This is how the Right, especially Trump and Johnson, play the “culture war”. Leak out you’re going to do something controversial, in this case appoint a sexist racist to a position. Whether you do or don’t ultimately do this doesn’t matter..
Thread 1 of 11 https://twitter.com/bbcpolitics/status/1300767478814044167

In the process you’ve done two things:
1) signalled to your base that yes, you have no problem with sexism and racism, you’re just like them
2) you trigger a non debate, ie is having a sexist racist in a key job a problem or not?
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The media will oblige by pushing the story ensuring it will get through to your base. Also they’ll do they’re usual “some people say sexism and racism is bad, others don’t, let’s go to two talking heads to debate this”. Thereby not just spreading the story but..
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..also normalising the extreme, eg sexism or racism is bad? becomes a question not an absolute position.

The Left, either mainstream (ie Labour or the Democrats) or activist (ie you lot on social media etc) have no effective response to this.
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The response of the Left is typically to amplify, ie they will say “look at this, it’s really offensive”, they debate it, share it online etc. By doing this they just do what mainstream media do, help the Right. The message gets shared more and..
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..and it’s signals to the Right’s base “this was a good move, it’s got all the Lefties stirred up”. The more the Left react, the more they amplify for the Right. It’s a no lose for the Right.

So what should do the Left do?
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The Left should deal with these “culture battles” by:
- Focusing their reaction, ie not just saying “this is wrong or bad”. They need to expose it for it is, a diversion (in this case the Tories Brexit deal failure) and talk about that substantive issue not the decoy.
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- They need to launch their own “culture war” attacks. For instance in this example not just react to the Tony Abbott story but put forward their own name, eg a better qualified BAME female candidate. Make that the conversation with it’s own push agenda, eg
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“Why can’t a black or asian woman be considered for this job in 2020?”. Make them to react to you, normalise your agenda not theirs and let the media amplify your agenda not theirs.
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Unfortunately both the leaderships of the Democrats and Labour are too timid to do that and are permanently on the back foot in the culture war.
Activists especially social media are no better. There is no Right wing attack or bait they won’t react to simplistically.
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There is minimal calling out of the diversion and focusing on the substantive issue and virtually no turning into an opportunity to push our agenda.
This needs to change the Right, Johnson and Trump, don’t succeed on policies etc, they succeed by fighting this war better
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This Thread on how to deal with the "culture war" as a blog article for easier reading and sharing outside of Twitter:
(NB the article contains some edits to the Thread text) https://dravalblog.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/how-the-right-wage-the-culture-war/