10 ways strategists control the story and the narrative

Ian Harvey/Principal Curator

It’s true. If you control the narrative, you control the agenda and if you control the agenda you are the authoritative voice.

Here’s a look at how the Left attempts to control the narrative using tried and true tricks and techniques. For a deeper dive on why it’s important to control the agenda read this. (Actually to be fair the right does this too. Everyone does it.)

1) Demonize the opposition. Anyone opposed to them is a greedy money capitalist bent on keeping average people in poverty.

2) Shoot the messenger at every turn. Don’t like the data or rebuttal to your narrative? Shoot down the source. Smear them, suggest they’re been paid off or are incompetent or not really a scientist.
For example, in August 2020, I posted video from a TV station about a night of rioting in Portland where an older woman was attacked. Leftist attacked the video because it was originally posted by a freelance journalist labelled an “extreme right winger” and therefore not acceptable. I merely linked to the source, the TV station itself. They shut up pretty quickly.
Examples abound from Judith Curry, to Patrick Moore in the climate change field, to commentators like Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell or researchers like Vivian Krause who has relentlessly exposed foreign funding of anti-salmon farm activists and anti-oil and gas activists.

3) Demonize the target. Oil sands become tar sands. Coal becomes Dirty Coal. Salmon farms become feed pens. Oh, weren’t they always tar sands? Nope. Tar is a distilled product. The oil sands contain bitumen. And no, that’s not dirty oil. Canada’s oil and gas is the most sustainably produced on the planet.

4) Cloak yourself in righteousness. Claim a higher calling. Ally yourself with other earth-based groups, especially FN. Get celebrities to show up at your events. As if celebrities are scientists and represent anything except themselves. Disdain anyone who challenges you as being less educated and of inferior intellect.

5) Lie and twist the truth especially when following steps 1 and 2. Because when you say 97% of scientists agree climate change is man made you can slip in “and a crisis.” and few will challenge it. It becomes the truth. As Goebbels said, “repeat the lie until it becomes the truth.”

6) Ignore the facts and substitute your own reality when ever faced with science or logic. That Canada contributes only 1.6% of Gghs is immaterial, everyone must suffer, ie we must all do our part.

7) Disregard the economic impact of what will happen if your demands are implemented. Ie. the collapse of the Canadian economy, loss of jobs, end of social safety nets. Did you like the C19 impact on the economy? You’re gonna love that he climate alarmists want to go even further.

8) Be mypoic. Believe your urban viewpoint can be overlaid onto rural and northern communities without impact. Electric vehicles may make sense in urban areas for people who can afford them but they are madness in northern and western Canada where a quick drive is a two hour jaunt into the middle of nowhere – and back – in sub zero temperatures.

9) Refuse to recognize the logic of your demands. Ie electric vehicles for everyone. Electrification of rail lines, solar and wind farms. Leave the oil in the ground, despite clear evidence the existing fleets of cars, trucks, freighters and aircraft alone will need fossils for 30 years while other industries depend on produces from fossils.

10) Accept money from dubious sources whose agendas aren’t clear but their money is good. Check out some of the stellar work Vivian Krause has done and then look at the list of people trying to smear her. She must be doing something right.