Last week I talked about how we should not let the Democrat Media Complex use their PC lexicon to control us and shape the narrative. This week I will mention how we can OWN the narrative.
Just as Andrew Breitbart did not let the Complex use its PC Lexicon to control him and shape the narrative, he then went one step further and did not let the Complex control whatever story he had. I present to you, Rule 5 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.
5.) Control your own story – don’t let the Complex do it: A one-and-done story isn’t worth anything. One fact can be posted on the Internet and flushed down the memory hole faster than anyone can imagine. How many incredible pieces of journalistic revelation have been lost because they weren’t properly presented to the public?
Serialization is good. Van Jones was taken down by Glenn Beck because Beck had the goods – and because he revealed them piece by piece. He got Jones and his defenders to come out of the closet and attack him. Then he calmly laid his cards on the table, one by one.
It’s the same strategy I saw Arianna pursue during the Larry Lawrence scandal. People came out of the woodwork to attack her as a scurrilous human being slandering a dead war hero. And she smiled and let them come at her. Then she put her evidence into the public eye bit by bit, keeping the story alive. Feeding the media is like training a dog – you can’t throw an entire steak to a dog to train it to sit. You have to give it little bits of steak over and over and over again until it learns its lesson. That’s what Arianna did.
It’s the same thing Drudge did with Lewinsky. He broke the story in pieces rather than in a long essay laying out all the facts, and he didn’t let the media’s cries for him to reveal all his information control his decision-making process. Instead, he controlled the media.
The important thing to remember here is that the media are like a leech hanging on the back of the news makers, and the news makers have every right and ability to feed that leech little by little instead of letting it suck them dry all at once. Keep your story alive by planning its release down to the minutest level.
The main thing to remember is this: we need to OWN THE NARRATIVE at every single opportunity. I am of the belief that owning the narrative is not just a fancy saying or something that can be focused on for an hour or so a day or even a week. Rather, owning the narrative is a way of life, one that lives with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Owning the narrative has been a part of my life ever since Andrew died, and it will remain in me until I take that eternal celestial dirt nap.
During the 2012 election I had dealt with the third party supporters, as I had mentioned last week, and every time they said something which mentioned Romney and Obama being the same I just calmly said they are not and showed them links a little at a time. In fact, one person even called me Rick “The Narrative” Bulow because when he would ask me what I am doing, I told him that I am calmly owning the narrative.
When Marco Rubio was mentioned on Romney’s VP short list and the birthers came out of the woodwork saying he is not eligible, I had calmly said that he is, and debunked their articles a little at a time with certain links of my own. And in fact just recently I had seen a thread on a site which mentioned a paper from the Congressional Research Service on natural born citizenship and presidential eligibility. Now what is funny about it is that I had brought up that paper in another thread on the same site and got bashed for it. So I had waded in and mentioned a couple of things about eligibility, and wound up getting banned from the entire site. Am I upset about it? Yes I am; however, one thing I did not do when I commented was let them own and control the narrative. The only way the Complex can own and control the narrative after being confronted with facts is to shut you up. And online, apparently that means banning someone from sites.
If we want to win in 2014 and then in 2016, we have to own the narrative, whatever it may be, at all costs. Remember that owning the narrative is not just a fancy saying but a way of life.
When I wrote that in 2013, the Republicans had been rebuffed on reclaiming the White House and Senate but retained their hold on the House, though they lost a couple of seats. Over the next four years, Republicans had slowly kept the House and reclaimed the Senate and the White House. The Republican did it because they owned the political narrative and not let the Democrats control it. Then whatever hold they had in 2018 and 2020 were lost because they lost the ability to maintain it. In order to win in November 2022 and then in 2024, we need to find a way to reclaim the narrative.
Just what is the narrative as far as politics is concerned? There are many different definitions. Wikipedia describes it as follows:
Political narrative is a term used in the humanities and political sciences to describe the way in which storytelling can shape fact and impact on understandings of reality. However, political narrative is not only a theoretical concept, it is also a tool employed by political figures in order to construct the perspectives of people within their environment and alter relationships between social groups and individuals. As a result, fiction has the potential to become fact and myths become intertwined into public discourse. Political narrative is impactful in its ability to elicit pathos, allowing the narrative to be influential through the value it provides rather than the truth that is told.
.According to Quizlet, It is the story that people believe about who has power, who wants power, who deserves the power, what someone has done to get and maintain power.
So now that we know just what the political narrative is, how do we own and maintain it? As Andrew so expertly pointed out, we do it by controlling the story. So often, we hear that everything is coming out to the open and the political establishment (both Republicans and Democrats) are losing. Many people want it to come out all at once. However, that is not the correct way to do it. Andrew Breitbart said the way to control it is by releasing things a little bit at a time, much like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for people to follow. Then leaving a whole bunch of crumbs in a box and lowering the boom. He gave examples of that in what Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington did during the Monica Lewinsky and Larry Lawrence scandals respectively. They released the story in bits and pieces, whether it be one article per day or one article per week.
Another prime example of controlling the story is what James O’Keefe did in bringing down ACORN in 2009 when he released videos of vounteers and employees in various ACORN offices assisting O’Keefe and Hannah Giles (who were undercover as a pimp and a prostitute) seeking advice on how to run an illegal business that included the use of underage girls in the sex trade. With Andrew Breitbart’s help, he released the ACORN videos one per day, and that made people sit up and take notice to the point that Congress voted to defund ACORN.
As andrew Breitbart said, “The important thing to remember here is that the media are like a leech hanging on the back of the news makers, and the news makers have every right and ability to feed that leech little by little instead of letting it suck them dry all at once. Keep your story alive by planning its release down to the minutest level.” That is one thing we all need to think about if we want to keep telling the story the way it should be told.
Not only should we control the story, but we have to develop relationships with like-minded allies or even enemies. I will explain how to go about doing that next week.