jorm:
it’s so clear to me that all the bullshit of the past 8 years was stoked so that we’d be too divided to enter this fight
I mean, I think everything. I think Brexit, Gamergate, Q-Anon.
In the end all of this feels like the weaponization of exploits in both our general and specific social cognition: General in that it represents an entire class of exploit, and specific in that it was tailored to the signifiers, mores, and normative style of the Anglosphere.
Within any group there’s a tendency to use similar metaphors and representations, as well as values, rooted in a shared literary traditions, and to use similar forms of argument to persuade (at least at the level of the laity). So if you want to intentionally spread specific ideas among a population, you could do worse than to study just what that populations literary tradition (and therefore metaphors and values) and preferred style of argument are.
The ways you spread an idea among Anglophones and Francophones may be very different, but the way you determine how to spread an idea among each is the same.