2y ago

‘Never apologize’: How Moms for Liberty teaches its members to spin the media

www.nbcnews.com

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.

60 comments

I wish these vile people would just crawl back into the holes they crawled out of.
- I rarely agree with or endorse or agree with violence. But the rise of the far-right shitbirds has really led me to believe that perhaps General Sherman really should've gone all the way to the sea.
  If I learned anything from playing Civilzation, even when you win a neighoring city over to your side with culture or trade alone, they're always going to be a problem. It's better to just raze the whole damn thing to the ground and start over in the same spot.
  edit: I also won't fall victim to the paradox of tolerance. Punching Nazis is a net good. Superman does it, after all.
  
  Get money out of politics. The Republicans fund these groups so they can push hate while maintaining plausibile deniability. Moms for Liberty can't exist solely on grassroots funding. They are being paid by the richest among us to spread hate and keep us distracted from class warfare.
  
  Replying to your edit:
  edit: I also won’t fall victim to the paradox of tolerance. Punching Nazis is a net good. Superman does it, after all.
  You're literally "jokingly" advocating for GENOCIDE!! What is wrong with you? Can't you tell the difference between punching someone in the face, and murdering an entire population over a political disagreement?
  And instead of at the very least qualifying your statement saying "It's a joke, obviously I don't mean this should be taken literally and I'm just venting without really noticing the full ramifications of what I'm saying". Or something to that effect. You just double down on defending your statement.
  At least when the Moms of Liberty were accused of supporting the Hitler quote, the modified their news letter to be double extra clear that they were condemning the Hitler quote. You can't even do that much...
  
  Your comment which kinda jockingly advocates for genocide is one of the top voted comments on this thread.
  Personally, I think you should be ashamed of this. And of this community.
  I propose that to help make things better, you should perhaps apologize.
  
  Now I'm doing a triple reply but I think it needs to be said.
  There's a huge difference between tolerating intolerance and tolerating the intolerant.
  Right now I'm doing the best I can to be tolerant of you. But I will not tolerate your intolerance. It is utterly unacceptable.
- They won't. Fascists have to be beaten back into these holes with the biggest, thorniest stick one can find.
  They never learn, they infest innocent minds and laugh in your face when you call them out.
- Meanwhile, the LGBTQ+(MAP) community is chanting...
  We're coming for your children, we're here, we're queer.
  
  Fuck off with that shit. Map was something right wingers made up, no liberal believes map is real, dumbass.
This is indicative of a shitty rhetorical strategy. Really, the only way to hold someone accountable when they use this strategy is to insist on continuing to talk about your main issue, not whatever they want to say.
So, if they pivot to making a point against Hitler's indoctrination of children, then take it back to their use of a Hitler quote that makes that point relevant in the first place.
- I may be butting into a topic I don't understand. I don't know much about these Moms for Liberty except that I thing I've heard that they support trump.
  The quote in question is: "He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.”
  It's pretty ambiguous in its meaning and intent. In the context where it was used: advocating for parents to have more control over their children's education: aka decentralize control of children.
  But let me point you to a less catchy but far more horrifying quote:
  I rarely agree with or endorse or agree with violence. But the rise of the far-right shitbirds has really led me to believe that perhaps General Sherman really should’ve gone all the way to the sea.
  If I learned anything from playing Civilzation, even when you win a neighboring city over to your side with culture or trade alone, they’re always going to be a problem. It’s better to just raze the whole damn thing to the ground and start over in the same spot.
  It has 2 upvotes and I'm the only downvote ...
  You talk about bad faith actors using shitty strategy to derail the debate. They're affirming that parents should have more control over their children's education, they unwisely used a Hitler quote without enough context in one of their publication and now that's all you want to talk about.
  I haven't looked into it but I'm pretty sure that the greater context here is that these parents don't want their kids to be taught that "it's ok to be gay" and "kill the trans" is a bad thing to say. They probably won't say it publicly, but that's what I suspect is really going on.
  And if I see them on the fediverse making these kinds of statements I might call them out on it. If I see them accusing the other side of acting in bad faith by acting in bad faith themselves, I might call them all on it. And if I see them almost directly calling for armed conflict, you bet your ass I'll DEFINITELY call them out on it.
  But guess who it is that I see acting in bad faith right now? You.
  And guess who it is that I see kinda, "but really just joking", advocating for armed conflict / quasi genocide? Someone on this thread getting upvoted that I won't even give the respect of directly responding to.
  
  "I may be butting into a topic I don't understand. I don't know much about these Moms for Liberty except that I thing I've heard that they support trump." I mean, it doesn't take that much effort to go to wikipedia, but here, I've even done it for you:
  Mom's for Liberty is so much worse than what you're implying here. They're not some innocent gathering of parents who don't want certain things taught in schools. They're an astroturf, highly GOP connected, right wing campaign that has supported many things like anti-vax propaganda, book bans, anti-LGBT legislature, and the rest of the "normal" GOP stuff. They have an extensive history of getting caught calling for violence against those they disagree with. They have 3 separate sections on Wikipedia about the different people they have been caught threatening with violence.
  
  No one is getting genocided because a guy on lemmy suggested a dead general should've done more. To everyone but you it's obviously a hyperbolic statement.
  Fuck Moms for liberty, they are a hateful and harmful group and do not deserve any measure of tolerance or respect.
  
  You know there are entire instances devoted to people who love right wing pieces of shit, maybe join one of those and be happy
More importantly this:
This is my view. Other people have different views on this. I think apologizing makes you weak.
This is what cultivates the "never admitting wrong and always attempting to be right" on literally everything. Making people afraid or scared to be "wrong" is absolutely the most incorrect thing possible. We learn best when we self identify our own mistakes.
This whole mentality is literally the number one thing I hear people hate the most on the Internet. Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem solving and if you teach people that being wrong is "weak" then you literally subvert the most basic ability to problem solve.
There could not have been a more wrong bit of advice this person could have given. This is literally the number one thing that makes public discourse even harder to do. My bit of free advice is to literally NOT view apologies as weakness. You will always be an infinitely better person if you just simply DO NOT DO this one thing that Christian Ziegler has indicated.
- apologies are strength. admitting you were wrong is strength. changing your mind when new facts are available is strength.
  it’s easy in the short term to not apologise. it’s easy to just say no. it’s short sighted, it’s incredibly dumb, and it shows how weak you truly are: unable to display even the most basic of human decency.
Please help me understand. They used the quote in the newsletter to bring attention to the viewpoint of one of, if not the worst world leader in recent human history. They simply stated the quote; something along the lines of he who controls the youth controls the future. They followed the quote by saying to not let the government indoctrinate your children. Hitler, the highest member of the government, indoctrinated children.
How is it bad to say to not follow in Hitler’s footsteps?
Because to say this is bad advice is to say the government should be allowed to indoctrinate your children.
- Do you think maybe they should have said not to follow in his footsteps? Because they didn't. They just put the quote in huge letters in an isolated box at the top of their newsletter. Which sure looks like an endorsement.
"But guess who it is that I see acting in bad faith right now? You."
Yeah, can you explain this a bit more?
Yes I can. But also, I have to apologize, saying "bad faith" was definitely going a bit too far. What you're doing is being exceedingly and ironically uncharitable.
I'm guessing that the Moms of Liberty have quite a lot of statements to make the but the one in the newsletter that contained the quote was about giving parents more control over their children's education. THAT is the topic of discussion (or at least what they present as their side of the discussion, their true agenda may differ).
Opponents to Moms of Liberty are derailing the topic of discussion by making it about quoting Hitler. This particular article quotes a member of Moms of Liberty advocating for not apologizing, because if they apologize that will become the story instead of the actual thing she wanted to talk about.
Then you come on here and say, don't let them derail the conversation by bringing it back to the thing they actually want to talk about.
In contrast, you’re associating me with some quote about killing “far-right shitbirds” because…why? I’m not seeing the logic of the association between me and that quote or about how I’m acting in bad faith.
Because it is a quote by someone on this very thread with 14 upvotes. This is a member of your community and they're popularly supported and you've done nothing to reign them in.
- You keep coming back to defending their Hitler quote. As if it's ever okay to quote Hitler regardless of context. You want us to discuss instead... Actually I can't really figure out what you want us to discuss. But you want us to ignore the Hitler quote. You said that multiple times now. I think anybody who's quoting Hitler should not be given the forum for debate. I'm not one that call a lot of people Nazis just for the hell of it, but if you're quoting Hitler... Well then you're a Nazi sympathizer at a minimum. I have no interest in what else you want to say after that point.
- What exactly do you expect us to do to rein them in? What power do you think we have?
  
  At the very least downvote it. There's now EIGHTEEN upvotes, 2 boosts, and I'm still the only downvote on that comment. And I know people can find the downvote button because I can see how many downvotes I'm getting.
  Moderators here don't have a rule against calls for violence. I already reported it, but technically it's not against the rules. Which I can understand in a politics magazine where war can be a topic of discussion, you don't want to be banning people when for example the government is actively engaging in mass murder (e.g. like the Rwanda genocide) and a commenter is saying that the people should defend themselves with lethal force if necessary.
  EDIT: Also my post was intended as a reply to someone else, I'm still getting used to the UI can accidentally making a top level comment instead of a reply.

60 comments