California Governor Gavin Newsom has adopted a Trump-style, high-intensity propaganda strategy—complete with trolling, mock slogans, and theatrical ridicule—positioning himself as a bold counterforce in America’s fractured political arena. His brazen tactics energise Democrats but risk backlash from Trump loyalists, raising the question of whether sharp satire can truly sway minds in an age of polarised “truths” and emotional politics.
America’s political theatre of the grotesque has been starring California Governor Gavin Newsom in a newly scripted counterpropaganda role, causing prominent denizens of the MAGA world some discomfort. Newsom’s performance is confrontational, coarse, and fashionably cruel on occasions. On the spectrum of low-to-high intensity propaganda, beginning with corporate puffery and “strategic communication,” his style rates as high-intensity. It warrants more than casual mention for the recollection it prompts of information warfare in decades past.
One factor in the contest for the human mind is that a change in psychological context can result in a shift in attitude without necessarily having to attack deeply held sentiments directly. That is, one might loosen Donald Trump’s incongruous hold over many millions of US citizens without denying legitimate causes of society’s “revolt of the left behind”. Nonetheless, it is tough to shift people who are deeply committed. As Jacques Ellul wrote in his definitive work, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, having acted in obedience to propaganda, a person becomes obliged to believe in that narrative because of the past action, lest that action seem absurd or unjust.
The Democrat governor has chosen to emulate, in my words, “the art of the Trump”. He has been trolling and taunting the president (and vice-president) on social media, adopting a reciprocal babyish style, with the addition of spiky humour. Not for Newsom the decorous resolve of Michelle Obama to go high when others go low. A writer for Buzzfeed observes it is ”like peering into the near future of what a post-literate presidential campaign might look like”—a campaign more about base psychological manipulation and even less the exercise of reasoned rhetoric.
Employing a small communications team, Newsom (signature, “GCN”) mocks Trump with his text messages IN CAPS just like the president: “TINY HANDS IS OUT THERE COPYING ME BUT WITHOUT THE STAMINA (SAD), AND CERTAINLY WITHOUT THE ‘LOOKS’. TOTAL BETA! – GCN.” He has launched his own MAGA slogan: “Make America GAVIN Again”; appropriated Trump’s hyperbole, including that “Newsom was right about everything”; released red baseball caps and other merchandise through The Patriot Shop, declaring, “if you hate The Patriot Shop, you hate America”. And much else, such as impertinent AI-generated imagery.
It is a bold tactic by a likely presidential candidate for 2028. Whether the governor’s campaign delivers his Democrat base a temporary sugar hit or a more sustained energy remains to be seen. More intriguing is whether it evolves sufficiently to cut through with enough Trump voters to make an electoral (and perhaps societal) difference. Experience suggests that ridicule, tempered with a comedic edge, can have the effect of liberating audiences from the discomfort they might otherwise experience in response to the confrontational nature of the content. That effect serves a purpose in information warfare; in this case, the conduct of an information campaign within a nation intractably at odds with itself.
Fabulists like Trump rely not on credibility but on collective fantasies in which their target audiences have agency. Their propaganda gains traction when based on some reality or fragments thereof. Responding to a need, whether physical or psychological, the propagandist’s narrative attaches itself to a feeling or idea. Especially today, caught in the vortex of information overload, a person’s emotional alignment and experience can shape their perception of truth; “emotional connection acts as an effective substitute” for the verification of fact in an insecure and distrustful world. In this world of competing “truths”, political actors like Trump are more enabled to roam free, albeit with the connivance of vested interests.
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy argues that fantasy has not been such a feature of public affairs since the time of Hitler’s Third Reich. One British propagandist of World War II witnessed how Nazi propaganda provided people with a clear sense of identity amid the hardships and chaos following Germany’s defeat in World War I. Raised in Germany to parents from Hobart’s Battery Point, Sefton Delmer identified recurring patterns of propaganda and the repeated failure of counterpropagandists to reach audiences beyond those already predisposed to receive their messaging. Delmer’s insight was that, while Nazi propaganda gave people a way to “express the need for servility and sadism”, many adherents were “acting fascist” rather than exhibiting profound commitment. The challenge was to attract the attention of such people and detach them from Hitler’s orchestration, thus predisposing them to alternative perspectives.
In contrast to the staid BBC, Delmer established brazen, vulgar German-language radio stations designed to exploit people’s enjoyment of propaganda. The Nazi narrative preached obeisance to authoritarian rule, racial supremacy and humiliation of the other. Delmer responded with crudity and ridicule, highlighting how hypocrisy, moral corruption and incompetence betrayed the ostensible cause of national socialism. He reportedly succeeded in forming safe virtual spaces in which audiences could vent their scepticism and duly escape the mendacity of the Nazi information bubble.
The sociological context of Delmer’s campaign serves as an imperfect analogue for the emotional schism of America. “Affective polarisation”, stoked by highly partisan political actors, occurs when people maintain a strong emotional dislike of others based mainly on their identity. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , Republicans and Democrats exhibit such dislike of one another even though, when surveyed, voters actually have policy preferences in common. Emotion constitutes both a threat and opportunity for a wounded democracy. Carnegie warns that, for the US, a point may be reached where the best hope is to shore up democracy and inclusion in some states while abandoning others to a different future.
Former Democrat strategist James Carville warns that just mocking Trump will not be enough. Risible though the president’s style may seem, attacking it so tauntingly may invite an offended reaction from those who have invested much in their support of him. Even so, a writer in the Los Angeles Times acknowledges it is one of the few initiatives to energise the party base and gain national attention. Newsom is quoted as “putting the mirror up to the absurdity of all of this”.
Those who oppose President Trump’s imperium in the making are having some impact through the prosecution of hundreds of court cases. Opinion polls record a loss of popular support for the president. But the conventions of mainstream news commentary and orthodox political rhetoric have proven largely ineffective in bridging the ideational gulf. Launching salvos of high-intensity information warfare, Gavin Newsom and team have acknowledged that Donald Trump’s commanding belligerence and narcissism call for more than conventional political wrangling. Whether the campaign’s impact extends beyond tactical showmanship is yet to be determined. In America’s media-saturated “attention economy”, Newsom must thread multiple needles to reach and win the engagement of voters not already predisposed to his Democrat identity.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.
Dr Geoff Heriot is a consultant on media and governance, a former corporate and editorial executive of the ABC, with extensive international experience. A review of his book, International Broadcasting and its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power (Anthem Press), appeared in The Reading Room on 30 January 2024.
