What is the strategy underlying obviously false claims by right-wingers

Forums: Propaganda Tactics, Political Psychology
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In the last few--10? 20?--years, right-wingers have been making all sorts of claims that are easily disprovable. An excellent example is the claim made by David Barton (et al) that "the US was founded as a Christian nation".

There are plenty other allegations that are very easily shown to be false.

This happens so frequently that there must be a strategy underlying this kind of claim.

Can anyone come up with a good hypothesis about the strategy and tactics of these allegations?

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Type: Question • Score: 3 • Views: 310 • Replies: 7

@Curiousguy99,

It's the same strategy used by spammers who send obvious scams.

Whoever believes in either premise is easy to manipulate.

BTW I would add that this strategy is used by all political types.

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@Curiousguy99,

1) I am not sure how you define "right-wingers". There are plenty of conservatives who don't make this claim.

2) Liberals also make "all sorts of claims that are easily disprovable". The liberal opposition to GMOs is a great example.

If you live in a political bubble it is always easy to see where the other side is going against clear fact. Seeing where you own political ideology gets it wrong is considerably more difficult.

Liberals do not have a monopoly on facts or on reason. This isn't about conservatives or liberals... it is about the tendency of people of both sides to live in ideological bubbles.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

The liberal opposition to GMOs is a great example.

According to an ABC News poll, when asked about GMO foods, responses were like this (I used the 'code' format to make the table line up nicely):

Code:

'conservatives':  50% said they were safe, 50% said they were unsafe

'independents':   60% said they were safe, 40% said they were unsafe

'liberals':       63% said they were safe, 37% said they were unsafe

They didn't say how these political categories were defined.

On this showing, the difference between the extremes is around 13% on each side, and even the conservatives are evenly split.

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@centrox,

centrox wrote:

According to an ABC News poll, when asked about GMO foods, responses were like this (I used the 'code' format to make the table line up nicely):

Oh God! That is completely the wrong way around! Teach me to get smart with the layout and mess up the content! Ignore the above!!! These are the poll results:

Code:

'conservatives':  50% said they were unsafe, 50% said they were safe

'independents':   60% said they were unsafe, 40% said they were safe

'liberals':       63% said they were unsafe, 37% said they were safe

1 Reply

The poll report

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97567&page=1

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@centrox,

Thank you Centrox, but I am not sure the point you are trying to make.

Are you arguing that liberals never make "obviously false claims" that aren't backed by facts? Or are you just quibbling about the one example I gave.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Are you arguing that liberals never make "obviously false claims" that aren't backed by facts? Or are you just quibbling about the one example I gave.

Neither. I was not making a 'point'. I was quoting some figures. All kinds of actors make obviously false claims. No side has a monopoly on bullshit.

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