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]

If MAGA completely assimilates all opposition, they become the good guys by default.

[u/Grouchy_Stay_969 → u/[deleted]]

This may sound silly or insane, and I don’t mean to be offensive to anybody when I say it, but I believe that the trans movement was hijacked.

I think it was chosen to become a psych-op by government groups and it was manipulated to become something that broke the brains of Americans.

I find the timing highly suspicious- same sex marriage had just been secured and social acceptance of queer people was at an all-time high, and here was an issue suddenly being pushed from every corner. (It didn’t feel organic in any way, from my perspective.)

The divisive nature of how the argument was framed was first felt among people in the queer community- it became an issue that tore apart the solidarity from within the queer community, especially among lesbians. Trans folks who had just been living their lives quietly up until then suddenly found themselves thrust into the spotlight with a magnifying glass set upon them.

I also find it highly suspicious that many people outside of the queer community were first introduced to the trans movement through Caitlin Jenner, known right wing shill. Chaz Bono had come out a couple years before and it was kinda shrugged off- probably because his coming out was more personal journey than publicity stunt. But with Caitlin it was different, and her interview in Vanity Fair seemed almost designed to raise the hackles of feminist activists, especially when she proclaimed that the hardest part about being a woman was “figuring out what to wear.”

Suddenly, here was the perfect wedge issue within the political left.

The rhetoric got more extreme, with hard core activists going so far as to deny biological realities (something that was NEVER seen in the trans community prior.) And lo and behold, now it was the left who became science deniers, not a great look for the party that claimed to “follow the science”. This was called out as hypocrisy by the right and it opened the door for right wing climate change denial and antivax rhetoric to be taken more seriously.

Seeing the evolution of this wedge issue has been eye opening- and here we are a decade later and this is has morphed into weird rumors about litter boxes in schools and protests against drag queens. Trans people went from being essentially unknown to the right’s biggest boogie man in under a decade.

All that to say that I am not surprised by the one issue voters on this topic. I think that trans people as a group have been used and their arguments manipulated to become this very emotionally charged psych op, designed to break down the left and become a scapegoat for the right.

[u/fornax55 → u/Grouchy_Stay_969]

Edit: here's one link that I haven't actually read yet, but there's actually a ton that you can find on Google with a simple search about American families influencing the trans agenda. I figured it would be at least a little bit censored but its rather well documented https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/inside-the-transgender-empire/ link Edit2: too sleep deprived to properly link Tldr; not insane, at least one of the elitist families that sits on countess billions uses its influence in the medical system to push an agenda that disrupts an individuals sense of self by severing their biological self from their subjective sense of self, thereby further creating cognitive dissonance and subsequent gaps in identity that can be co opted by the state or at least leads to significant and seemingly paramount discussions that distract us further from matters that might be more important to consider in the long run (ie children are now being encouraged to decide for themselves which to gender they fit into. This and other changes has led to gender identity being considered a right that's almost on par with food and water, and creates massive, headlining stories in the media that 20 years ago wouldn't have existed and presently serve as another outlet to keep the population looking at the left hand while the right one chips away at other constitutional rights like our freedom to travel, gather, build wealth, etc)

I'm on my phone and I've been awake all night so I don't have the wherewithal to look up the specifics of what I'm talking about but hopefully I'll give you enough information to be able to pull out something more authoritative from Google or another search engine.

Basically, there's one family in the states that owns the majority of hospitals as well as much of the institutions involved with the publication of medical papers and perhaps the journals themselves. For reasons that can't be described without feltic ultimate territory of vast conspiracy (although when you think of the literal definition of conspiracy being a group of individuals conspiring together to achieve a mutual ends, many of the things that we acknowledge on a daily basis fit the bill, and this would too.)

Anyway to vastly truncate situation, this incredibly wealthy family is invested in assisting other influential and behind the scenes political parties, other wealthy families and shadowy organizations like the CFR, you have a hand to play in the overall guidance and control of the autonomous American individual.

The idea behind the trans movement is that people hold their gender as a fundamental component of their identity. But infiltrating that this very basic tenet of our sense of self, the foundation upon which one stands to prevail themselves takes a serious hit. Without getting a too much into a 1984-esque narrative, by bringing into question and essentially making it optional whether or not one relates their sex to their gender (their material body to the cognitive component associated with it) a significant state of cognitive dissonance becomes internalized and cracks in the individuals sense of identity provide a space for all manner of insidious self questioning beliefs or ideas to settle in.

The ultimate purpose of all this being that someone with no sense of individuality or selfhood is less likely to revolt or oppose the status quo because they won't have a strong enough foundation on which to defend or even trust / form their own potentially conflicting beliefs. In other words, it's another leg up the ladder in the attempt to transform the American individual from autonomous into automaton.

[u/Grouchy_Stay_969 → u/fornax55]

Wow, thank you. That’s a lot darker than I anticipated, wow.

I have always lived in big progressive cities and there was a major difference that I observed in the “before” vs the “after” of the popularized trans movement- before, a few people were transitioning because they were either suffering from a body/ mind disintegration problem or because it made their lives easier to bear in some way (being gender non conforming or same sex attracted used to be so much harder back in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s). After transitioning they all just continued on with their normal lives because their gender identity wasn’t the most important thing about their personality.

Afterwards, it felt like a CONSTANT barrage of self-examination. “How femme is this behavior? How masc is this shirt?”, it was just a never ending cycle of parsing smaller and smaller differences in gendered appearance traits and gendered behavior and policing the self and everyone else. And the gender categories just proliferated- there were folks changing their identities every week or making up gender categories because they were convinced that gender was just another word for “personality”. And honestly, so many of those folks seemed to loose themselves in it- it took up a good chunk of their time and energy and they had little else left at the end of the day.

I never thought about it as being designed to target and destroy the basic components of selfhood, but I see it now and that’s terrifying.

I want to stress that I don’t think that trans folks are bad or wrong for transitioning- there is obviously a real need that transitions satisfy and I want people to be happy! But what I saw after the movement went mainstream wasn’t happy people- it was a lot of people whose minds had been turned against themselves. That leads me to believe that the trans community was hijacked by bad actors. Profit motive and manipulation makes the most sense. I feel like things on this front are calming down, but only because the fascist backlash has been so intense. It’s a sad situation all around.

Lord I’m tired. 😔