americans were doing, but it’s not sexy so it doesn’t make the news as much as the scary, scary drama (of which there was plenty).

I don’t usually read the Times, but I found this interesting and, dare I say it, encouraging.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 6:22 AM on February 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

probably not that Karen Blair:

Yes, I liked it a lot. It's good to read about people doing boring, sensible things that work.

Nitpick: the article is in Time magazine, not the New York Times.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:27 AM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I have been forwarding this article to various friends who were active in the 2020 election campains. We were mostly focused on direct electioneering, and it is wonderful to see folks on both sides of the aisle who believed that the system itself needed supporting. As many have said in many different MetaFilter threads, it's horrifying that private citizens needed to step in. But they did and the results were good. I celebrate that.
posted by PhineasGage at 6:41 AM on February 6, 2021 [11 favorites]

Nancy, yeah, that was sloppy. I read the Times every day; I haven’t looked at Time since the 90s.

PhineasGage, I feel that so strongly, too. I also want to springboard from that idea and observe that in another way the concept of “private citizens” is— idk. There is a very real way in which there are no private citizens. America is us. We all do better when we all participate with all the influence we have. People like those in the article are part of what makes democracy resilient. It is dangerous to rely on the idea of Institutional Democracy. It’s just people. People who put country over party. People who continuously assert, from generation to generation that we value democracy. But by that i am not disagreeing with you, either.
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 6:57 AM on February 6, 2021 [12 favorites]

It seems a little tone-deaf on Time magazine's part to use the word "conspiracy" here. A vague agreement between labor and capital? This article has just enough fodder for people to spin it into whatever conspiracy theory they want.

This. I've already seen this article shared on Facebook this morning with "THEY RIGGED THE ELECTION" commentary from the poster.
posted by bassooner at 6:57 AM on February 6, 2021 [18 favorites]

It's framed as a "conspiracy" in order to get clicks amongst the people who want it to be a conspiracy. It's dishonest and directly aimed at damaging society in order to get more shares and engagement from violent psychopaths and the individuals responsible for that framing should be given several decades in an oubliette to consider whether or not it was a good idea.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:15 AM on February 6, 2021 [53 favorites]

Find in page: Abrams
0/0

Huh.
posted by eviemath at 7:30 AM on February 6, 2021 [25 favorites]

eviemath, that's an interesting point. It's possible that Abrams wasn't part of the secret effort, but that seems unlikely.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:41 AM on February 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Overall, the named people in the piece are primarily (though not exclusively) from primarily white organizations.

It's an important story. Unfortunately poorly told.
posted by eviemath at 7:53 AM on February 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Abrams rallied people to vote Democrat. What the article describes is non-partisan work to make the election run smoothly. Unless I’m mistaken, Abrams role in this election was strictly steered towards winning it for her candidate. It’s absolutely not a negative, but it’s a different job.
posted by papineau at 8:20 AM on February 6, 2021 [14 favorites]

> It seems a little tone-deaf on Time magazine's part to use the word "conspiracy" here. A vague agreement between labor and capital? This article has just enough fodder for people to spin it into whatever conspiracy theory they want.

You all are hyperfocused on a word that appears in the fifth paragraph. If Time was intending to characterize the effort as a conspiracy, it would have been in the headline or lead. Move on?
posted by at by at 8:44 AM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

This article has just enough fodder for people to spin it into whatever conspiracy theory they want.

So it has always been; it's just bigger and quicker now. 'If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.' And now the decades-long shift away from reality-based politics, combined with people living in fearful times stuck online, has molded modern Cardinal Richelieus faster than ever.

People are now hyper-primed to lazily connect dots that aren't even there, then draw the wackiest conclusions possible from their own scribbles. It's highly incentivized by the feedback from their self-radicalizing echo chamber groups (formerly on FB, now on other apps). It used to be that you had to have true dedication to be a conspiracy theorist; waiting weeks or months to meet someone like-minded to get that hit of satisfaction from having some of your speculations be reflected back (confirmation from another!). Now you open your device and there it is, amplified and instant, that rush of satisfaction that "I'm onto something here." Never mind that much of it is made by bots.

One thing that gives me hope is that a good chunk of the conspiracy groups have now moved to peer-to-peer traffic. That means their spread now depends largely on individuals' ability to successfully sell their ideas to others. And very few people are as well-versed in manipulation as the ones behind Qanon.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:48 AM on February 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

"You all are hyperfocused on a word that appears in the fifth paragraph. If Time was intending to characterize the effort as a conspiracy, it would have been in the headline or lead. Move on?"

I invite you to go look at the front page of /r/conspiracy, see that nearly every post is about this, and to kindly let your complaint go, because this critique is entirely valid because it's already literally happening.

But sure, let's move on when it's already been latched onto by the conspiracy community in under 24 hours. /S
posted by deadaluspark at 8:54 AM on February 6, 2021 [19 favorites]

Abrams rallied people to vote Democrat. What the article describes is non-partisan work to make the election run smoothly. Unless I’m mistaken, Abrams role in this election was strictly steered towards winning it for her candidate. It’s absolutely not a negative, but it’s a different job.
posted by papineau

About Abrams' organization Fair Fight

We promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights. Fair Fight brings awareness to the public on election reform, advocates for election reform at all levels, and engages in other voter education programs and communications.

Voter suppression of voters of color and young voters is a scourge our country faces in states across the nation. Georgia’s 2018 elections shone a bright light on the issue with elections that were rife with mismanagement, irregularities, unbelievably long lines and more, exposing both recent and also decades-long actions and inactions by the state to thwart the right to vote. Georgians and Americans are fighting back. Fair Fight Action engages in voter mobilization and education activities and advocates for progressive issues; in addition Fair Fight Action has mounted significant programs to combat voter suppression in Georgia and nationally.

Fair Fight PAC has initiated programs to support voter protection programs at state parties around the country and is engaging in partnerships to support and elect pro voting rights, progressive leaders.

Abrams most definitely worked on general initiatives to ensure a fair election, not just to elect Democrats. It's certainly possible their organization wasn't one of the ones specifically linked up to Podhorzer; that's beyond the scope my knowledge. And groups that he helped form a coalition among seems to be the central thread in the fpp piece, so if they weren't part of that specific sub-group or coalition, then they wouldn't be profiled in this article. But then the article is not quite as comprehensive an overview as it implies itself to be.


You all are hyperfocused on a word that appears in the fifth paragraph. If Time was intending to characterize the effort as a conspiracy, it would have been in the headline or lead. Move on?
posted by at by

The author's writing uses phrasing throughout that indicates a shaky understanding of how non-hierarchically organized coalitions accomplish things. People in general don't understand more distributed cause and effect very well - that's normal and quite understandable. But journalists and politicians lacking in such an understanding is increasingly becoming a liability for healthy democratic discourse in general. I stand by my evaluation of: important story, poorly told.


I'd be happy to move on to discuss more general issues around what makes an election fair and democratic, and/or the official structures or unofficial citizen efforts that make that happen. I think that conversation needs to be even broader than the more limited scope of the fpp, is all.
posted by eviemath at 9:08 AM on February 6, 2021 [21 favorites]

Here is a well-constructed, well-documented article about how different groups came together and put aside their differences to save American democracy, and it seems like the intent of half the posters here is to spin this in the most *negative* way possible.

People did the right thing. Many of them. Together. And because of their hard work and cooperation across months and years, the right thing happened. It is not weakness to recognize that people are capable of doing the right thing, it is strength. Because doing the right thing is contagious. Those who want to do the wrong thing want you to believe that’s the natural state of things - that to work against them is to be a sucker, casting your effort into a void. Don’t let yourself believe them. Believe in the people discussed in this article, know that they’re out there, and know that you’re not alone.
posted by workingdankoch at 9:26 AM on February 6, 2021 [30 favorites]

The article documents people doing good things -- including people we would not ordinarily ascribe good intentions to. Which is pretty fucking fascinating in our current era. I'm trying to appreciate the article at face value without the distraction of concern-trolling on behalf of people whose opinions I already don't respect. Chucklefucks are going to find new things to hate when they run out of things they already hate. They're going to latch onto this article as proof of how agents within the system worked against them, no matter how sweetly padded the copy was written to curry favor with their prejudices.
posted by at by at 9:30 AM on February 6, 2021 [10 favorites]

Thank you for sharing this, it was wonderful to read about so many people and groups coming together and examples of how they were effective. And won! When I see statements like, "when your grandchildren ask you what you did during this historic time, what will you say?" I fear my answer will be, "not enough." I support several of the group's mentioned and was really even more encouraged to see their efforts multiplied as they came together. For me it was a very hopeful article. I know the fight is not over, but we are stronger than I knew.

“Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”

I can't really say "I helped." But I am happy to be able to say, "I helped the helpers!"
posted by evilmomlady at 9:37 AM on February 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

"I've already seen this article shared on Facebook this morning with "THEY RIGGED THE ELECTION" commentary from the poster."

Yes, or, "It was a CONSPIRACY to STEAL THE ELECTION!"
posted by bz at 9:45 AM on February 6, 2021

“We won by the skin of our teeth, honestly, and that’s an important point for folks to sit with,” says the Democracy Defense Coalition’s Peoples. “There’s an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it’s a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.”
posted by JackFlash at 10:28 AM on February 6, 2021 [14 favorites]

A day or two after the election, I sat down at my computer and clicked the "call" button: "Hi this is Zach with the [Swing State Where The Election Was Currently Too Close to Call] Democratic Party. I'm calling about an issue with a ballot not being counted, is [Name] there?"

When you make campaign calls before election day, a lot of people don't want to talk to you. When you call after election day, people are suddenly a lot more interested. I talked to the voter, who had some kind of issue like a provisional ballot or an absentee ballot signature rejection, and made sure he did everything he needed to do to make sure his vote counted. And then he stopped to ask me, his voice notably shaken: "the people chanting 'Stop the Count,' they can't do that, right? They can't do that?"

And it just broke me. I looked down at the screen, and one of the very few pieces of information I had about him was his age. I asked if this was his first vote, and he said yes. This was a young person of color who just voted for the very first time, and the only thing he knew was that his vote hadn't been counted yet and there was an armed mob of white supremacists chanting "stop the count" that was very specifically and personally about not counting his ballot.

I tried to reassure him that we wouldn't let that happen, that I was but one tiny volunteer of a vast operation built to fight like hell to make sure his vote counted. But the irreparable damage from that, the number of things that went wrong to bring us to that moment on the phone, our democracy is still extraordinarily fragile right now.
posted by zachlipton at 10:59 AM on February 6, 2021 [86 favorites]

You all are hyperfocused on a word that appears in the fifth paragraph.

The entire paragraph plays straight into the same thing. Many paragraphs are “shadow effort” this and “secret history” that. It’s a (weird) choice the author made about the basic framing, not one word.
posted by atoxyl at 12:06 PM on February 6, 2021 [21 favorites]

I guarantee this article has already got 10x as much traction on the right as on the left. Maybe conspiracy people are gonna do their thing anyway but the framing of “it was a conspiracy... of unlikely friends doing important work” is a bizarre and unforced error.
posted by atoxyl at 12:14 PM on February 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

how different groups came together and put aside their differences to save American democracy, and it seems like the intent of half the posters here is to spin this in the most *negative* way possible

There's a difference between critiquing the actions of the subjects of the article (no one here is doing this) and critiquing the writing style and choices in the article itself (which rather detract from the good things that the subjects of the article did). Considering that one of the details the folks profiled in the article actually worried a lot about and spent a lot of time and effort on was messaging and communication, critiquing the effectiveness of the writing in this article seems apt enough, and not at all rude to the folks profiled and the very good work that they accomplished. As I keep saying: important story, poorly told.
posted by eviemath at 12:28 PM on February 6, 2021 [13 favorites]

Why does this article frame this work so negatively and vaguely? I hope the people named are not targeted
posted by eustatic at 12:56 PM on February 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

One thing that gives me hope is that a good chunk of the conspiracy groups have now moved to peer-to-peer traffic. That means their spread now depends largely on individuals' ability to successfully sell their ideas to others. And very few people are as well-versed in manipulation as the ones behind Qanon.

Well… I'd hesitate to attribute Qanon's success to the svengali-like skills of its instigators. If anything, it's a demonstration of emergent "keep throwing stories at the wall until one sticks" evolution. That, combined with a large crowd of people itching for a totalizing good-versus-evil frame and primed with apocalyptic narratives that justify that frame…

There are lots of people whose lives have been ruined, and a small number of people who've made good grift on the Q train. But the demand side of the Q narrative is strong and growing; there are people who really, really, want someone to give them a story that justifies the tipping point they want.

That concerns me, and it's one of the reasons I agree that great care has to be exercised when labeling things like "cooperation between normally opposed parties in service of a shared value" as "conspiracy."
posted by verb at 1:28 PM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Move on?

No, especially since sloppy clickbait is part of how we got into this mess.

Fuck the framing of this article for playing into the same conspiracy theories that led to people trying to overthrow the government. Fuck it for presenting rich technocrats and lawyers as masterminds. Fuck it for conflating centrist nonprofits with actual grassroots movements and leftist activists, erasing them in the process. In addition to feeding conspiracy theorists, the whole thing smacks of a bunch of executives and lawyers wanting to pat themselves on the back and the article reads like it's intended for people who post about being happy that they no longer have to think about politics. Awful all around.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 1:58 PM on February 6, 2021 [9 favorites]

NEWS FLASH: People who interpret all information in bad faith to confirm their paranoid narratives will do so with this article too.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:58 PM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

NEWS FLASH: People who interpret all information in bad faith to confirm their paranoid narratives will do so with this article too.

I think this take really underestimates how weirdly insistent the article is on hitting all the buttons. I think it’s sort of an attempt at click baiting? But it was a bad idea.
posted by atoxyl at 2:44 PM on February 6, 2021 [14 favorites]

Are we on circuit 2? 3? Y'all have made your points about the article.

To return to the topic of the article, I was heartened by the bipartisan nature of the working group.

We regularly lament the vast right-wing political infrastructure funded by the Kochs, Mercers, et al., and there were some secret and not-so-secret Democrat-supporting groups politicking this time, too. And then I enjoyed the Lincoln Project's videos.

But until I saw this article it wouldn't have occurred to me there would ever be a group mixing folks from a pretty broad span of the political spectrum who were all so idealistically devoted to the basic principles of free and fair elections.
posted by PhineasGage at 3:16 PM on February 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

Wow, this article is really, really interesting, with a ton of detailed info I haven't seen elsewhere.

The whole profile of Mike Podhorzer is just great, and I utterly love his whole emphasis on "relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them" (even to Little League coaching!).

I wish more of us (especially me) did more of that here.

This piece covers a big, complex constellation of alliances and actions, and it's tough to merge all that into a coherent story, but I think author Molly Ball does a good job.

Something that pull quote omits is this detail later in the article: the statement was signed by the heads of the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO - AND by the heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National African American Clergy Network. That's an interesting alliance, right there.

And then the whole coverage of everything happening behind the scenes to prevent Michigan's vote from being subverted, from the work of racial justice activists and feminists and disability activists on Election Night, to the people getting former Republican congressmen and governors to call for the electors to actually obey the will of the people and cast the electoral votes correctly - it's great to gain a better understanding of all that.

This is a really good read. Thank you so much for posting it, Nancy Lebovitz!
posted by kristi at 3:45 PM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Thank you (once again) to all the people in the world (the great majority) who do the right thing every day without much attention. YOU are the DEFINITION of civilization.
posted by Twang at 4:01 PM on February 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I really, really want to share an article to friends and family and everyone else that details and positively frames all the hard work done at every level during this election (and in Georgia!) to ensure the election was fair and every vote was counted. I want to share an article that is uplifting, encouraging, and sends the message that hard work from you and me really can make a different. I am really, really disappointed that this is not that article. It demonstrates ways the election was saved but refers to the people doing the saving with words like "operatives" and "shadow campaigners" and calls the whole effort a conspiracy. Who relates to that? Who wants to be a shadow operative who's part of a conspiracy? With the VRA gone and the Trumpists more committed than ever to dismantling fair elections we need this sort of effort to happen during every election in the future, and an article like this actively discourages people from participating and paints a target on the back of those profiled. This is necessary, good, and often thankless work, and this article is begging the reader to take it from "thankless" to "reviled". I know I'm another person complaining about the framing but it makes me so fucking angry when so many people were just fighting and fighting to make things run smoothly.
posted by Anonymous at 5:13 PM on February 6, 2021

I would love to know the backstory of this piece. It is clearly, at its heart, a story of good people doing good things to protect democracy. Who decided that narrative wasn't sexy enough? Was it the writer or her editor who came up with the bullshit conspiracy conceit? Did anyone at Time point out that it totally undermines the actual content of the reporting? That it put this reductive comic-book-level overlay on the complicated actions of real people?
posted by neroli at 5:41 PM on February 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

But until I saw this article it wouldn't have occurred to me there would ever be a group mixing folks from a pretty broad span of the political spectrum who were all so idealistically devoted to the basic principles of free and fair elections.

I recall seeing links about this previously in metafilter election mega-threads from the late summer and fall. The new detail here is about some particular details of the coalition-building.

Building and working with coalitions when your goals overlap with those of other people or groups has long been an integral part of how democracy works. We've forgotten that to a large degree in North America, to the point that journalists now no longer know how to report on it or describe it with accurate framing when they see it.

I say North America because the errors the author of this piece makes are similar to the misunderstanding about the role of coalitions in democracies pushed by Harper's Conservatives in the Canadian federal election where they lost power to Trudeau's Liberals. Unlike the US, Canada has a parliamentary system of government, where if one party gets a majority of votes, they can form a "majority government"; but if no party gets a majority, then there are two options. Either the party that gets a plurality of votes forms a "minority government" (their leader gets to be Prime Minister and form a cabinet consisting of elected representatives from just their own party), but is a lot more restricted in what they can do than a majority government. Or two or more parties who, combined, have a majority of votes can get together and form a coalition government. Coalition governments are pretty standard in most parliamentary democracies. But Canada hadn't had one in a while, and the US influence is strong, so when it looked like the Liberals and NDP were potentially going to form a coalition government, the Conservatives started really pushing the completely false idea that this was somehow not how the parliamentary government system was supposed to work, or that it was really inadvisable and super uncommon.

The author of the fpp definitely supports the coalition they're reporting on, unlike Harper's Conservatives and the potential Liberal-NDP coalition. Yet they are still describing it in very similar ways, using lots of loaded language that makes it come across sometimes as sinister, other times as miraculous, rather than a return to normal from the Republican party extremism over the past decade or two.

The main guy profiled, Podhorzer, sounds like he is very good at organizing and coalition-building. That requires a specialized skill set that one builds through training, practice, and experience, and it most definitely merits respect. It's also not surprising, given his career/job. Much like the years of hard work, study, and practice required to become a doctor mean that in comparison to any randomly chosen other person, the doctor's skill set is quite impressive and worthy of respect; yet while we should respect that skill set in a non-random medical setting, we should not be surprised that it is a skill set possessed by, say, an ER physician we might encounter on a visit to the hospital. Anyway, it is good that there are reminders that such work can be done; not even realizing it is an option or thinking it impossible is certainly worse than thinking that it can be done but only by the sort of "great man" that the phrase "great man theory of history" alludes to. But in reality, many people contributed to the coalition described in the fpp; and many more of us could (and arguably should) learn the requisite skill sets as well!
posted by eviemath at 7:16 PM on February 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

All I want is for this to be the ONE year where the State of the Union Address doesn't contain the phrase "the State of our Union is strong." Because stories like these emphasize how much it's fucking not.
posted by lock robster at 8:52 PM on February 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

Conspiracy is the appropriate term. Lesser terms of organization (cooperation, collaboration) fail to capture the common causes and synchronized behavior described. That a term derived from "breathing together" brings mostly toxic connotations of malevolence or ill minds, reflects a mistrust of groups by society. Why can't we hold up more examples of conspiracies for the common good?
posted by grokus at 12:21 AM on February 7, 2021

Why can't we hold up more examples of conspiracies for the common good?

I want to like the article and its subject. But comments like this don't just come off as wrong, they come off as gaslighting.

Conspiracy has had a problematic connotation for as long as I've been reading. The rest of the article has other word choices that tingle the spidey senses. There's something going on here and it's not just about 'word choices' and 'framing'. The Times of all people know exactly wtf they're doing.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 4:38 AM on February 7, 2021 [6 favorites]

Right-wingers are already citing this article as proof of a conspiracy to steal the election by fraud. The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election was in irresponsible choice by a magazine struggling to be at all relevant.
posted by theora55 at 7:06 AM on February 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

There are so many larger problems to worry about right now than the spin that authors and/or editors of this very solid piece of reporting put on their story.

But I guess it's comforting to believe that there's something that could or should be done differently to change the minds of people consumed by absurd paranoid fantasies... as if the same article, written in a slightly different way, would have sobered these people up, or would not still be susceptible to being misrepresented as "proof" of something sinister.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:05 AM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

From January 24, in the NY Times:
How Democrats Planned for Doomsday: A huge coalition of activist groups had been working together since the spring to make sure that Joe Biden won and that the “election stayed won” amid Donald Trump’s subterfuge.

The video call was announced on short notice, but more than 900 people quickly joined: a coalition of union officials and racial justice organizers, civil rights lawyers and campaign strategists, pulled together in a matter of hours after the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill.

They convened to craft a plan for answering the onslaught on American democracy, and they soon reached a few key decisions. They would stay off the streets for the moment and hold back from mass demonstrations that could be exposed to an armed mob goaded on by President Donald J. Trump.

[…]

The meeting was no lucky feat of emergency organizing, nor was the highly disciplined and united front that emerged from it.

Instead, it was a climactic event in a long season of planning and coordination by progressives, aimed largely at a challenge with no American precedent: defending the outcome of a free election from a president bent on overturning it.

At each juncture, the activist wing of the Democratic coalition deployed its resources deliberately, channeling its energy toward countering Mr. Trump’s attempts at sabotage. Joseph R. Biden Jr., an avowed centrist who has often boasted of beating his more liberal primary opponents, was a beneficiary of their work.

posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:26 AM on February 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

There are so many larger problems to worry about right now than: Metafilter.

And yet, here we all are.
posted by eviemath at 12:31 PM on February 7, 2021

The idea that conspiracy theorists would not be drawing red circles and arrows all over this article if only the authors had worded things differently and not used the word "conspiracy" is nonsense. News organizations trying to find just the right way to word the news so that conspiracy theorists can't twist it into supporting their crazy worldview would be an enormous and futile waste of time and effort.
posted by straight at 1:42 PM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

Just because some conspiracy theorists are going to see conspiracies everywhere doesn't mean you have to do their jobs for them. Plenty of non-conspiracy-minded people read Time and Time is telling them this was a conspiracy. So what are they going to think? The issue is not finding the right framing to convince conspiracy theorists there's no conspiracy, it's about not telling non-conspiracy theorists that there is a conspiracy.
posted by Anonymous at 3:34 PM on February 7, 2021

Just because some conspiracy theorists are going to see conspiracies everywhere doesn't mean you have to do their jobs for them.

Did you actually ready the article? Do you have anything useful to say other than harping about the language?

So anyway, what I'm talking away from this is that the nightmares scenario- where the election was closer enough and contested enough to be thrown to the House really was a real possibility, even a deliberate strategy from the Trump group. I know now that these analyses were not only publicized, but influential people were taking them seriously, and taking action to counter them in a way we usually only see from Republicans, which is both a relief, and scary. Because I'm not sure we can keep up that level of organization.

The article puts more context into how post election was a game of move and counter-move, with the final action being a Hail Mary attempt to kill Congresspeople and disrupt the vote count. And there were several places where Trump could have won if action have been taken.

Finally, we have a lesson for the future- the Republicans haven't given up; both mass activism AND organizing is still necessary. The war isn't over and we need to be planning for 2022 now.
posted by happyroach at 10:24 PM on February 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

So, I actually read the article. Part of why the framing upsets me is because it positions the organizing and coalition-building work described as unusual, an emergency measure, and almost miraculous, rather than simply what is, and has always been: the regular work required for healthy, well functioning democracy. The threat was indeed extreme. The tools used to address the threat were some of the basic tools of democracy, however.

This is important in part because one of the arguments of anti-democratic folks is that democratic structures and methods are (they claim) incapable of responding to extreme threats. Extreme threats are extreme, and are threatening, and we most certainly need to continue to be on alert for the ongoing threat of fascist violence and disruption of democratic processes! And, underneath the very poor framing, this story should give us an illustration of some of the democratic tools that we can use to that end.
posted by eviemath at 5:40 AM on February 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Also, folks who want to talk about the actions and events described in the fpp and not its framing: you know that you can do that by... posting comments about the actions and events described in the fpp, rather than continuing to harp on about being upset that other people are upset with the framing, right? Like, you don't need my or other posters' permission to have that conversation; some of us discussing the framing doesn't prevent you or any of us from also talking about the actions and events described; and I, and I think most of the other posters who have also made negative comments about the framing, would also like to have that conversation, and some of us have also been trying to... just that those parts of our comments aren't getting responded to.
posted by eviemath at 6:07 AM on February 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

That effort was unusual because it involved people on opposing political sides who came together for the first time, based on their own sense that emergency measures were needed.
posted by PhineasGage at 8:18 AM on February 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

That certainly hasn't happened much in recent history, but if you go back pre-Tea Party and that shift in Republican tactics, it was much more common. Isn't part of Biden's whole selling point, according to his campaign, that he has a long history of working with people across party lines when goals or interests align?

If you look at other countries, you'll see many more examples of coalitions across party lines, too. That's not how US politics has been working lately, for sure, but it is how representative democracy is supposed to work. So maybe the story is more that some in the business wing of the Republican Party are finally realizing that they made a tactical error, and want to work in coalitions again. (Although the organizers described in the fpp did a particularly good job and it is worth celebrating that.) Then how does that fit with other calls from Republicans eg. in Congress for "unity" and "bipartisanship"?
posted by eviemath at 9:03 AM on February 8, 2021

Did you actually ready the article? Do you have anything useful to say other than harping about the language?

Did you actually read my comments? Because I thought I made it very clear that I was in favor of the things the article describes, but not how it describes them. Not sure why people are so upset that others object to coalition-building and other actions necessary for a functioning democracy being described as a conspiracy.

We need more work and people like those in the article, not less. Which is why framing is so damn important.
posted by Anonymous at 2:10 PM on February 9, 2021

You can and should write a letter to the editor of the magazine.
posted by amanda at 5:38 AM on February 10, 2021