A right-wing candidate would never condemn Bolsonaro or Melei or Orban. They’d either praise them or attack their enemies.
That’s the smart thing to say. Whenever they’re cornered by reporters and asked about far right leaders in other countries they never condemn them, because it’s a signal to the base that they’re True Believers and it helps build coalitions across the right.
When are Democrats going to learn from Republicans? This is a winning strategy that the right has mastered. We can do it too.
I agree that the rhetorical technique is smart and one we should learn about.
Although I think there’s a false equivalence there within the mainstream US context, because red scare propaganda wholeheartedly declares Venezuela and Cuba to be undemocratic dictatorships, while Bolsonaro and Melei bare resemblance to Trump themselves by being (seen as) the rightward tip of mainstream electoralism, a little extreme but still still capitalist #democracies.
Sanders has infamously praised Castro and Cuba a few times, I wasn’t really paying attention so I don’t know how well this was received by the Democrat audience. I remember it was a headline controversy back in 2020, but it certainly didn’t ruin Sanders.
As for attacking their enemies… one would have to be very careful attacking America to an audience of mainstream Americans. It’s possible to (in bad faith) frame it as criticizing specific governments (Bush, Trump) instead of imperialism, or even possibly framing it as a problem with capitalism, but given their target audience that’s a tough leap to make in one go - remember that these leaders are seen by most as “authoritarian dictators” and it’s not easy to unravel that much propaganda in a couple of speeches. I don’t know how effective it would be to attack those leaders’ domestic enemies or historical predecessors (see yellow Parenti snippet on Cuba).
A right-wing candidate would never condemn Bolsonaro or Melei or Orban. They’d either praise them or attack their enemies.
That’s the smart thing to say. Whenever they’re cornered by reporters and asked about far right leaders in other countries they never condemn them, because it’s a signal to the base that they’re True Believers and it helps build coalitions across the right.
When are Democrats going to learn from Republicans? This is a winning strategy that the right has mastered. We can do it too.
I agree that the rhetorical technique is smart and one we should learn about.
Although I think there’s a false equivalence there within the mainstream US context, because red scare propaganda wholeheartedly declares Venezuela and Cuba to be undemocratic dictatorships, while Bolsonaro and Melei bare resemblance to Trump themselves by being (seen as) the rightward tip of mainstream electoralism, a little extreme but still still capitalist #democracies.
Sanders has infamously praised Castro and Cuba a few times, I wasn’t really paying attention so I don’t know how well this was received by the Democrat audience. I remember it was a headline controversy back in 2020, but it certainly didn’t ruin Sanders.
As for attacking their enemies… one would have to be very careful attacking America to an audience of mainstream Americans. It’s possible to (in bad faith) frame it as criticizing specific governments (Bush, Trump) instead of imperialism, or even possibly framing it as a problem with capitalism, but given their target audience that’s a tough leap to make in one go - remember that these leaders are seen by most as “authoritarian dictators” and it’s not easy to unravel that much propaganda in a couple of speeches. I don’t know how effective it would be to attack those leaders’ domestic enemies or historical predecessors (see yellow Parenti snippet on Cuba).