On January 10, 2010, Michael Mann posted an important op-ed piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The Serengeti strategy: How special interests try to intimidate scientists, and how best to fight back. He focused on the specific attempts by climate deniers to attack his credibility as an expert on climate science through often vicious and inflammatory ad hominem attacks. However, the argument he lays out has broader implications in my opinion. I believe what he says will prove helpful to anyone the right lumps into their one size fits all category of “If you’re not 100% batshit crazy like we are, you’re our enemy.” I would include here, without limitation, Democrats, liberals, feminists, LGBT people, minorities and anyone advancing ideas or policies deemed anathema in conservative circles.
Obviously, Michale Mann has over a decade of experience with smear campaigns and even lawsuits filed against him and his employers, seeking to defame him personally and destroy his reputation in order to discredit the work of thousands of researchers regarding the impact of human activity to alter the climate. So allow me to let him lay out his argument in his own words:
Much as lions on the Serengeti seek out vulnerable zebras at the edge of a herd, special interests faced with adverse scientific evidence often target individual scientists rather than take on an entire scientific field at once.
The basic idea is one with which we are all familiar, and it isn’t a new tactic by any means (just ask Hillary Clinton about the shit storm the Republicans, and their enablers in the media, unleashed on her when she led the effort to pass Health Care reform during her husband’s first term.) It’s the wel-known “attack the messenger” concept, but as Mann explains, not just any messenger. Find the most vulnerable and/or prominent target and go after them. The purpose of this approach is twofold: (1) distraction by moving the discussion away from the merits the ideas and facts they oppose, and (2) attacking the credibility of the idea based solely upon the attacking credibility and reputation of the spokesperson most associated with that idea.
Let’s consider the case of Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but who was the first significant face of the movement to publicize human generated climate change as a danger to our planet, both through his lectures, but more prominently through the documentary he produced, An Inconvenient Truth. While many critics on the right attempted to misrepresent Gore’s message, the most effective strategy employed by conservative climate deniers was to attack the man rather than his ideas. They made Gore, not climate change per se, the target. By relentlessly going after his reputation they were able to marginalize him. Their tactics ranged from the ludicrous, such as comments about his weight (Al Gore is fat!) to his personal life (i.e., his separation and subsequent divorce from his wife). On the former, consider these remarks by Ann Coulter in 2007:
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The only place Al Gore conserves energy these days is on the treadmill. I don’t want to suggest that Al’s getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, “That reminds me—we have to do something about saving the polar bears.”
Never mind his carbon footprint—have you seen the size of Al Gore’s regular footprint lately? It’s almost as deep as Janet Reno’s.
Indeed, Republican politicians have justified their reversal on the issue of climate change due to Al Gore’s alleged personal failings. Here’s Republican Senator Mark Kirk in 2011, a former proponent for climate change legislation, on why he changed his position 180 degrees:
“The consensus behind the climate change bill collapsed and then further deteriorated with the personal and political collapse of Vice President [Al] Gore,” Kirk told Greenwire.
He’s probably referring to this: in 2009, a massage therapist in Oregon went to the police and accused Al Gore of sexually assaulting her three years previously. Gore ultimately wasn’t prosecuted. Soon thereafter, he and his wife … separated. Still it’s hard to figure how whatever happened that night in 2006 has any bearing on the greenhouse effect.
Indeed, in a study by sociologists regarding 203 columns written by conservative pundits between 2007 and 2010, 93 of them directly discussed Gore, attacking him on numerous grounds, including one of their favorite arguments – the alleged excessive use of energy at his home. Despite their numerous misrepresentations and outright falsehoods, their effort to brand Gore as a liar and a hypocrite worked. He went from being a prominent voice in the policy debate on climate change, to a running joke. All this because Fox News and other conservative media were able to link their attacks on his personal reputation to the validity of the scientific basis supporting man-made climate change. Is it any wonder many prominent environmentalists in and out of government never mention his name anymore. He’s become toxic.
The same strategy was used against Michael Mann. Here’s his description of the personal invective and smear campaign conducted by conservatives to sully his name:
I was vilified in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on Fox News. I was in the sights now of powerful, well-heeled interests such as the Scaife Foundations and the Koch brothers (Mann, 2012). A Scaife-funded front group known as the Commonwealth Foundation unsuccessfully pressured Penn State University to fire me, while the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review frequently published attacks upon me personally. […]
I was subject to what The Washington Post and The New York Times denounced as an “inquisition” and a “witch hunt” by politicians in the pay of fossil fuel interests (Mann, 2012), looking to discredit my work.
The former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Texas Republican Joe Barton, attempted in 2005 to subpoena all of my personal records and those of my two “hockey stick” co-authors, even though the vast majority of what he was demanding was already in the public domain. […]
Subsequently, Ken Cuccinelli, the newly minted attorney general of Virginia, who’d received significant Koch brothers support (see Blumenthal, 2013; Cramer, 2013; and Vogel, 2011), attempted to obtain all of my personal e-mails with more than 30 scientists around the world from the 1999 to 2005 time period, during which I was a professor at the University of Virginia, under the aegis of a civil subpoena designed to root out state Medicare fraud. After Cuccinelli was repeatedly rebuffed by the courts all the way to the state Supreme Court, a Koch-funded group called the American Tradition Institute (ATI) sought to demand the same e-mails through misuse of state open-records laws. The ATI too was rebuffed all the way to the state Supreme Court, which ultimately demanded that they pay both the University of Virginia and me damages for their frivolous petitioning of the court (Sturgis, 2014).
The attacks were geared to impugn Mann’s personal integrity and competence as a scientist. Mann relates that this well-orchestrated, long term campaign to discredit him led to death threats – against both him personally and also family members. So, how did Mann respond. As he notes, he could have retreated early on to the safety of his lab, ignored the attacks and hoped for the best. However, as the chosen sacrificial lamb, he never really had a choice. He was forced to fight not only for his reputation, but for his job and for his freedom. He also recognized that giving in would have only encouraged further attacks on his colleagues, effectively neutering publication of research through the tactics of bullying and intimidation, as well as discouraging a younger generation from entering the field to which he has devoted his career.
Mann’s response evolved over time. He now strongly recommends that scientists become public advocates for science (in his case climate science research). They should take every opportunity to personally educate the public at large through speeches and lectures, as well as to lobby for political action. His own experience has convinced him that humor and mockery is one of the most effective rhetorical tools anyone can employ to combat personal attacks by critics, regardless of the issue or ideas one seeks to promote. His message is to not let the media or your adversaries define you – define them instead. Use their own ridiculous remarks and outrageous positions against them. And choose your audience wisely. Do not bother seeking to change the minds of those who are already convinced you are wrong. Instead, focus on those who are receptive to the information you wish to convey. In short:
[To quote Mark Twain,] “Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.” Translating to 21st-century Internet-speak: “Don’t feed the trolls.” It is far better to expend your time and effort engaging with those individuals who display a capacity to reconsider their viewpoints—who are receptive to new information and evidence—than waste it on those who are not.
It’s an approach that all too often Democrats politicians, especially over the last few decades have failed to employ. Once upon a time Democrats assailed their enemies directly (e.g., FDR and Truman), calling them out for the evil bastards they are. True, I am encouraged by recent remarks by President Obama to go on the attack against his Republican foes, rather than sitting back and letting them fire all the shots in an attempt to appear the only rational guy in the room. It unfortunate, however, that he waited until his last two years in office to play offense. A standard claim I used to hear a lot here was that the “laid-back” approach he used so often earlier in his Presidency to refrain from direct attacks on Republicans, proposing a willingness to compromise to achieve bipartisan cooperation, despite the damage it did to core Democratic Party policies, programs and principles, was a masterful attempt at out maneuvering the GOP. In effect, it was stated that the President was playing 11th dimensional chess while the GOP were playing checkers.
Well, the truth of the matter is that the Republicans and their conservative allies, despite their internal differences, never intended to play games, much less compromise with Obama. They were united in fighting a war against their self-declared enemies by any and all means necessary. By repeatedly lying to the public and using every slimy, despicable and underhanded trick in the book, from voter suppression to thinly veiled racist appeals to whites, they accomplished much of what they sought to achieve: control not only of both houses of Congress, but also of most state governments, even in states that formerly leaned Democratic. This was accomplished even though the majority of voters in the 2014 midterm elections, on a cumulative, national basis, voted for Democrats for Congress. Though we often heard the cry that the GOP was digging its own grave, their relentless and venomous attacks on the President and other Democratic politicians, whether liberals or members of the Wall Street wing of the party, worked. The over the top rhetoric, the outright obstruction and the big lies, half-lies and propaganda repeated continuously from Obama’s first election in 2008 to the present, won the war.
Perhaps worse, in those states where Democrats retained power, those Democrats all to often support policies that, outside a few social issues, reject a progressive agenda to help the 99 percent. Many are anti-union and pro-business. The economic policies more than a few of them support are mere hairs-breadth away from Republican policies. One need only look at Governor Cuomo in New York as a prime example of a Democrat who for the most part rejects progressive policies in favor of Republican-lite. Jerry Brown in California, with his support for fracking, is another example. That such Democratic officials represent a slightly lesser evil is not much comfort for those of their constituents who voted them into office expecting better. It is my contention that the strategy Republicans used to gain their present position of political hegemony, one funded and supported by the Kochs and others, has created a social and economic crisis in our society far worse than at any time since the Great Depression if not the Civil War.
I’d suggest you read the Mann article in its entirety, but it’s behind a pay wall. I spent thirty dollars I don’t have to buy the right to read it, and I’ve have done my best to summarize Mann’s main points, but you can find other articles online that stress the same approaches to combating the “Serengeti Strategy.” While many of them primarily deal with attacks on climate change science, not all do, and in any event, it is my view Mann’s recommendations for how to respond to such “swift-boating” applies to other areas in which liberal and progressives become targets of smear campaigns in order to muddy the waters and keep discussion of their ideas out of the public eye.
I’ll end with one of the better commentaries that I’ve come across, Amanda Marcotte’s take on Mann’s call to arms:
In this case, the “herd” [against which conservatives deploy the Serengeti Strategy] is the idea: Climate change, feminism, liberalism. Conservatives know they can’t kill off the herd. Their arguments are crappy and their beliefs often off-putting. So instead of trying to take on the herd, they target individuals. The idea isn’t to stop the debate over whether or not climate change is real or feminism is a good idea, because that’s a debate they know they can’t win. Instead, they try to make the debate about the individual’s character. They make that person the face of the idea they hate and hope that, by smearing that person, the idea will be smeared by proxy. […]
Mann’s harassers … clearly seemed to believe that by discrediting one scientist, they could bring the whole theory of climate science down.
We see a similar situation in the attacks on Anita Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian’s haters frequently try to put distance between themselves and more traditional conservatives, but we should not be fooled. Their tactics are pure Michelle Malkin and their goal of marginalizing women in geek spaces and the tech industry is indistinguishable from the larger conservative agenda regarding women. […]
That’s why the best way to fight back against the Serengeti strategy is for more scientists, feminists or any members of demonized groups to get out there and keep talking. The more faces to match with an idea, the harder it is for conservatives to make one individual stand for the whole. It’s one thing to use lies and innuendo to convince people not to trust Anita Sarkeesian and therefore feminism, but it’s a lot harder to do when the face of feminism is thousands of women, many of them popular and well-known.
“When it comes to fighting against disinformation, the old adage ’the best defense is a good offense’ rings true,” Mann writes. Instead of leaving vulnerable members of the herd out there to be picked off, we should surround them and give them support and protection. In doing so, we can only make the herd stronger.
