Jean Hardisty and Deepak Bhargava offered some answers recently in an eye-opening essay in The Nation.

In their article titled Wrong about the Right, the authors take exception to the "lessons" taken from the right by elements of the Democratic Party establishment and liberal interest groups.

Indeed, it seems to me that much of what now passes for the conventional wisdom about the right is wrong -- and conveniently tends to support that status quo. Unfortunately, it is the status quo that got us to where we are today.

Hardisty and Bhargava don't just challenge the conventional wisdom's take on the right.  They also offer a strategic vision that is worth thoroughly taking in.

Here are a few excerpts:

The now dominant narrative about the right's rise to power holds that conservatives invested huge amounts of money in a number of think tanks over the past thirty years and brilliantly framed their messages in ways that were simple and resonated deeply with much of the American public. By embracing a top-down, hierarchical movement structure and relentless message discipline, the right was able not only to triumph at the ballot box but also to change the very terms of political discussion-- demonizing "big government" and celebrating "tax relief," "personal responsibility" and "free-market capitalism."

This account of conservative strategy has piqued the interest of a growing number of progressive groups, who argue that the left should adopt a similar strategy. And it is currently driving the activities of many major progressive donors.

The difficulty here is that, as an explanation of the right's ascendancy, it is at best incomplete and at worst misleading. What's more, it is not clear that progressives should emulate all of the right's tactics, or that we will succeed by doing so. There are certainly lessons to be learned from the right -- but for the most part they are different from those commonly assumed.....

Our current infatuation with the strategies and structures of the right has led some progressives to call for a more streamlined, hierarchical movement, but this is not how we've won in the past. Progressive movements have been successful when they have not had a top-down organizational structure. Also, this analysis fails to appreciate the comprehensiveness of the right's movement-building style. And it does not reflect progressive democratic principles....

Organizing has always had an uneasy place not only in the broader culture but also in progressive circles. It has frequently been sidelined by expert-driven advocacy or by charismatic figures who lead short-lived protest movements, and today it is at risk of being displaced by a focus on think tanks and communications strategies. Perhaps more alarming, however, is the relative decline of organizing as a strategy relative to mobilization. The work of many 527 organizations prominent in the Bush and Kerry campaigns of 2004 (America Coming Together and the Media Fund, for example) seemed to be about parachuting into communities and soliciting votes, with little thought about what would be left behind.

One of their additional points I want to briefly discuss.

Ideas, Not Messages. To the extent that conservatives were serious about ideas--and to be sure they were and are--they started not with "messaging" or "framing," two strategies currently in vogue among progressives, but rather with inquiry into core beliefs about race, government, family, markets and global economic and military domination.

The urge to rush into devising "messages" is a tendency among many who are seeking to respond to the right in general, and the religious right in particular.  Such headlong rushes into "message" often results in a kind of radical reductionism in which we  find ourselves engaged in the microsemantics of bumperstickers -- rather than considering the fullness of the religious right as a movement, developing some understanding of why and how it has been successful, and what kinds of changes other sectors of society might reasonably undertake to counter it.  

Message politics is tempting in part because it is a task that seems safe and manageable. 'Everything will be better if only we have the right message.' Or, 'this message will completely discredit them!' And so on. It also allows us to kid ourselves and others, when we have little actual knowledge on which to base our ideas. "Message" has all to often substituted for "strategy." But this is exactly backwards. Messages are are an outgrowth of, and but one tactical component of strategy.

One version of message politics sometimes happens in discussions about what to call the religious right and it's various subsidiary parts.

It is time to refocus this kind of conversation.

One of the first things that usually needs to change is the routine use of epithets -- when what are needed are fair and accurate descriptive terms. For example, if we label everyone with whom we disagree as "extremists," or "wingnuts" how do we even know who we are talking about? How can we evaluate different groups, their tendencies and capacities if we radically limit our vocabulary to terms of disparagement? Or more simply put, how can we even have an intelligent conversation?

While some of us have been talking about these matters of language for years, it has taken a particular urgency as the rise of the blogosphere has created a whole new and dynamic medium in which what we used to call "the printed word" takes on a whole new kind of power and significance.

Chip Berlet has done more than anyone else to challenge the conventional wisdom with regard to the uses and misuses of language in response to the right.  Beginning in May, he posted a series of essays on his web site and at Talk to Action. For example, back in May, he noted that Rev. Martin Luther King wrote his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail, in part in response to being labeled an "extremist":

King wrote that he considered the label, and then realized that in their respective days, the Biblical Amos, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson had all been thought of as extremists by mainstream society. King responded, "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice--or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?"

Two issues are raised by King's clever reversal of the attack on him as an "extremist."

First is that the term "extremist" has only relative meaning in terms of how far outside the "mainstream" norms of society a particular idea or act is located by some observer who claims a "centrist" position.

Second, King suggests it is important to determine whether any idea or action labeled as "extremist" defends or extends justice, equality, or democracy--or whether it defends or extends unfair power or privilege.

Ultimately, the concept of "extremism" is of little value in discussing prejudice, ethnocentrism, or the Christian Right. Sociologist Jerome Himmelstein argues the term "extremism" is at best a characterization that "tells us nothing substantive about the people it labels," and at worst the term "paints a false picture."

Similarly, standard terms like "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" (or the colloquial variant, "fundies") are sometimes used, in ignorance, to disparage people with whom one disagrees in religion and/or politics. If, in acting out of ignorance people use standard religious identities embraced and held dear by millions as terms of disparagement, is it any wonder that many of those same people, (or even the simply religiously literate) believe they are hearing the words of religious bigots?

I realize that this can be hard for many progressives to hear.

But if we are to own the moral high ground on matters of social justice, equality, and religious freedom, we must not fall into the bad habits of language and mind that are rooted at once in prejudice and, as discussed by Chip Berlet and Martin Luther King, bad framing.

While it is important to develop our vocabulary, and define our terms so that we can clearly and effectively communicate with each other and with a wider public -- again, let's not confuse this with message. It is still necessary for us to know what we are talking about in order to effectively use the terms we choose.  If we know what we are talking about, and seek to speak not from the standpoint of ignorance and prejudice, we will find the right words. In the meantime, while avoiding epithets, there is still no substitute for a set of commonly agreed upon terms to help us navigate a body of knowledge, even as we are aquiring that knowledge.

Chip Berlet's series on dominionism and theocracy is a big step in this direction, providing useful definitions and a knowledgeable context. I made my own recent foray into defining dominionism and applied the term in reporting some specific contemporary political circumstances.

Whether we are dealing with matters of learning; and learning to talk about the right and its component parts more effectively; and drawing appropriate political lessons from the right as Hardisty and Bhargava suggest, I have emphasized that there are some other, concrete tasks we could be considering.  And when I say "we" I mean the participants in the blogosphere.

The blogosphere is a new and powerful tool for communications and organizing. Making it accessible to people who we think could make effective use of it -- ought to be part of any of the organizing strategies of the major progressive movements of our time.

But I think to do that, we need to consider how to develop a more nuts-and-bolts approach of putting this powerful tool in more people's hands -- by doing targeted outreach to people who already have the technical infrastructure and capacity to use it; and by seeking to make the infrastructure and the  capacity to use it, accessible to those who can benefit from the extraordinary potential of the blogosphere, but who are not yet involved.  

Can the progressive blogosphere live up to it's potential? And can it be effective in catalyzing, informing and enhancing the kind of social movements, and organizing strategies that Hardisty and Bhargava see as essential to counter the rise of the right?

I think so.

But it is uncharted territory.

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