Winning with Emotional Intelligence - Part 1

Confronting the Right-Wing Propaganda Machine

By Steve Schear

Five days after the election, I flew to Costa Rica. It’s been raining here pretty much ever since, fitting weather for the post-election blues. One day, driving through giant puddles, I heard Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain” on Spotify:

All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well. . .

How appropriate, I thought.  It’s time for us to do what we must do, and do it well. To do it well, we need to recognize the importance of emotional intelligence.  

There’s been a lot of discussion about why MAGA won and what we should do now. Yet most have missed two key lessons of this election:  1) people act based on their emotions; and 2) the right-wing propaganda machine masterfully manipulates voters’ feelings. Our chances of not just surviving this moment but ultimately prevailing depend on understanding and acting on those two fundamental facts.

This is the first of a three-part series about the emotional side of politics.  I’ll begin with why we must focus attention on the right-wing propaganda machine (RWPM).  Part Two will discuss the importance of pro-democracy activists’ emotions. The third part will offer ideas on beating the RWPM.

Emotions Often Trump Intellect

While canvassing in six states, I talked to as many Trump supporters as I could, sometimes for an hour. To me, there’s no mystery about why we lost. Using lies, the RWPM created a worldview adopted by half the country’s voting population. Almost all Trump supporters I talked to bought the right’s sales pitch that A) the economy was terrible; B) millions of dangerous immigrants are streaming into the country; C) Democrats are the cause of our nation’s terrible condition; and D) Trump and MAGA will protect them. Some even believed Democrats caused Hurricane Helene by controlling the weather. The amount of right-wing disinformation, aka lies, fake news, and BS, runs deep and wide.

Harris generated joy and positive vibes that helped our organizing, motivating people to join the struggle. MAGA and the RWPM relied on fear to win a close election. The election showed that, whether we admit it or not, almost all of us make decisions based on emotions. Then we use our minds to provide explanations for those decisions.

RWPM — Our Biggest Problem

When we think of right-wing media, most think of Fox News. But Fox is just the tip of the spear. The right dominates radio with talk shows on the Sinclair, iHeart, and Bott (Christian) networks.  One friendly independent in Montana advised me, “You guys should be on the radio. All we hear is the other side.  People around here listen to the radio a lot when driving around.”  Then there’s Elon Musk’s control of X and his two hundred million followers, along with a ton of other right-wing social media and podcasts.  Joe Rogan with his 30 million listeners might be the only right-wing podcast you know, but there are lots more out there with huge audiences.  

Musk and others also fuel PACs that spread disinformation beyond the RWPM’s usual audience.  The Washington Post recently reported how Building America’s Future, a right-wing dark money “non-profit,”  pretended to support Harris while placing ads targeting Muslims by asserting Harris’s support for Israel, and targeting Jews by claiming Harris’s support for Palestinians.  This election’s 7.5 million drop in Democratic votes was caused in part by this deceitful operation.   

And I was recently surprised by a Harvard study revealing that 14 percent of social media users deliberately spread lies. Who are they? “Respondents who reported purposefully sharing false political information online were more likely to harbor (i) a desire to run for political office, (ii) support for political violence, and (iii) positive feelings toward QAnon, Proud Boys, White Nationalists, and Vladimir Putin.”

Speaking of Putin, The Hill reported that Russian operatives ran hundreds of fake news sites that helped Trump, including many in Spanish targeting Latinos.  

RWPM — Invisible to Us and the Mainstream Media

In the 30 years since Rupert Murdoch launched Fox in 1996, the RWPM has expanded its capacity to create and consistently reinforce the beliefs of half the country. Because most of us never listen to MAGA talk radio or podcasts, we rarely encounter the RWPM.  The same holds true for most journalists, producers, and pundits of the mainstream (non-MAGA) media.  The invisibility of the RWPM, other than Fox, hid its pervasive malevolent impact. 

When New York Times’ columnist Nate Cohn described Harris’ uphill battle against discontent with the economy, the piece had not one word about why voters were unhappy — despite three years of full employment, inflation under control, real wages outpacing inflation, and millions of new jobs.  The answer: the RWPM. Cohn’s blindness was not unique.

Since 2020, almost no one in the media has discussed the power of the RWPM. Although Media Matters has been consistently covering the RWPM, very few others have done the same. And it’s not just the non-MAGA media missing the story.  In all the intense discussions among Democratic and grassroots leaders about messages the Dems should use, there is rarely any mention of exposing RWPM lies or reaching those immersed in the right-wing media world.  

“How could it have happened?” Since the election, we have struggled to understand how half the voters could vote for a convicted felon and rapist who tried to overthrow the 2020 election, whose was preaching hate and anger. The answer was invisible to us because it exists in an information world where we never go.  

RWPM — Malevolent Emotional Intelligence

Trump is not intellectually intelligent, but he has a malign emotional intelligence.  Though not the benign self-knowledge described in Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence,” Trump intuitively knows how to connect with people, using humor and disregard for social norms. He is a master at appealing to resentment and anger. His 2016 victory was largely a result of this malevolent emotional intelligence. 

This year, Trump’s abilities declined, yet his campaign staff and MAGA allies used the RWPM to more than make up for his deficiencies. With essentially unlimited financial resources, they pumped out extraordinarily effective appeals to voters’ fears and insecurities.  When canvassing in Montana, over and over again I ran into Trump supporters who were afraid of criminal undocumented immigrants, even though Montana has few immigrants, and the danger was entirely fabricated. 

Harris also ran an emotionally intelligent campaign, but one that appealed to our hopes and, to a lesser extent, fears of Trump’s re-election. Hope was simply insufficient to overcome MAGA’s propaganda advantage.

Opening Our Eyes

Fortunately, the invisible problem is coming to light. Since the election, Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, Jennifer Rubin, Michael Tomasky in The New Republic and others have recognized that a our primary problem is the RWPM. The first step to winning the struggle against fascism is to recognize the root cause of MAGA’s strength. Since the election, grassroots leaders have been calling on us to continue organizing and fighting.  We will, but organizing will not be enough to win.  We need to develop strategies and tactics to overcome the RWPM. The first step is to recognize the problem.

Then, “you do what you must do, and ya do it well.”

In my next article, I will offer suggestions about how we can use our own emotional intelligence to become effective activists under a MAGA government.  In the third article, I will recommend actions using emotional intelligence to protect democracy and the planet. Stay tuned . . .