The Ultimate Political Weapon

[PrinceofLowLight]

Just thinking here... What if you created your own Communist or Nazi party, not necessarily affiliated with the existing ones, but a real party nonetheless, and then publically endorsed certain candidates? Even after the smoke clears and your party gets revealed as just a guy with a grudge, that'll still be a devestating blow to PR.

[Gunshy]

Interesting...a friend of mine, who is vehemently anti-union, considered buying a Soviet Red flag, and joining the picket lines of the strikers here, while the media was filming.

I quickly convinced him not to try it, since he most likely would have gotten the shit beat out of him by the strikers.

So, I'd have to say that unless the pseudo-party endorsement is pretty elaborate, I doubt it would be seen as anything other than a lone nut in favor of a canidate.

[Guardsman Bass]

Just take over the Green Party and use that

[General Zod]

Just thinking here... What if you created your own Communist or Nazi party, not necessarily affiliated with the existing ones, but a real party nonetheless, and then publically endorsed certain candidates? Even after the smoke clears and your party gets revealed as just a guy with a grudge, that'll still be a devestating blow to PR.

it would depend on how much influence the said party acquires.

[Joe]

These would be fringe parties in the American political spectrum, and fringe parties tend to arise from being distrustful of and angry at the two mainstream parties. They wouldn't exist in the first place if they were willing to endorse mainstream candidates.

[Darth Wong]

Conversely, if you were wealthy and you wanted to help a certain candidate, you could make ads attacking that person and then buy ad space. A big bold-print colour ad attacking a candidate and paid for by the local Nazi party would probably have the opposite of its presumed intent.

[kojikun]

Mike, I believe you and LowLight have defined a new form of memetic/social engineering. Someone could probably write a book on this, if people did it.

[Gil Hamilton]

Mike, I believe you and LowLight have defined a new form of memetic/social engineering. Someone could probably write a book on this, if people did it.

It's not a new phenomena. There is a saying in advertising. "All publicity is good publicity". If you put out attack ads of a political party, you shine a spot light on them, drawing peoples attention to them. People who wouldn't support them won't support them anyway, but now there is more attention on them, objectively helping them.

[kojikun]

If you put out attack ads of a political party, you shine a spot light on them, drawing peoples attention to them. People who wouldn't support them won't support them anyway, but now there is more attention on them, objectively helping them.

You've got it backwards though. There is no attack ads. It's all situational engineering so that it looks like the persons supporters are nazis in order to make the guy look evil, or so it looks like his detracters are nazis in order to make the guy look good. It's not a slander campaign, more like a social situation influence campaign ie social engineering.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You've got it backwards though. There is no attack ads. It's all situational engineering so that it looks like the persons supporters are nazis in order to make the guy look evil, or so it looks like his detracters are nazis in order to make the guy look good. It's not a slander campaign, more like a social situation influence campaign ie social engineering.

It's been done before.

[Dark Hellion]

I always thought the Ultimate Political Weapon was the orbital ion cannon. Huh, guess I was wrong.

The only problem with Mr. Wong's idea is that if you can trace it back to who did it, then it could backfire dramatically. This is a rather big if, and considering who gives money to parties might not be all that damaging, but it would still be a thing to consider.

[beyond hope]

I can just imagine the headlines now: "American Society of Necrophiles endorses Congressman Schitt for re-election."

[Gil Hamilton]

You've got it backwards though. There is no attack ads. It's all situational engineering so that it looks like the persons supporters are nazis in order to make the guy look evil, or so it looks like his detracters are nazis in order to make the guy look good. It's not a slander campaign, more like a social situation influence campaign ie social engineering.

I don't have it backwards. It's a very established theory that I learned in my Media and Mass Communications class. It's the reason that Bill O'Rielly and FOXNews saying nasty things about Al Franken and trying to sue him was the best possible thing ever for Franken's book sales. Any attention is useful, even bad attention. because it makes people want to find out more about them. Attack ads do exist and can have effects to discredit people, but they tend to polarize support rather eliminate it. The idea behind a good attack as is that it gets more of your supporters out than it gets the support base of the person you are attacking out.

If form a psuedo-crackpot party and then publically throw your support behind a candidate and are loud about it, you aren't necessarily hurting them. For instance, if the Communist party threw it's support behind President Bush, would it have much of an effect? Well, the people who don't support Bush wouldn't support him anyway. The people who do support Bush wouldn't jump ship, they'd just assume that it's not real or liberal media or something anyway. The people in the middle however it would effect, but only because if President Bush bothers to respond, it will give him another media spot and another chance to get his message out and why he isn't like them. This might trick some people, but in the end it objectively helps him.