7 ms·

Doctorow is right, of course, but it’s lamentable that he declares the ugly rise of Trump as only a feat of media influence, when in fact it’s also a reaction t

Doctorow is right, of course, but it’s lamentable that he declares the ugly rise of Trump as only a feat of media influence, when in fact it’s also a reaction to it. No one had a problem with the Obama campaign’s heavy use of social media, a strategy that harvested racial tensions just as much as Trump’s did.

gfodor 8y ago
Agreed these otherwise great criticisms of social media seem to always fall into this trap. Turning this into a partisan issue is going to backfire, I promise you that. Make this about a political party and it is going to be all too easy to divide people on this issue. Right now the left and the right are aligned in their loathing of Facebook -- but every time the message "Facebook helped Trump get elected because his supporters are racists and easily manipulated" is parrotted it serves to encourage them to take the opposing side to defend themselves and claim Facebook's tactics are being overblown. They'll never defend Zuck, but they will fight against clamping down on tech companies in the name of defending capitalism and American jobs (and, without saying so, as a way to assert they were not manipulated and resent being called racists.)
- trocadero 8y ago
  This is definitely a partisan issue. It's true that there was always a low level pro-privacy/anti-fb sentiment, but it's the perception that FB was used to get Trump elected turned it into an inferno. If Clinton had won the election there would be far less attention paid to FB.
cabaalis 8y ago
Trump did and said many things during his campaign that would have been political suicide before. The media is still struggling to understand why people support him in the face of what they consider detestable. They also fear what politically incorrect things will become fair game in the next crop, since it has been proven you can do and say those things and still win. I think the result was largely in support of pushing back against the ideas of political correctness. I know many fine people who voted and support Trump. It isn't that they are racist, bigoted, etc. It's that they believe our country was spiraling into a state where you couldn't be, and that was too much an affront to free speech. (For example, wanting to secure our borders so that your own children born here would have a better chance at finding a job was becoming "racist")
- eclipxe 8y ago
  “My friends are not racist, they just all agree with these 14 words...”
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 8y ago
  > secure our borders What this means in practice is separating families and industrialising child abuse for victims of the immigration police.
32qwef 8y ago
How did Obama's strategy harvest racial tensions? I genuinely want to know. Can you link me to something?
- byebyetech 8y ago
  I am curious about that statement too. Maybe the argument was something like "Black man is running for President." That fact alone was enough to cause racial tensions.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Obama harvested votes from people convinced that his election would ease racial tensions.
  - 32qwef 8y ago
    You and some other commenters in the replies are making this claim. So yeah, Obama was black, and some people were excited to vote for him because he was black. That's not what I'm asking. Did his Facebook ads specifically take advantage of the fact that he was black? Did his ad campaign benefit from inflaming racial divisions? To be fair, advertising from the trump campaign may not have played on racial tensions either. The thing people are upset about is the russian interference. The russians bought ads and made posts that clearly stoked tensions, and Facebook was negligent in preventing this.
    - bryanlarsen 8y ago
      "campaign benefit from inflaming racial divisions" That was not the claim. The claim was that he "harvested" racial tensions. And of course he did.
- khawkins 8y ago
  It's certainly fair to say that Obama benefited from racial tensions, whether his campaign intended to or not. https://news.gallup.com/poll/107770/most-say-race-will-factor-their-presidential-vote.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/107770/most-say-race-will-facto... Blacks were 19% more likely to vote for Obama because he was black and 2% less likely. Whites were 5% more likely to vote for Obama because he was black and 6% less likely. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/2076258/How-Barack-Obama-beat-Hillary-Clinton.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/20... Obama ended up with near-unanimous support from the black vote in the primaries, beating Hillary.
oblio 8y ago
I'm not an American so I haven't followed all the debates, but I got the impression that the Obama campaign was overall positive? Wasn't it basically "yes, we can" (for the minorities)? Basically there was a racial component, but the basic idea was to be proud of your origin and stuff like that. The Trump campaign, on the other hand, struck me as trying to put down the others. Totally negative. I don't think those two are equivalent.
- gfodor 8y ago
  The Obama campaign didn't overtly use divisive language on race but focused a lot of energy on convincing people that the wealthy weren't paying their "fair share" and used similiar classist langauge throughout the campaign. They are very good at it and aren't as ham-handed as Trump so this is probably why you walked away with the sense it was a purely positive campaign. Part of the reasons conservatives see Obama as divisive is because conservatives tend to believe that most wealth in America is earned through hard work and sacrifice, and many believe that they can better their own financial means through these things. So even for those that aren't at the level of wealth being targeted by the politicians, this language is negative and divisive to conservatives in general because it instills a deep sense of unfairness and mistrust by targeting those who "earned" their wealth and painting them as takers.
  - hobls 8y ago
    > most wealth in America is earned through hard work and sacrifice Ha. Citation needed. Most wealth in America is concentrated in the hands of a small number of incredibly wealthy families. It is plainly ridiculous to suggest that someone with billions of dollars has worked harder or sacrificed proportionally more than a single mother working two jobs. Hard and sacrifice are simply not the driving factors in wealth generation.
    - hluska 8y ago
      "Ha. Citation needed" is a very rude reply to someone who went out of his way to explain why conservative voters weren't enamoured with Obama. Contrary to what you may believe, vast swathes of the world think that American electoral politics are completely insane.
jaegerpicker 8y ago
That's not even close to a fair comparison. Trump tapped into a undercurrent of seething hate and racism. No not all Trump voters are KKK members but the whole of the KKK endorsed him and he gladly accepted it. Obama pushed a message of hope and bringing peace and justice to all people. He certainly fell short in a lot of ways but he was at least trying. Trump is tapping into the worse parts of our nation and using that to gain political power. It's a completely different thing. What you are using social media for matters.

gfodor 8y ago

Agreed these otherwise great criticisms of social media seem to always fall into this trap. Turning this into a partisan issue is going to backfire, I promise you that. Make this about a political party and it is going to be all too easy to divide people on this issue. Right now the left and the right are aligned in their loathing of Facebook -- but every time the message "Facebook helped Trump get elected because his supporters are racists and easily manipulated" is parrotted it serves to encourage them to take the opposing side to defend themselves and claim Facebook's tactics are being overblown. They'll never defend Zuck, but they will fight against clamping down on tech companies in the name of defending capitalism and American jobs (and, without saying so, as a way to assert they were not manipulated and resent being called racists.)

trocadero 8y ago
This is definitely a partisan issue. It's true that there was always a low level pro-privacy/anti-fb sentiment, but it's the perception that FB was used to get Trump elected turned it into an inferno. If Clinton had won the election there would be far less attention paid to FB.

cabaalis 8y ago

Trump did and said many things during his campaign that would have been political suicide before. The media is still struggling to understand why people support him in the face of what they consider detestable. They also fear what politically incorrect things will become fair game in the next crop, since it has been proven you can do and say those things and still win. I think the result was largely in support of pushing back against the ideas of political correctness. I know many fine people who voted and support Trump. It isn't that they are racist, bigoted, etc. It's that they believe our country was spiraling into a state where you couldn't be, and that was too much an affront to free speech. (For example, wanting to secure our borders so that your own children born here would have a better chance at finding a job was becoming "racist")

eclipxe 8y ago
“My friends are not racist, they just all agree with these 14 words...”
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 8y ago
> secure our borders What this means in practice is separating families and industrialising child abuse for victims of the immigration police.

32qwef 8y ago

How did Obama's strategy harvest racial tensions? I genuinely want to know. Can you link me to something?

byebyetech 8y ago
I am curious about that statement too. Maybe the argument was something like "Black man is running for President." That fact alone was enough to cause racial tensions.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
Obama harvested votes from people convinced that his election would ease racial tensions.
- 32qwef 8y ago
  You and some other commenters in the replies are making this claim. So yeah, Obama was black, and some people were excited to vote for him because he was black. That's not what I'm asking. Did his Facebook ads specifically take advantage of the fact that he was black? Did his ad campaign benefit from inflaming racial divisions? To be fair, advertising from the trump campaign may not have played on racial tensions either. The thing people are upset about is the russian interference. The russians bought ads and made posts that clearly stoked tensions, and Facebook was negligent in preventing this.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    "campaign benefit from inflaming racial divisions" That was not the claim. The claim was that he "harvested" racial tensions. And of course he did.
khawkins 8y ago
It's certainly fair to say that Obama benefited from racial tensions, whether his campaign intended to or not. https://news.gallup.com/poll/107770/most-say-race-will-factor-their-presidential-vote.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/107770/most-say-race-will-facto... Blacks were 19% more likely to vote for Obama because he was black and 2% less likely. Whites were 5% more likely to vote for Obama because he was black and 6% less likely. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/2076258/How-Barack-Obama-beat-Hillary-Clinton.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/20... Obama ended up with near-unanimous support from the black vote in the primaries, beating Hillary.

oblio 8y ago

I'm not an American so I haven't followed all the debates, but I got the impression that the Obama campaign was overall positive? Wasn't it basically "yes, we can" (for the minorities)? Basically there was a racial component, but the basic idea was to be proud of your origin and stuff like that. The Trump campaign, on the other hand, struck me as trying to put down the others. Totally negative. I don't think those two are equivalent.

gfodor 8y ago
The Obama campaign didn't overtly use divisive language on race but focused a lot of energy on convincing people that the wealthy weren't paying their "fair share" and used similiar classist langauge throughout the campaign. They are very good at it and aren't as ham-handed as Trump so this is probably why you walked away with the sense it was a purely positive campaign. Part of the reasons conservatives see Obama as divisive is because conservatives tend to believe that most wealth in America is earned through hard work and sacrifice, and many believe that they can better their own financial means through these things. So even for those that aren't at the level of wealth being targeted by the politicians, this language is negative and divisive to conservatives in general because it instills a deep sense of unfairness and mistrust by targeting those who "earned" their wealth and painting them as takers.
- hobls 8y ago
  > most wealth in America is earned through hard work and sacrifice Ha. Citation needed. Most wealth in America is concentrated in the hands of a small number of incredibly wealthy families. It is plainly ridiculous to suggest that someone with billions of dollars has worked harder or sacrificed proportionally more than a single mother working two jobs. Hard and sacrifice are simply not the driving factors in wealth generation.
  - hluska 8y ago
    "Ha. Citation needed" is a very rude reply to someone who went out of his way to explain why conservative voters weren't enamoured with Obama. Contrary to what you may believe, vast swathes of the world think that American electoral politics are completely insane.

jaegerpicker 8y ago

That's not even close to a fair comparison. Trump tapped into a undercurrent of seething hate and racism. No not all Trump voters are KKK members but the whole of the KKK endorsed him and he gladly accepted it. Obama pushed a message of hope and bringing peace and justice to all people. He certainly fell short in a lot of ways but he was at least trying. Trump is tapping into the worse parts of our nation and using that to gain political power. It's a completely different thing. What you are using social media for matters.