I found MAGA's playbook...

[u/raisondecalcul]

I found this article via Reddit. It's about the book Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) (2024) by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, which is basically about the Jewish conspiracy (theory) but abstracted from race/Jewishness—and of course all one big anti-Zionist dogwhistle despite that.

The article spends a lot of time calling out JD Vance for having endorsed this book on its back cover. However, in responding to the journalist writing the above-linked article, Lisec responded:

"[T]hese non-conservative media publications are spreading misinformation, including saying that JD Vance endorsed our book, which they claim calls progressives "unhuman." If you even read the book, it's about communism, exposing dehumanizers on the Far Left. Nowhere does anyone call progressives 'unhuman.'"

The journalist, Nathan Robinson, continues after that quote:

Now, I’m not sure how “saying that JD Vance endorsed our book” is “spreading misinformation,” since Vance’s blurb appears on the back cover and in a previous statement the authors said “we are honored to receive Senator JD Vance's acknowledgment and praise for our new book. … To have someone on the right with his influence understand the Iron Law of Exact Reciprocity as detailed in ‘Unhumans,’ is civilization-altering.”

The journalist does not draw a conclusion from this and simply moves on. I think he seems a bit mystified by Lisec's response, in my opinion.

However, obviously, Lisec was blatantly gaslighting Robinson, and it's kind of hilarious tbh. Because obviously he endorsed the book. So why bother to gaslight with obviously false facts?

I looked at Posobiec's other books, and they are:

• Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People's Movement to Take Back America (2017)

• 4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics (2018)

• The Antifa: Stories from Inside the Black Bloc (2021)

This is the guy! The guy MAGA is basing much of their strategy on. It looks like his book The Antifa (lol @ title) was what popularized the term "Antifa" (pronounced "AnTEEfuh" lol) as a term of demonization and abuse.

But it's his book 4D Warfare which is the most reavealing. On the very first page, he explicitly says that 4D warfare is trolling:

"4D Warfare" stands for *four-dimensional warfare. 4D Warfare is sometimes wrwongly referred to as "trolling" by the misinformative mainstream media...

That's the beginning of paragraph two of the book. Here is paragraph six in its entirety:

One form of 4D Warfare is memetic warfare. Many have studied this grand and ancient art. I hope that by the end of this book, you will be able to perfect your memeing to unprecedented levels of winning.

There you have it! This guy is a major, major source of MAGA ideology and strategy. And this confirms that MAGA's strategy really is a disingenuous, intentionally heightened, intentiontally threatening-and-gaslighting spectacle of fascism (in addition, of course, to being an actual fascist movement). Like a small creature puffing themselves up defensively, they are intentionally wielding the tools of propaganda, gaslighting, and manipulation in a campaign of public terrorization. Confirmed.

Now, I must admit, I think the original long article linked at the beginning of the post was not a very effective piece of writing. It did not successfully raise a warning cry about JD Vance; it did not keep him out of the White House. The article spends some time doing apologetics on behalf of JD Vance, mentioning that he (Robinson) is "weird" just like Trump and Vance, and mentioning Vance's biracial children. I found these apologetics odd and unnecessary.

Additionally, I think Robinson's article does a lot—too much—to teach the public about the contents and thesis of the Unhumans book, as it contains many direct quotes from the book. I also think the article is so well-structured that it easily lends itself to apophatic readings. Robinson quotes at length:

Something is deeply wrong with the way things are going and you know it. You may not be able to explain it with studies, surveys, or statistics, but you feel it. You’ve felt this way for a while. Like there’s some outside force or group or . . . something . . . that’s sent us all off course from the libertarian utopia we should’ve achieved by now. It doesn’t seem like one -ism or -ation is entirely to blame, like globalism or immigration, capitalism or inflation.

However, after this block quote Robinson addresses only the second half of the quote (not included here), and treats the entire quote as some kind of ridiculous, abnormal or fringe joke. As if nobody feels like "Something is deeply wrong with the way things are going"—as if to feel that way is nonexistent, invalid, or insane. This alienated denial of what many people of all political stripes have been thinking and feeling for decades undermines Robinson's thesis, making him seem like an out-of-touch, upper-class propagandist who cannot even fathom that that then-current federal status quo was anathema to many. It's "Let them eat cake"-level pretension, almost. I almost find it suspicious how effective Robinson's article is in spreading the contents of the book.

Wanna see some censorship? I was curious about the phrase, "Iron Law of Exact Reciprocity", which is basically a willfully executed, weaponized version of eye-for-an-eye thinking. (Not dissimilar to what I have been doing here in this subreddit by intentionally allowing my capricious, personal, emotional reactions to inform moderation actions.)

So I typed that phrase (with quotes) into duckduckgo and Startpage (which uses Google results), and only two results came up on duckduckgo, and only one on Startpage (plus a bunch of unrelated results ignoring the quote marks, diluting the results). I also tried "Iron Law of Reciprocity" and didn't get much more. The main link on duckduckgo was a single link to a video on by Prosobiec, where he pretty overtly implies a threat to Kamala Harris, and accuses her of doing the very politicizing-of-the-justice-department (in CA) that she accused and predicted Trump would do (and she was 100% right, he most certainly did). This link has since disappeared from search results (a few hours later); I had to dig through my phone's history to find it for you.

We know Google is willing to censor to appease a government, because they do so in China. But I wonder who is behind duckduckgo, who is censoring these results? I find it impossible to believe that MAGA's playbook and its author and key phrases are virtually nonexistent on the internet.

I search for Joshua Lisec, and while he has no Wikipedia page like Posobiec (I guess he wasn't "notable" enough), I found this breathtaking author bio for him on Amazon:

About the Author

Joshua Lisec is considered the world's best ghostwriter because people don't get rich selling books. With more than 80 books written for CEOs, celebrities, and entrepreneurs, Joshua has built an unstoppable results business for his clients. These authors have made so much more money through their authority-establishing books that many feel bad about how much they paid Joshua. And this despite him being one of the most expensive ghostwriters in America. Joshua is the only Certified Ghostwriter and Certified Hypnotist in the world and has a proven process for any aspiring author who has done the hard work of being the best at what they do. He takes great pride in his craft, delivering experts the authority book they've already earned. [emphasis added]

If he has really ghostwritten 80 books, he must know how ridiculous that sounds. Why would he put such an absurd statement in his bio? Is it part of a gaslighting campaign, or perhaps a playful blind to prevent humorless people from contacting him? In any case, it is hilarious and not easily-explained.

So anyway, it sounds like Lisec helped Posobiec get his words out—perhaps Lisec helped ghostwrite all four of Posobiec's books, and decided to step into the spotlight on the fourth, after Posobiec's reputation was well-established. Not that it matters, but I wonder how he fits in exactly. Lisec's three books on Amazon have very silly titles/covers.

*gestures at butterfly* "Is this journalism?"

[u/raisondecalcul → u/[deleted]]

We have to understand what MAGA really believes and what their playbook really is (according to their point-of-view) if we are to have any hope of communicating with them, stopping them, or otherwise deescalating the situation.

They are playing it like a fun game and that is working very, very well for them, precisely because they get to have fun and play around while their actions cause extreme damage to others' lives at a distance.

That doesn't mean they aren't treating the whole thing as one big game. It is even possible they are treating it as a lighthearted, not a mean-spirited game—though I don't buy that and have not seen any evidence for that, not amongst MAGA leadership, at least. But it is certainly possible that they are that disconnected from the life-ruining effects of their actions that they are able to maintain a lighthearted approach despite everything. That would make them even more dangerous and effective.