(slightly off-topic) Want to Defeat a Proposed Public Policy? Just Label Supporters As “Extreme”

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/extreme.htm

WANT TO DEFEAT A PROPOSED PUBLIC POLICY? JUST LABEL SUPPORTERS AS “EXTREME”

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows how support for a generally liked policy can be significantly lowered, simply by associating it with a group seen as “radical” or “extreme.”

In one experiment, researchers found that people expressed higher levels of support for a gender equality policy when the supporters were not specified than when the exact same policy was attributed to “radical feminist” supporters.

These findings show why attacking political opponents as “extremists” is so popular – and so effective, said Thomas Nelson, co-author of the study and associate professor of political science at Ohio State University.

“The beauty of using this ‘extremism’ tactic is that you don’t have to attack a popular value that you know most people support,” Nelson said.

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00844.x

[phantom power]

1. Conservatives have understood how to do this to Liberals for at least 30 years.

[Drale]

2. It doesn't always work because

Most of us have labeled Ron Paul as an extremest yet there are still people on this board who, for some reason, still support him.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. But, are there enough of them to elect him?

If not, then the strategy works.

[Drale]

5. No but

I don't think there are enough Ron Paul supporters in the entire world to make that happen.

[hughee99]

6. I think people on this board support Ron Paul because he's a repuke

that the repukes don't like. People don't necessarily support him, but they will have some degree of support for anyone who pisses off the repuke establishment.

[Vincardog]

8. The difference is Ron Paul is an extremist. How many departments does he want to get rid of?

There is a difference between merely being labeled and extremist and actually having extreme views.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. A quick example, grabbed from the headlines

http://www.texasgopvote.com/global-warming/united-nations-framework-convention-climate-change-durban-south-africa-003573

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: Durban, South Africa

By Cathie Adams

“We’re all going to die in five years” unless a legally binding framework to cut greenhouse gas emissions is accepted by the 192 parties attending the United Nations’ confab in Durban, South Africa. That is how a question was couched to a group of environmental extremists who claimed that the United States, Japan, Canada and other developed countries are roadblocks to a “progressive and aggressive solution,” thus turning the annual UNFCCC meeting into a “traveling circus that cannot decide.”

…

Funding fortunes and promises for more are wholly inadequate tokens to Nnimmo Bassey, chair of the extremist environmental group Friends of the Earth International. Embracing sustainable development, which amounts to a utopian call for economic, social and environmental equity, she rejected sound science as she bemoaned expectations at the Durban meeting“extremely low,” and a “new Durban mandate void of content.” Believing the U.S. insistence that ALL major economies be a part of a new legally binding greenhouse gas emissions protocol would take 20 years to negotiate, she would rather leave major producers of greenhouse gases including China and India out of the equation.

Like the infamous “Wall Street Protestors,” the extremists labeled the failed carbon markets “a means of avoiding responsibility” and “greed” as well as the continued use of fossil fuels and the corporate control of forests. Yet they are demanding NEW funds for climate justice, which is a Marxist call for massive government controls to supposedly produce absolute equity of economies, the environment and of society. They labeled nuclear energy, hydraulic fracking for natural gas, drilling for oil and World Bank loans for energy plants “talking left, but walking right.” They summed up their discontent stating that while governments “talk, we are trying to save the planet.”

Another extremist group Climate Action Network, a coalition of 700 organizations from 90 countries, called for a progressive and aggressive outcome to the Durban meeting citing a new report from the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change claiming a link between extreme weather events and manmade global warming. The World Wildlife Fund, a member of CAN, called for a legal mandate for GHG emissions by 2015 and the establishment of the Green Climate Fund, a UN global tax scheme to which “no nation has said no.”

…

By Cathie Adams at Nov 29, 2011 11:37 AM

[Nihil]

9. Good catch. (n/t)

[MisterP]

7. started in the 50s: Paul Robeson = extreme, James Jesus Angleton = all-American