Anat Shenker-Osorio
Appearances
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Yeah. So it's critical to remember that social proof, which is the psychological phenomenon, I sometimes call it the middle school theory of messaging, is the most persuasive tool in our belt. And social proof just references the fact that people do the thing they think people like them do.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
So to make this visceral to all of us, I think we can all, well, some of us are old enough to remember a time where it was socially acceptable, at least in many circles, to believe that, you know, two men shouldn't marry or two women shouldn't marry. And it was, you know, an asthma and it was bad. And it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And that was a sort of majority view, right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Obviously, we had an extraordinary movement toward marriage equality that eventually became, hey, look, folks, we're getting married. Either get on the bus and accept this, or you're going to be having to explain to your grandchildren why you had such a freaking hard time, right? So when... you actually wear your beliefs, you speak your beliefs, you show your beliefs.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Again, I'm sorry to use the example, but the odious red MAGA hat is a perfect example of social proof. Most people are not in the mighty Midas as many, I know many, many, many hundreds of thousands of people are, but that's, you know, there's, there's a few people left over who haven't woken up. Um, And so they're grappling right now and we can see it in focus groups.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Focus groups are an extended meditation on people wondering if they're being gaslit or not. They are saying over and again, am I nuts? This seems like a really big deal. Is it a big deal? I can't really tell. Is this just sort of what happens when there is a new administration or is this some kind of break?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And the reason that they're grappling is because it's sort of the first mover problem where everyone's like, well, I feel like I'm kind of freaking out, but it seems like kind of no one's freaking out. So I don't know, am I overreacting?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
So the first thing you can do is actually, you know, you own a barn, you live in a rural bit, paint the side of it saying fabulously fighting fascism, or say freedom over fascism, or say I'm in the know, K-N-O-W, but also N-O. Free America. That is an extraordinarily effective free America from wages we can't live on. Free America from health care that we can't afford.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Free America from Elon Musk, who thinks he can purchase himself a country for very little money down. Free America from the hate, the division and the fear they are peddling. So first and foremost, and maybe it seems tiny, but you actually need to show, not tell that this is the majority position. The majority of us do not agree with this. We are not into this. We will not go along.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
That can be a symbol. I happen to be wearing right now a little Lady Liberty pin. It can be a hat. It can be a shirt. It can be all of the above. It can be signs. So that's the first thing. The second thing is to go local. I know that everything feels massive and overwhelming. It does to me. I'm sure it does to the two of you.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
But in order to actually implement this autocratic fascistic agenda, they have to do it at the local level. So where you live, here's a promise I can make to you. You get you and three, four or five of your friends to go to the city council meeting or to go to the school board. Do you know how many people go to a school board meeting? Four of you go. You're the majority.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
They're either going to implement this stuff at the local level or we're going to stop them. So go local. And then my third piece of advice is recognize that we all need to rest. We all need to recuperate. We all need to sort of be okay to keep going. This is not a sprint, unfortunately, as we all know.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And so figure out the issue area that is going to sustain you, the thing that you're going to be willing to keep marching and keep going to. And when you do that, remember, that their core aim and purpose is to steal our joy, is to steal our togetherness, is to steal our sense that actually we're the ones we've been waiting for. And so be more fabulous.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
If you want people to come to your party, throw a better party. These protests should have music. They should have dancing. They should have food trucks. We should be showing, not telling, which I keep saying, that actually this is the better way to live.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Yeah, so these are focus groups I should specify with what I would call disaffected voter eligible people. So oftentimes they're the Biden 2020 surge who didn't vote in 2024. And hopefully it's obvious to viewers, listeners, why we're focused in on these people, because 19 million of them fall into this category and are, in fact, the large part of why we lost in 2024.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And the first thing I want to say is that there is sort of a prevailing wisdom in progressive land and in democratic circles that non-voter equals non-activist. And that is simply not true. The ladder of engagement model where the bottom rung is if you don't vote, you're really not going to do other things. False. There are two different ladders of engagement and direct engagement.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
action being out in the world actually in opposition to this and specifically in opposition to what undergirds this regime, which is, of course, our extraordinarily unequal economic system, to put it in the politest possible terms. So it's astounding the degree to which these folks really, really, really get it and believe that Trump is merely a symptom of
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
He is not sort of like the grand apotheosis of all of this. He is, of course, you know, repugnant and horrible and all the other adjectives you want to put in there. But they understand that there is something fundamentally broken here. And
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Yeah, thanks for the question and for the introduction. What I would say is that. We cannot seem to be or be in defense of the status quo. We cannot seem to be offering people a vision that is, you know, January 19th, 2025, meaning right before inauguration.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
What's interesting is that in all of the punditry and speculation and kind of this endless conversation, which is completely exhausting around, you know, should Democrats be more centrist or more woke? That's not the axis along which folks actually judge Democrats. It's do you fight? Do you not fight? And what they want to see, I guess not shockingly, is. fight.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
They want to see that you will stand up with me, for me, alongside me. And that is what tells them both, oh, you've got my back and therefore I'll have yours. But it also is what signals to them, this is not normal. This is not mere sort of team blue being against the policies of team red, but rather a fundamental break. with what has been.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And that is sort of what would induce them to become that famed 3.5%, which you may have heard scholars of authoritarianism use as sort of a benchmark, because in all of the examples that we have from other places, when 3.5% of a population is engaged in visible resistance, there's no autocrat who has withstood that.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
The Midas Cinematic Universe.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Believe it or not, yeah. And here's why. We have operated, many of us, in a fiction for a very long time that we could vote our way to democracy. We tried it in 2018. We tried it in 2020. We tried it in 2022. And in those cases, 18 and 20 in particular, but 22 as well, in terms of sort of beating back the expected red wave, as we all recall, it didn't work.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
because you can't actually vote your way to democracy. The only way to actually get there is to recognize the full extent of the problem. And so my source of hope, I didn't forget the question, is that we're in a moment of fundamental rupture. And in moments of fundamental rupture, those are also what we call persuasion windows.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
What we find is that when people are engaged in reevaluating what is going on, what is true, what is false, what is the source of the problem, what are the potential solutions, we can actually make much bigger swings. And part of that is that we are actually having a conversation now, not as much as we need to, about the role of government.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
People understood before that day, and they certainly understand right now that the way the world works and the way that things are done, whether that be our electoral system and certainly our financial system, is beyond broken.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Because we are in a best of times, worst of times illustration and articulation of the absolute evil ravages of government as embodied in this horrific regime, which I summarize as of the bullies for the billionaires. This is a regime of the bullies for the billionaires.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And real government, the people who work at the EPA, the people who work at the Department of Ed, the people who work on our roads, on our weather, on, you know, all of the things, the long, long, long list of things. We have an opportunity, and I am using the word opportunity, to actually shift this calcified evil story that government is bad because you don't know what you got till it's gone.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And loss aversion is an extraordinarily powerful force. So let's not squander this opportunity.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And so it begins, if you are in these town hall settings, with demonstrating not just empathy, but I would say showing, not telling that you actually know that there are sides. Right. This neoliberal fiction that, quote unquote, a rising tide lifts all boats, which I think too many Democrats fell prey to and perhaps still are.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
That was a sellout of the Democratic vision and of the time under FDR, when if you were a working person, if you were working class, you didn't just vote Democratic. Being a Democrat was a core part of your identity. And we were not lamenting, you know, why don't we have purchase with the working class?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
FDR spoke quite eloquently, as I'm sure you know, about, you know, I welcome their hatred, speaking of the big bosses at the time. So really, the name of the game is saying, I see you, I hear you, you have more month than check. That's not right. I see you, I hear you, you are not getting a fair return on your work.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
I see you, I hear you, you just want to go to the doctor and not get sick worrying about the bill. Speak in the concrete language of lived experience, not in the language of abstraction like universal single-payer health care, which is a policy and an important one, don't mistake me. But that kind of language is what I call selling the recipe and not the brownie.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
You have to speak in brownie speak, meaning the outcome of the policy. And tell folks that, yeah, there are sides. The sides are... Almost every single one of us who just want to get by, put food on the table and be home in time to eat it. Ensure our kids have the freedom to learn the truth of our past. Ensure our neighbors can make it home safe at the end of the day.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Ensure that we can live our lives, be with the people we love and express ourselves as we see fit. And then there are these macro Republicans. who are bankrolled by billionaires, who want to take the wealth our work creates and turn us against each other, hoping that if they can get us to point our finger in the wrong direction, we won't notice while they pick our pockets.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
That's pretty much the essence of the message.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Thank you. I'm thrilled to be part of the Midas cinematic universe, which is what it feels like.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Yeah. So what they're doing, which you summed up beautifully, has to be understood in a broader context. And that broader context is their 30, 40, arguably longer year war perverting our notion of government, perverting the idea that we can have nice things, that we can collect money together in order to, I don't know, flush our toilets and have the stuff go away.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
send our kids to school and have them have maybe somewhat of a nice time, be able to get health care, be able to drive on roads and all the rest. The reason why we have come to this place and they are able to, you know, make this sort of you need to suffer now is because that's not the entirety of their argument. The entirety of their argument is that they are the strong men.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
You know, this is the authoritarian siren song we know from the world and time over. And they are coming to wrestle the evil behemoth of government, the bloat, the waste, the fraud, the abuse. That's not my language. That's theirs. Hopefully that's clear. And the reason why you need to feel pain right now is because government has grown too large and it has enabled and empowered bad people, right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
We know this from the older language of welfare queen. We know this from the language of giving to the undeserving. So they've already constructed for themselves a platform wherein government is bad because it takes from, quote unquote, hardworking people who are coded as white and gives it to profligate undeserving people who are coded as black and immigrant and white.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Not like you, not real Americans or not real Californians or not real Minnesotans or whatever you feel in the state. And so their argument for pain right now, because of course, as you rightly said, people are feeling pain. is, right, this is a short-term thing in order to deal with this kind of giant problem.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And it's only because they've set up for themselves this entire foundation of thought wherein they shame and blame some other, and that other, you know, has different manifestations at different times. Sometimes it's Black folks, sometimes it's Latinos, sometimes it's trans people, sometimes it's all of the above.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
But that's why they can make this argument, and it is compelling not to most people, but to their core base. So they then utilize that core base, the MAGA red hat wearing base, in order to spread that gospel.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
The antidote to it is to recognize that it is absolutely essential, of course, to talk about people's pain and to do it not in abstract terms, as I said before, but, you know, you want to be able to go to the supermarket and fill up your basket. Like, what the fuck is this shit? Just to, you know, speak in very, very on the hill approved language.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
But it's also important to remember that politics isn't solitary. And if we are not actively countering the rest of their narrative, then our economic only promises actually don't break through because they're still hearing, yes, but immigrants are going to take my job. Yes, but, you know, undeserving people are on Medicaid and they should have work requirements and why aren't they working? Right.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
So what the message requires is both and. It requires saying, hey, look, most of us believe that people who work for a living ought to earn a living and that the money that we put together collectively should fund our futures and care for our needs. But today, these MAGA Republicans and the broligarchs that they decided could engage in a hostile takeover of our government.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
And I want to stop myself and say, always refer to Trump and the ilk as the regime, never refer to them as the government. Our government are the civil servants who actually do things for us, who make sure that this country functions when they are actually allowed to do their jobs. So that's a distinction, the regime versus the government. going back to the message.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
But today, these macro Republicans and their brolic arc enablers want to take your money to line their own pockets while they destroy everything our families need. They think if they can make us hate each other, turn on each other, that we won't notice that they're the ones inflicting pain upon us.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
We have to remember that their story, as evil and horrible and completely false as it is, it has heroes, it has villains, it has an origin story. And so ours needs to as well.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
Yeah. So what I would say is that if you're going to operate within their frame and respond to the proposition, the complete bullshit proposition they're putting forward, as you rightly identified, I think that's a very clever way to do it. I think that's the wrong choice.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
I think living inside of their frame is a mistake because then you are ultimately in a you said, they said kind of thing where they say this is the greatest thing since, you know,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
free eggs and you say no it's a Ponzi scheme it's a little bit like having the endless debate that we've seen in many states New York in particular crime is up crime is down crime is up crime is not up crime is up crime is not up how many times can I talk about crime did you notice how much I talked about crime did I make you think about crime and so if you're saying this is a Ponzi scheme unless you're very very methodical and elegant about it you're still sort of raising to the fore their
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
proposal, if I can even call it a proposal. Instead, what you do is you exit the frame altogether and you say, this is the MAGA murder budget. This is a budget that is hell bent on destroying the lives and controlling the futures of every single person that doesn't live, look, love, pray, or think like them. This is the MAGA murder budget. It's what they've put forward. It's what they believe in.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
How to Fight Back with Messaging Guru Anat Shenker-Osorio
They will take our money in order to destroy our lives. You don't even credit, like you don't go into, this is actually why you don't need to, you know, this is actually why their thing isn't true. Because then you're playing their game. Does that make sense?