Posted by David Wearing
on October 31, 2009, 11:11 am, in reply to "sorry, one more on David"
Thanks, Jeff, for your thoughtful comments.
You raise a really important point here, I think - one which was discussed on the board recently with reference to the phrase that the media has "blood on its hands". People who are not on the left and find our views unfamiliar (the very people we need to persuade) may well find our stances alienating if we don't find a way of making our points in language that rings true to them. We should never say things we don't think and believe ourselves, or dilute the substance of our views. But we do have to find the right words to persuade people, and the forums in which to do that.
So much has been done to marginalise and "other" the left in mainstream political discourse that we cannot ignore these factors if we are serious about our task. Choosing the right language and the right forums/media in order to persuade people who don't agree with us has to be amongst our highest priorities.
As you note in your observations about your own experiences, persuasion is an incremental process. I doubt that my article transformed any neo-cons into anti-imperialists. But if it undermined a few assumptions in people's minds, or reframed some issues for them in ways they found at least novel, plausible and interesting, then maybe that'll turn out to be one step along a much longer road - one that'll ultimately take them closer to where we are politically.
There's another section of the potential audience for that article that's not been mentioned up til now though. That's the people who share our views but are not part of the left. People who share the views expressed in the article, but feel isolated and alienated from mainstream discourse because they rarely hear those ideas expressed.
Think how many people read Chomsky and whose reaction is, "so its not just me who thinks like this then". I was one, and Chomsky says he hears that all the time. Polls show that the public is much closer to the view of foreign policy that I expressed in my article than the one put forward by the two main parties. That indeed was the point of the piece. The reason I placed so much stress on the existence of a disparate but broad and dedicated movement that reflects the majority opinion was to encourage such people - isolated, potential activists - to get involved in campaigning, and let them know that there's a movement out there for them to join.
So that's another advantage of writing a piece in the msm. You can maybe help empower people in that way.
David Wearing
http://www.democratsdiary.co.uk
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