Wikipedia

2553 readers

92 users here now

A place to share interesting articles from Wikipedia.

Rules:

Only links to Wikipedia permitted
Please stick to the format "Article Title (other descriptive text/editorialization)"
Tick the NSFW box for submissions with inappropriate thumbnails
On Casual Tuesdays, we allow submissions from wikis other than Wikipedia.

Recommended:

If possible, when submitting please delete the "m." from "en.m.wikipedia.org". This will ensure people clicking from desktop will get the full Wikipedia website.
Use the search box to see if someone has previously submitted an article. Some apps will also notify you if you are resubmitting an article previously shared on Lemmy.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

dantheclamman@lemmy.world

Plum@lemmy.world

Dead cat strategy - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 1 month ago by tal to c/wikipedia@lemmy.world

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.[1][2] The present name for the strategy has been associated with British former prime minister Boris Johnson's political strategist Lynton Crosby.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah.

It is very important to understand this concept (or just listen to bannon et al talking about doing exactly this...).

But also? trump's deadcatting IS causing damage. Stuff like "the price of eggs" is going to be heavily impacted by bird flu (out of their control), mass unemployment (thanks musk), and the economic policies being pushed by the republican congress. But also? Stuff like "threatening a trade war with the entire planet" sure as hell doesn't help that either.

So, no, people can't just ignore the deadcatting as many folk online insist they should. Because the trump admin is so incredibly incompetent that even their distractions are deeply harmful.

[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Recent articles have labeled Trump's strategy as "flood the zone," which I think is more accurate than "deadcatting." His administration's announcements are not a series of dead cats because they actually want to do all the crazy stuff they're spouting off about. The goal is to keep doing so many big, outrageous things that nobody can keep up. By the time anyone has time to process issue A they are already being distracted by issues B through F. And in the mean time the world's news media is constantly reporting on Trump's latest thing, so Trump's base gets the impression that he's working tirelessly for them.