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Deconstructing #takingtherainbowback [1]

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Date: 2023-06-08  

Last week, The Majority Report with Sam Seder highlighted a Heritage Foundation video that featured Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow, trundling through Target and making snide and demeaning comments about the LGBTQ+ section. One portion really stood out, where she decried the decorating of gingerbread houses with any rainbows. “My favorite Pride parade gingerbread float!” she said of the miniature. “So many rainbows, it’s hard to say. I thought these were only for Christmas. Celebrating the birth of Christ, but what do I know?”

My first comment in a diary memorializing this propaganda hit piece was, “If Perry thinks that gingerbread houses always must deal with the celebration of Christ’s birth, how does she explain ‘Hansel and Gretel’?” Al Dorado, an intrepid DKos member, mentioned that Genesis 9:13-16 speaks of the rainbow, and it was odd that these folks (I would call them Christian nationalists) “don’t even read the book they supposedly follow.” I noted that those who subscribe to fundamentalist Christianity might view the LGBTQ+ community’s use of the rainbow symbol as a form of appropriation and that, if so, they may feel resentful in a way that perhaps even they could not articulate.

After writing a diary about the video, I came across a few more that discussed the offense taken by some in the right wing over the use of the rainbow as an LGBTQ+ symbol. What do you know? They can articulate it. But it’s in the most convoluted way possible.

I chanced upon a video released on a channel called Discovering the Jewish Jesus with Rabbi Schneider. The video is titled “The Weaponization of Empathy—Gay Pride Month.” This piqued my interest because it purports to discuss empathy, a topic that came up recently in another discussion I’d had here at DKos, so I wanted to know how this person was using that concept. But also that he was jamming and juxtaposing it with “weaponization” made me instantly wary. What exactly was this person communicating, and how was he putting in the context of Pride?

The description of the video held this hashtag: #takingtherainbowback

What I did from this point was put the video on mute and enabled closed captioning. Why? Because I could tell that this was a propaganda effort, and part of what propaganda does is use what’s known as pragmatics, or prosody, to influence the viewer or listener. The speaker modulates his or her voice in ways that ordinarily would inform the audience but in propaganda is used to mislead or deceive the audience. They hijack tone, a crucial element of communication that usually goes unremarked but can communicate a great deal along with the message’s actual content.

So, knowing that’s what I was about to encounter, I turned off the sound and just read the transcript. This also allowed me to pay more attention to Schneider’s body movements, another form of language that often goes without much notice. This muting and enabling of captioning is not so much a trick as it is a way of enacting more distance between listener and speaker, which gives more space to evaluate what is being said. I recommend this technique if you are also encountering propaganda. Create as much of a remove as possible.

The video description stated that it “speaks on the LGBTQ’s use of propaganda and psychological warfare”* when it is propaganda. It satisfies that definition because it is consistently biased, uses loaded language (emotional manipulation) to steer the audience, and utilizes repetition of opinion (stated as fact) instead of offering rational argument supported by evidence.

* The description ends, “... to manipulate our culture and children.” That type of fearmongering is exactly typical of propaganda. But, just as with Tucker Carlson’s “explanation” or reinterpretation of January 6, this piece of propaganda, because it is pointing out what propaganda is, directs the viewer’s attention outward so that the viewer is blind to the fact that he or she is consuming propaganda at that very moment. This is a rhetorical trick.

I took time to deconstruct Rabbi Kurt Schneider’s segment, and it took me three hours to get through twenty minutes of material. That is the disproportionate nature of this type of rhetorical onslaught: similar to a Gish gallop, the speaker is able to pack as many distortions and falsehoods into a short space; and due to the one-to-many, unidirectional format, the listener does not have a chance to interject or enter into a dialogue but consents to accepting the speaker’s assertions without any moment of reflection to test whether the statements are true.

I took my time so that I could interrupt, challenge, and note where these distortions occurred. Again, this is a form of self-protection.

My notes follow.

Schneider begins by defining propaganda and tells the audience that sometimes those with an agenda will manipulate emotions in order to enact that agenda. To that point, the statement is generically true and so cannot be argued against. (This technique—the use of populist, indisputable statements—is often employed by propagandists to get the audience on their side right away.)

Then he transitions to ostensibly acknowledging the good that empathy can do—that it is a human emotion that is good to share when we mean to connect with someone—but then minimizes, even deplores empathy when it’s “weaponized” by certain groups who are apparently seeking to do harm. He specifically names the LGBTQ+ community:

Now, empathy again can be a good thing. It could be a positive force to accomplish good. But people that use empathy to manipulate people into the darkness become a plague on society.

→ That is pretty much the definition of loaded language. What is this “darkness”? But, no matter—the rabbi’s words have instantly transformed those persons into a plague. These are the associations that come loaded in these terms.

And the LGBTQ community has used empathy to manipulate America and the Western civilization. Indeed, it’s coming upon the whole world to pull us down into the depths of darkness.

→That’s some pretty impressive power. But notice Schneider had to anthropomorphize the United States to make the metaphor work. Then the extrapolation by orders of magnitude gives richness and depth to the rhetorical device, this manufacture of words.

“We feel for people that are living LGBTQ lifestyles because we love them—they’re, they’re, they’re our brothers and sisters. We’re connected to them. But to go from caring about people in the LGBTQ community because we have empathy—which is a human emotion that God granted to us—to go from there to now endorsing an ideology and a lifestyle that’s unhealthy and that’s killing our children, that, beloved, is a recipe for disaster and is leading us into the darkness.”

Schneider reframes what empathy is, placing it squarely in the religious realm (when, indeed, it rather comes standard in the human insofar as we’re equipped with mirror neurons; yet the ability must be modeled by other people in our culture, as we can’t mirror what we don’t see).

He then immediately launches in a volta—a sharp turn—to a clause full of negatively valenced, loaded terms, brimming with pre-established catchphrases (“killing our children” is the slanderous shorthand purporting that those in the LGBTQ community prey upon [or even, apparently, slaughter] the children in our culture) and chock full of opinions (“a lifestyle that’s unhealthy” —- by whose standards? And is it really just a lifestyle? No, it’s gender identity, one of the most intrinsic axes of identity available to a person in terms of their own self-knowledge. This framing is not just suggestive—it’s intentional).

In the span of two sentences, we’ve gone from brotherly love to glimpsing a despised and dangerous “lifestyle.” LGBTQ people become the most familiar and the most alien and dangerous threat to mankind. They occupy a superposition of power, eerily occupying the same conspiratorial space stereotypically that Jewish people are imagined as being in: inherently low but with outsize cultural power and influence. You even have the blood libel making an appearance here (“killing our children”).

This is just to 1:52 of a 16:31-long segment. This is how much he has crammed into this short rhetorical space.

Gay pride month? Why not have a family pride month? Why not have a marriage pride month? As far as that’s concerned, why not have a teacher’s pride month or a policeman’s pride month? It’s insanity, a whole month to push our country in a direction that is leading us into mass disorder and mass confusion.

This recalls a section of Sarah Parshall Perry in the Heritage Foundation video, asking incredulously where her section in Target was, that it was unfair that LGBTQ+ persons had their own area devoted to their fashion choices. As Sam Seder said, the rest of the store was her section. Same applies here.

But note that Schneider may be suggesting a state of ‘insanity,’ ‘mass disorder’ and ‘mass confusion’ in his own listeners by repeating such closely related terms in such a compressed space. At the very least, he’s bringing the point home. That’s efficacious propaganda.

He uses repetitious triplicate in the very next section as well. Notice also in the upcoming section that dogma is used as evidence, when dogma is anything but. Moreover, the rabbi utilizes repetition by direct duplication. While this technique can be taxing if done overly much, it can also quite effectively punctuate a point.

Beloved, it’s obvious, it’s common sense, it’s built into our psyche that we have an understanding that two men together is not natural. Two women together is not natural. How do we know that? Because two men together cannot produce children. Two women together cannot produce children. The First Command the creator gave to humankind that he created in his own image was to be fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful and multiply.

Well, of course, there are plenty of people, heterosexual people included, who are infertile and cannot produce children.

Also, there are instances of other animals in the animal kingdom—even primates—that enter into same-sex bonding and pairing. It’s clearly natural.

It’s speculated that homosexuality may arise in nature so that the young of each generation has a surfeit of caregivers—gay Uncle Bob or Aunt Louise would be able to devote their caregiving skills and pass down artifacts of culture without any sense that they must divide their attentions between nieces and nephews on the one hand and their own children on the other, because they most often would be childless themselves. Thus, the siblings of the same brood, of the same family or generation, would be able to count on the help provided by their gay brother or sister to help raise the upcoming generation. It’s almost a built-in cultural form of redundancy, much as within the brain the memory storage system has mechanisms of redundancy. So we have surplus caregiving and extra caches of cultural knowledge. These are evolutionary functions.

To round up this point: this may be seen as a stretch, but I want to introduce the concept of slime molds. Well, some might say, that doesn’t advance your argument—that’s inherently dehumanizing. But it’s true that slime molds, when threatened with possible demise, will separate into two populations, one which will reproduce and carry on the mold’s genetic lineage and the other that sacrifices itself to boost the chances of its genetic doppelgänger—in fact itself, as the pieces of one slime mold is one entity—to actually produce into the future.

[S]ome cells develop into 2- to 3-millimeter stalks, while cells at the top of the stalk develop into fruiting bodies that contain spores. What’s weird here is that these are still technically individual cells, some of which have the genetic fate to turn into a stalk, some with the genetic fate of turning into spores, and only the ones that become spores get the opportunity to reproduce. The ones fated to become stalk simply die. Spores presented in this way are then dispersed by soil invertebrates and, in the right conditions, spores germinate, produce amoebae, and thus complete the life cycle. … selection favors the cells that take unfair advantage of the altruistic cells, so much so that the selfish types of cells should threaten the existence of any altruists. And yet both types of cell continue to exist. How this self-sacrificial behavior continues in the face of conditions that should select for its elimination has baffled scientists for years.

While this is obviously light-years away from human culture and human motivations as they manifest in society, it is a clear example of one species creating portions of itself that achieve supreme relevance without reproduction. In fact, if those members reproduced, the organism as a whole would perish. Those members give of themselves so that the whole may continue. That’s the epitome of self-sacrifice.

I continue with my analysis in Part II, as Schneider’s video gets even more detailed and intricate. I invite you to read more there.

Also, if you’re interested in learning more about the nuts and bolts of propaganda in general, check out this YouTube video, which is both trenchant and incisive: “Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda”:

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