PHILADELPHIA — Last week, a local Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty attracted attention for quoting Adolf Hitler in its newsletter. After the local paper reported the story, the group added additional “context” but kept the quote. Eventually, after it faced even more scrutiny, the organization removed the quote and apologized in a statement posted to its Facebook group.
That, however, was a big mistake, according to advice at the Moms for Liberty national conference’s media training session Friday.
“Never apologize. Ever,” said Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “This is my view. Other people have different views on this. I think apologizing makes you weak.”
He advised the attendees to instead make it clear that the Hitler comment was “vile” but to immediately pivot to make the point that Hitler indoctrinated children in schools and that that’s what Moms for Liberty was fighting against. Ziegler warned that any apology would become the headline, so that should be avoided.
You read that right. He said to not apologize for quoting Hitler. That’s what we’re dealing with now.
“By not addressing their points from a charitable perspective, you’re playing right into the astroturfer’s hands.”
That’s the exact opposite of how this works. The GOP astroturfers want the conversation to be about “addressing concerns of these poor mothers, whose innocent children are being subjected to XYZ” meanwhile they get to keep fear mongering and raising money. You can tell these people that book banning isn’t a good idea for thousands of reasons but that’d be meaningless. They don’t care about book banning in the first place. They care about raising money and fear mongering as a way to do so.
And now you’re accusing them of being Nazi’s. But THEY know they’re not Nazis (well those of them that aren’t nazis think they’re not nazis). So who are you trying to convince? Yourselves? Now they’re worried because people are lying about them and what they want and then they’ll just donate to the astroturfing organization that’s protecting them from the unhinged lunatics accusing them of being nazis.
You need to fight on both fronts, you have to use a charitable approach to slow down grass roots recruiting. AND you attack the values and falsehoods behind the hidden agenda.
They have their public claims and they have their behind closed doors claims. You combat their public claims directly and proactively promote the counterarguments to their behind closed doors claims.
You also indict them for ACTUAL poor behavior that they’ve done.
This is the best source I could find for the original context for the Hitler quote. Sticking strictly to the context of that image, it’s classic: Hitler did this thing that the government is doing, that’s why we have to fight against it.
https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/2023/06/21/moms-for-liberty-hamilton-county-indiana-quotes-hitler-in-newsletter/70344659007/
I don’t have the actual original before the yellow box was added, so I can’t say if the yellow box was the only change. But now all you’re doing by attacking them on this nothingburger of a Hitler quote, is you’ve given them ammunition to talk about how irrational and unreasonable the people opposing them are.
The accusation of ambitions similar to that of Hitler could be true, but your evidence doesn’t support it at all. All you’re doing is whipping up your side to an irrational fervor which will get noticed by the other side and then they’ll do the same thing.
You’re making things worse, not better.
I don’t know. That’s how I do advocacy, maybe it’s ineffective. I think it works on the people where something can work and doesn’t work on the people where nothing worse. This more unhinged kinda of advocacy is pushing away the people on whom it can work, helps turn the people on your side into lunatics and helps to turn people on the other side into even worse lunatics.
Well then maybe they shouldn’t intentionally cough over moments of silence for Holocaust victims.
And excusing that sort of behavior by claiming it’s not the group it’s just individuals is nonsense. The group encourages it. The group supports it.
Just from a couple of passing references in the passed, I already basically assumed they were far right anti lgbtq+ pieces of shit.
It’s just now when I see all the “evidence” you’re giving in support of that I’m almost reconsidering my original position… Ok, but not really.
They coughed during a moment of silent purportedly to be in recognition of the victims of the holocausts but the context is clear that the intent was just to humiliate this particular political group.
That’s not evidence of anything. It’s just another nothing burger.
How is the context clear there? It sure isn’t clear to me. And isn’t there a better way to “humiliate” someone than mocking a Holocaust remembrance? Especially after quoting Hitler?
I can see that very little is ever clear to you except your preconceived notions.
Obviously, I meant that it was the opponents of the Moms for Liberty that were attempting to humiliate the Moms for Liberty by calling for a moment of silence.
And you keep saying “quoting Hitler” as if that was an indictment on their (the Moms of Liberty) character. They were quoting Hitler in condemnation to his statement, not in support of it.
The opponents were not the ones coughing. Don’t gaslight.
And their quote was in big letters in a box by itself with no context, so yeah, it is an indictment of their character. Then they did a half-apology. Then they walked it back. They’re proud of their Hitler quote and they happily interrupted a moment of silence for Holocaust victims by coughing through it.
The weird thing is that I’m still fairly confident that the Moms of Liberty do have as their end goal to gain control over education curriculum and make it heavily ideologically based on their own anti-lgbtq+, pro religious and eventually racist ideology. But all this “evidence” you’re giving me is starting to make me wonder if I’ve been bamboozled.
None of this changes the fact that you still have failed to condemn a comment on this very thread that is part of your community, supported by your community and is calling for genocide. Which is IMO still far worse than anything I’ve seen you (possibly falsely) accused the Moms of Liberty of doing.
The comment was deleted. Which you’ve already been told. Also, why are you acting like one excuses the other when they’re unrelated?
What are you talking about? I never said anything about Nazis. You said you didn’t know who they were so I sent you a link to Wikipedia. Then you said something about treating a astroturfed company with alterior motives charitably. And I said that’s a bad idea. No idea where the rest of this is coming from.