Molloy DSG Professional Digest

You get what you get when you delegate the argument.

During a public campaign for an important and desirable position, it is important to pay close attention to the primary methods of campaigning utilized by the contenders in order to secure their positions. At the highest level of analysis, two primary methodologies of campaign strategy can be derived: positive and negative. While both are effective, the consequences for society after an election can be drastically different. Positive campaigning focuses on cohesion: a clear presentation of where the positively campaigning party intends to lead their consituents, with steps to align policy and tasks to achieve these promises. Negative campaigns focus on negative rhetoric about the opponent; always including celebration of a shared hate. Campaigns focused on negative methodology take advantage of vulnerable people, co-opting their thinking to spread divisive messages through entitlement and fiction. Historically, in the 1930’s, the Nazi party was elected after running an intense negatively focused campaign; a method of gaining power focused on the opposition of their competition. Negative campaigning that results in the rise to power of a party utilizing this strategy is always followed by war or travesties or some other type of hell, and a simple reflection of the methods can reveal a negatively campaigning party’s actual leadership capabilities, strategic positioning, and threat potential.

To fully understand how negative campaigning spreads across society, you must first respect and understand a bit of game theory, and disassociate any preconcieved angelic or malevalent alignments about any parties up for election. You must also fully disadhere any ideas that any given technology, media, and idealogical sources of information can be good or evil. In the game of money and power, all that matters is money and power; the idea that malevalent or benevalent forces exist as a “them” is flawed. All successful, whether negative or postively focused, groups of people in business or an organization are built on cohesion around a set of common ideas. In order to understand negative campaigning, your thinking must comprehend, understand, and comply with the principle that any tools or language may be weaponized – this is foundational to having an actually unbiased and informed view of the arena.

In the 1930’s, Hitler’s rise to power was primarily based on hate of any opposition to the Nazi party. Vile speeches, smearing news, spreading of hate, disrespect for discourse and argument, were the constructs of those associated with the Nazis. Nazi party members read and spread propoganda, did what they were told without regard to the consequences of their action as individuals or a whole. The highest levels of the Nazi party based their management styles on principles of self-interest motivated by greed for power, peddling fear to the population and meanacing them with threats. As the Nazi party rose to power, every member of the party became responsible for the actions of the whole. All the Nazis cowardly participated in the distribution and enablement of hate rather than cohesiveness, ultimately resulting in the deaths of innocent people. This eventually led to their defeat during World War II and eventual demise and rebranding.

The Nazi narrative heavily emphasized national unity against perceived internal threats brought by any opposing energy that could threaten their power. Instead of presenting a robust and positive agenda for the future, the Nazis focused on a defensive posture—arguing that the survival of the nation depended on defeating these internal and external boogymen. This created a strong, emotionally charged propogandic campaigning approach that resonated with many disillusioned and vulnerable people. These emotionally charged arguments, based on a deliberate underlying negative campaign framework, were relentless. Naturally, unethical and malevalent behaviors by people within the Nazi party became normalized, such as lying, deceit, gaslighting, violence, and hate worshipping centered on propaganda. As this spiraled out of control within their society, this reduced the ability for their republic to be competitive. Their negative campaigning not only facilitated the Nazis’ rise but also contributed to one of the darkest chapters in human history. The emphasis on an "us vs. them" narrative dehumanized opposing forces within Germany and internationally, creating a weak population that ultimately turned to genocide of their internal opposition and killing of many civilians in war.

By focusing on the need to stop their opposition, the Nazis were showcasing a defensive and divisive strategy rather than an offensive, cohesive one. This reflected their confidence in any actual proposals and visions to create a successful nation resilient to dark forces in the world and leave a lasting legacy. The struggle for the Nazis to positively campaign, focusing only on stopping their opposition, was due exactly the result of utilizing negative campaign tactics; as they dug in deeper with the negative propaganda and hate, the opportunity to create a compelling and cohesive vision for all citizens was squandered. Eventually the Nazis rose to power based on presenting a constant fear-based narrative about their opposition, resulting in a society full of propaganda, intimidation, deceit, meanacing, fear, and innocent death; a hell on Earth. Although the Nazi party fought hard, it's important to understand that emotional thinkers will always fail at achieving an objective sooner than objective-minded thinkers, so it’s no surprise that at some point the good forces of the world had to step in to disable the Nazi threat.

Stop now to take a moment to frame something important here: historically it turned out to be irrelevent to the function of constituents of the Nazi party how the status-quo of their society reached the point it did – the misery of casting their own disresponsibilities unto each other while boiling the frog. Transformative and cohesive parties present frameworks for improvement as the society as a whole as their arguments for election into a position. Improvements are based on objective reasoning against real data, creating bold opportunity for everyone within the country based on precident. Positively campaining groups are comprised of people who are open to deep discussion of the landscape, reaching into the depths of topics that are indefinitely difficult to talk about. When reaching into the past to analize effectiveness, individuals who are part of the negatively campaigning party are triggered into emotional fits and unable to discuss certain topics; affected deeply by their arrogant and voluntary consumption of deceitful information and addiction to hate routines so vile it qualifies as pornographic. Longterm integration with the negatively campaigning party consumes the citizen with fear, resulting in conversations that lack debate and tumble into personal insults, talking points, and keyword usage. Therein you should see why the struggle the individual without full control over themselves, which is one of the consequences of a selfish approach to life, makes that person vulnerable to negatively campaigning.

History has time-and-again shown that tumultuous elections where the positive campaign of one party is stifled by intense negative propoganda from the negatively campaigning status-quo party are extremely important. If the positively campaigning population has reached a cohesive enough state, the negative propaganda becomes material for a flailing marginialized campaign; it becomes clearer what organizations work for whom and how money or agenda of players within that party affect their strategy. Organizations that participate in negative campaigning always deceive their own constituents with deceit, and never present information without some type of bias strategized into their product. Negative campaigning depends on strong propaganda sources that leave out information, or twist words into malevalent pills designed to fool their prey into compliance. Negative campaigns depend on downright fraud to win, presenting fake and manipulated polling numbers to show strength in higher numbers than reality, painting anyone who doesn’t believe their results as the enemy to the agenda of that party. When inquired about what the agendas of the positively campaigning party is, the constituents often don’t have answers that are based in reality.

It continues to be extremely important to reject vile assumptions and push back against the disrespect for debate as forms of influence become more subtle and intimate as technology progresses. This requires an always-on internal mindset that disregards triggers and narrative talking, and turns hateful thought inward into an analytical introspection line of fire. Clear analysis must be the responsibility of all consituents of an elected position; all individuals participating in the decision will decide the outcome, therefore a mindset muddied by propaganda becomes dangerous. The old faithful cliché that history doesn’t repeat itself will always be true, however all types of idealogies – whether good or evil – are going to continue to manifest until hell freezes over.