The power and pitfalls of protest: how to speak out without falling victim to Trump's playbook | Jonathan Smucker

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Opposed to these hoity-toity, overeducated, condescending elites, Trump presents himself as hero and champion of "ordinary Americans".
52% : He also attacks vulnerable people because of their immigration status, their advocacy for Palestine and their gender identity, among other pretenses.
50% : At Trump rallies during his 2016 campaign, I observed how he would deliberately draw attention to protesters, utilizing them as characters in his story, encouraging the crowd to chant and jeer as security removed the disruptive "outside agitators".
43% : So it was striking to watch how dramatically Trump changed his tack when military veterans spoke out at some of these same rallies.
34% : It's important that we consistently punch up at billionaires and the politicians doing their bidding and refrain from punching down at people who voted for Trump.
28% : As mass protest surges against Trump and Musk, how can we show up as effectively as possible?
20% : The lesson isn't that you have to be a military veteran or federal worker if you want to effectively protest Trump and Musk.
19% : These veterans later learned from active-duty friends that Trump had gotten quite upset by their actions, because they didn't fit into his narrative; military veterans could easily overcome Trump's "woke protester" framing.
17% : Trump didn't invent this disparaging story, but he grafts these negative tropes about protest and protesters onto his larger pseudo-populist "anti-elite" narrative.

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