Crossing the Line
Bold messaging can be dangerous, especially if you touch the wrong subjects
I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping on top of posting here as regularly as I was hoping to. It’s been a really weird couple weeks, lots of recalibrating taking place on my part, and I’ve been trying to do more thinking and listening than talking.
Just for context, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire has made a name for itself over the last year and a half by posting provocative messaging to start a conversation. They have garnered national news, they sparked a coup in New Hampshire, and often started an important conversation through hyperbole, humor, or shock. I will not deny that this had an effect on the way I used Twitter while I still had my account. I was subsequently put on the social media team when I moved back to the Granite State in June.
I found this to be very effective with my own account, growing to nearly 20 thousand followers within less than a year, and the New Hampshire Libertarian Party Twitter has grown from around 4,000 to nearly 30,000 followers in just over a year using a similar strategy, bringing awareness of multiple issues to wide audiences using provocative language.
All of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party tweets that blew up over the last few weeks are at least partially my doing, as I came up with some of the original ideas and encouraged the other ones or did nothing to stop them from being posted. With all this international news being written about us, aside from stepping up to the plate to defend the brash messaging, I’ve been trying to reflect on the outcomes.
McCain Tweet
I’m sure most of my readers have heard about this one by now, and if not I wrote my last article around it:
I think this is the tweet I’m happiest about. Though it evoked bipolar reactions, it mostly started the conversation we were aiming for. What many don’t realize is shock is an important factor in starting an uncomfortable conversation, especially on Twitter. All of John McCain’s war crimes could have been listed, and there could have even been videos of children losing limbs to bombing campaigns that John supported. But they don’t have the same impact without the shock factor of the image prompting the question to be asked “Why would you tweet something like this?”.
Timcast reached out to our team and wrote the piece below. Please check it out, it was very fairly written.
I also went on a couple big shows to defend the tweet. Alison Morrow, who has had me on before:
And the boys from Revenge of the Cis:
In both instances, I was able to advertise the Free State Project as well as the broader Libertarian movement to thousands of people, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
This tweet was a big gamble, but I think it played out in our favor.
Minimum Wage Tweet
Though innocuous in intent, this tweet was posted shortly before the McCain tweet and blew up by association. The tweet was ultimately deleted a few days after being posted, mostly for drawing ugly, antisemitic discussion and also with the intent of not starting another shit storm. But it was too late, and this tweet also drew international attention, after already being deleted for over a day.
This tweet was inspired by an interaction between Hannah Cox and Nina Turner, and with the classic LPNH spin of attaching provocative language, it was intended to induce outrage from pearl clutchers and get a laugh from most of the audience.
The tweet should have been at least a quote tweet. Instead of pointing to the ridiculousness of leftists calling everyone who disagrees with their policies “Nazis” it signaled to many people, and not just the pearl clutching morons, that we are Holocaust deniers, which none of the people running the account or in the NH party are.
The press surrounding this tweet was mostly negative, and it polluted our positive press of being opposed to warmongers and genocide, as many took it as us making light of one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.
We decided to make a clarification post with the doubled intent of calling out the organizations that condemned us for “genocide minimization” to join us in calling for the end to supporting actual Neo Nazis in Ukraine. We were of course met with silence.
Though I think this tweet was a net negative, it did point out something important for those of us who are already tuned in. Nazi comparisons to everything are completely fine from the left. Everyone is literally Hitler. They’re constantly downplaying the forced removal and murder of millions of people by comparing everything to national socialism, yet when we simply reference it without even comparing it, it’s an unforgivable crime.
Also, the countless organizations and accounts that called us out only care about a genocide that took place 80 years ago. So not only are they selective about who is allowed to make comparisons, they also either completely ignore current genocides, or even worse, in the case of the Israeli occupation of Gaza, they use it to sweep current atrocities under the rug.
Zelensky Tweet
My oh my, we thought the outrage had blown over, but this tweet that we unanimously agreed to send caused some of the most extensive blowback.
In case all the follow-up tweets below the post don’t make an obvious enough statement, the intent was to draw attention to the systemic Neo Nazi problem that Ukraine has in its government and military, and why we don’t want to support them.
However, most of the same organizations came for our heads again, posting pictures of members of the party on Twitter saying that we’re all vile antisemites. This is of course while we have a practicing Jew on our comms team and are currently running a Jew for US Senate.
Despite their attempts to condemn us, many of the organizations straight up revealed themselves as blatant hypocrites. And in some cases, the pieces they wrote about us came off as glowing endorsements to anyone who opposes genocide or foreign aid to despotic countries.
I view this tweet as a perfect follow-up to our blunder with the minimum wage tweet. Though many might write us off as antisemites from seeing a headline, those are not the people that LPNH is trying to reach.
I got into a somewhat heated debate with Dave Smith on Jose’s podcast a few days ago, surrounding this subject. I stood my ground, declaring that though we made a misstep with the minimum wage tweet, we ultimately came out on top and got the first healthy dose of media recognition in years, with dozens of local, national, and international news outlets writing about us, mostly in a light that we find preferable.
In the end, we gained thousands of followers, gaining attention in dozens of articles locally, nationwide and internationally, I would argue mostly positively for our goals.
Let me know what you think in the comments. Was this overall a good endeavor? Was it a net negative? Does it not matter at all and will it be forgotten about in a few days? Comment, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe to support my work!
You're doing the lord's work Reed, keep it up brother.
I've given my criticism for the McCain tweet, and while I maintain it could have been done differently and achieved near-identical results, I still appreciate and support the hell out of you, FSP, Jeremy, and NH LP (minus Boresenko, I mostly just think she's nuts) and what you all do.
Keep writing here and on Twitter, and keep kicking ass, sir.