DT is actually using the same campaign strategy of alinsky.
1. * RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” “I’m worth billions and I know great people and I, I, I, tell great stories.”
* RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.) [no comment needed]
* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” [Our threads here are very much keeping in step with the debates. LIAR, UGLY, LIAR, UGLY. Pretty pathetic.]
* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. [Always something new for the press.]
* RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
[Except he has been doing this for decades with his love and joy in lawsuits.
Nothing has changed much...1983 NYT...
“His alternating skills of charming some individuals and riding roughshod over others has earned Donald Trump a reputation in some quarters as someone not to be trusted. He reneged, for example, on a promise to donate to a museum the Art Deco bas- reliefs on the facade of Bonwit Teller’s - bulldozed to make way for Trump Tower. It was a sin deemed unforgivable by landmark preservationists. But the only negative comments about Donald Trump these days are given off the record.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/07/business/the-empire-and-ego-of-donald-trump.html?pagewanted=all ]
* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” [McConnells threat to drop him will be a positive campaign picture - everyone forgets our Congress is just as much the enemy as the administration.]
* RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.) [What a pro at ridicule.]
True!!!
And another.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/propaganda/name_calling.htm
Name-calling
Techniques > Propaganda > Name-calling
Method | Example | Discussion | See also
Method
Call them names
Laugh at what targeted others say. Criticize their lack of Values. Denounce their ideals. Turn around their words and actions, taking them out of context and amplifying them to drown out any denial (making denial seem like admission of guilt). Use other double-binds such that whatever they say or do only mires them more deeply.
Find a name that trivializes them and use it at every opportunity, with a smirk on your face and the laughter of your supporters.
Show up opponents
Make your opponents appear stupid, immoral or otherwise undesirable. Besmirch their untarnished reputation, holding it down in the mud, rubbing it in with the knowledge that much of the mud will stick. Be careful about the person retaliating. As necessary, ensure they are isolated and disempowered first.
Make an example of someone
Take a random person and denigrate them. Show that you can and will do this any opponents.
You can do it to an apparently strong person, to demonstrate that you are not afraid and will take on and defeat even the powerful. You can do it to a weak person, to show that nobody is safe from your ire. You can do it to an ordinary, guy-next-door person, to show that ‘people like you’ are not safe either.
Example
My opponent is a flip-flop man who cannot make up his mind. He changes mind with the breeze! How could anyone follow such a weak-willed flip-flopper?
Discussion
Mud sticks, as we all known. Name-calling associates the other person with something that is despised or is inferior in some way. Now, if anyone associates with that person, the mud will also stick to them. The more the other person is socially isolated, the more that others will avoid the person. The results is a spiral of isolation that neutralizes opponents and sends a chilling warning to those who might follow in that person’s path.
Note how, especially in wartime, the other side gets given a whole slew of derogatory names. In the second world war, the Germans were called Huns, Krauts, the Boche, etc. The Japanese were called Nips, Japs, Slant-eyes, and so on.
Name-calling happens also in activism. Calling the police ‘pigs’, for example, is not just a derogatory term, it also frames the whole structure of state authority as dirty and unprincipled, hence making them unworthy and legitimizing attacks on them.
Note also political elections, and how easily debates can descend into name-calling from which there is no recovery.
See also
Association principle, Stereotypes
Clyde Miller, Propaganda Analysis, NY: Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1937