With his return to the White House, Donald Trump now has the singularly powerful bully pulpit and megaphone of the presidency, and with that, great control and influence over a vast multimedia propaganda communications machine which includes not only television, radio and print but also social media, podcasts, YouTube and other online spaces and digital culture.
Donald Trump, like other historically powerful authoritarians and autocrats, is a master of spectacle and distraction. This spectacle is disseminated through and amplified by a type of political and social experience machine that compels Trump’s MAGA people and other followers and supporters by entertaining, “educating,” and emotionally training and conditioning them into TrumpWorld, the MAGAverse and the larger right-wing echo chamber and alternate reality. The Democrats and other mainstream establishment political voices (including small “c” conservatives and traditional Republicans) who believe in America’s democratic institutions, the Constitution, the rule of law and “normality” have not built an equivalent experience machine. This is one of the main reasons why Donald Trump and his authoritarian populist MAGA movement and the larger global antidemocracy movement have been so effective in their revolutionary project to end America’s multiracial pluralistic democracy and civil society.
In an essay at the BBC, Deena Mousa explains the concept of the experience machine as commonly depicted in science fiction and philosophy:
This year marks another anniversary: 50 years ago, the philosopher Robert Nozick foresaw the themes of The Matrix – and much more about contemporary life – by proposing an intriguing thought experiment. In his 1974 book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, he asked his readers: would you willingly plug your brain into a simulated "experience machine" if you could live out your deepest desires? Would it matter to you if it wasn't "real"?
In the current moment, where virtual experiences are becoming more prevalent and intertwined with our daily lives, and technology can increasingly simulate pieces of reality, Nozick's question feels more prescient than ever. Whether spending an afternoon in the metaverse, using a chatbot as a stand-in for a human friend, or creating an AI-generated video, it is asked of us repeatedly in small but important ways. Nozick was ardent that most would prefer reality, but is it possible that Cypher got a few things right?
Similar to the Matrix, Nozick's experience machine would be able to provide the person plugged into it with any experiences they wanted – like "writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book". No one who entered the machine would remember doing so, or would realise at any point that they were within it. But in Nozick's version, there were no malevolent AIs; it would be "provided by friendly and trustworthy beings from another galaxy". If you knew all that, he asked, would you enter the experience machine for the rest of your life?....
When Nozick first introduced the experience machine, the idea was purely hypothetical. Today, however, the lines between his philosophical musings and our reality in the digital age are not just blurred – they are increasingly intertwined. We face Nozick's question on smaller scales every day as we choose how to interact with technology. As those tools become more advanced, it is increasingly obvious how well they reflect the enduring relevance of Nozick's thought experiment, and are revealing of our evolving relationship with the concept of reality.
Podcasts, YouTube and other social media play a central role in the Trump MAGA experience machine. During the 2024 election (and beyond) Trump and his messengers used these platforms to get and keep new voters and supporters, most notably disaffected and alienated young men across the so-called “manosphere.” Kamala Harris and the Democrats were not able to do this effectively. Moreover, Harris was advised to avoid “the manosphere” and Joe Rogan’s and Theo Von’s shows, which collectively have an audience of millions of viewers. Trump’s appearances on Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s shows were humanizing and played to his strengths. I regularly watch Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s shows on YouTube. While watching Trump talk to Theo Von and Joe Rogan, my conclusion was (again) confirmed, that the Democrats and Kamala Harris had no answer for Trump’s appeal and that they would be easily defeated.
Public opinion polls and other research have shown that one of the deciding factors in support for Trump in the 2024 election, especially among “low information” voters, was their use of social media, apps, YouTube and podcasts as the main source for “news.”
The Trump campaign and its agents also made innovative use of targeted ads that were delivered via streaming services to persuadable voters — these are typically low-information and other members of the public who do not pay close attention to politics.
The New York Times details how the Trump-MAGA experience machine sucked them in:
Donald J. Trump’s super PAC called them the streaming persuadables.
It was shorthand for some of the most important voters of the 2024 election — the sliver of truly undecided voters who they believed skewed young and diverse, and disproportionately consumed content on streaming services like Max, Tubi and Roku.
Both broadcast and cable television allow campaigns to advertise almost exclusively by where voters live or what programs they are watching. But many of the ascendant streaming services and smart TVs allow advertisers to be far more precise — down to picking specific individuals to serve ads to.
How the leading Trump super PAC and his campaign targeted these streamers provided a critical yet unseen edge in Mr. Trump’s sweeping victory last month. It helped the Trump team make up for Kamala Harris’s mammoth financial advantage and narrow its dollars and focus on the roughly 14 percent of battleground-state voters it had identified as swayable.
The Harris side, awash in cash, mostly ran streaming television ads the old-fashioned way — targeting by geography….
“It saved us an enormous amount of money,” said Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s campaign managers. “You’re targeting by house.”
A new report by Media Matters details the right wing’s extreme dominance of the online media space, where "right-leaning online shows had at least 480.6 million total followers and subscribers — nearly five times as many as left-leaning."
In a new essay, Democratic Party strategist Waleed Shahid and political commentator Francesca Fiorentini diagnose these failures of messaging, communication, and organization and argue how the search for a “Joe Rogan of the left” is a waste of valuable time and limited energy:
Conservative media isn’t just successful because it’s entertaining. It’s successful because it is a parallel political infrastructure—one that fuses ideology, entertainment, donor money and mobilization into a self-reinforcing loop.
Right-wing media does not react to the Republican Party; it defines it….
Progressive media, by contrast, remains trapped in a reactive, defensive posture, often litigating GOP narratives rather than setting its own. And unlike its conservative counterpart, it is too often tethered to party elites, hesitant to challenge institutional Democratic power, and still operating as if gatekeepers hold the same influence they did 30 years ago.
Unlike their right-wing counterparts, most political content creators on the center-left and left operate as independent freelancers, without institutional backing, full-time salaries, or basic benefits like healthcare. Many juggle multiple income streams—subscriptions, ad revenue, crowdfunding—just to sustain their work, leaving them vulnerable to burnout and reactive rather than strategic in their output. They often work alone, without the support of editors, researchers, or political operatives who could sharpen their messaging and deepen their impact.
In contrast, right-wing content creators are frequently embedded within a well-funded ecosystem, backed by think tanks, billionaire donors, and political organizations that provide research, staff, and media connections. The result? Right-wing media functions as an ideological machine, while left-wing content creation remains scattered, precarious, and too often detached from the movements and institutions that could amplify its reach.
This is the real asymmetry: the right’s media ecosystem is unabashedly ideological, intentionally insurgent, and generously resourced. The left’s remains reactive, scattered, and deferential to the Democratic Party. Until that changes, the left will continue losing the battle for public opinion—one podcast, one news cycle, one election at a time.
Trump and his agents and strategists are continuing to expand their ability to rapidly (if not almost instantaneously) shape and control the information space. The Washington Post recently profiled Trump’s White House social media “war room” and offers these details of how it works:
The effort was part of a new administration strategy to transform the traditional White House press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, disseminating messages directly to Americans through the memes, TikToks and podcasts where millions now get their news.
After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power….
The team is made up of roughly a dozen employees — people mostly in their 20s and 30s from outside politics — who work out of the White House and are given wide leeway to craft content. By removing layers of bureaucracy before publishing, the team avoids the “analysis paralysis” of other messaging shops, Dorr said.
And members are expected to move at internet speed. When a federal judge declined to block the White House from banning the Associated Press from certain news events, the team raced to declare “VICTORY” in graphics that members slapped across White House TVs and social accounts….
As the administration has expanded its marketing arm, it has also worked to uproot the classic structure of the White House press corps. In her first briefing, Leavitt called on “podcasters, social media influencers and content creators” to apply for credentialed access to a briefing room long filled by legacy news outlets. More than 12,000 have since applied, according to the White House, and several have been ushered to exclusive new-media seats near the podium.
Administration officials have said the change reflects a fundamental shift in American culture, as journalists compete for relevance with a new generation of influencers who speak to audiences of millions online.
Trump’s agents and strategists are also using artificial intelligence as part of their experience machine strategy to shape (and control) the public’s mood and perceptions of reality in service to the global authoritarian and neofascist (and techno feudalist) revolutionary project. In a recent example, on his Truth Social media platform, the president shared an AI-generated video of what Gaza would look like if his dream of “emptying” it of Palestinians and turning it into a Trump-branded resort area were to be realized.
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The Guardian reports on the dystopia of politics and news mated with artificial intelligence:
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specialises in identifying deepfakes, said this was “not the first time and won’t be the last time” that AI-generated clips about news events would go viral. He noted there had been a flurry of content created around the LA wildfires, including a video of a burnt Oscars trophy.
He said Avital’s experience should make people realise “there’s no such thing as ‘I just shared with a friend’. You make something, assume you don’t have control.”
He added the fact the video was intended as political satire but repurposed as “very compelling, visceral” propaganda by Trump highlighted the risk of AI-generated video.
“It allows individuals without a lot of time, money and, frankly, skill you would normally need, to generate some pretty eye-popping content. That is really cool, you can’t argue,” he said….
Although this video is obviously computer-generated, since videos are typically not hyper-realistic, he warned: “it’s coming”. “What happens when you get to a point where every video, audio, everything you read and see online can be fake? Where’s our shared sense of reality?”
In a new essay at The Jacobin, Reece Peck and Anthony Nadler (both are professors of media studies and culture) offer an alternative strategy for mainstream progressives and liberals that uses authentic populism and appeals to social democracy to reach working-class communities and to counter the Trump-MAGA Experience Machine. Their essay “The Left Needs Media That Competes — and Wins” merits being quoted at length.
In the 2024 election, Donald Trump wielded yet another mass communication medium that conservatives have managed to conquer: podcasting and online video. Trump’s brash “alt-media strategy” overwhelmed Kamala Harris and the Democrats’ ground game, propelling the twice-impeached, convicted felon back into the White House. Many on the Left have long romanticized on-the-ground politicking, but no amount of door-knocking can match the reach of conservative influencers who build parasocial bonds with one’s neighbors and provide them, each day, with powerful stories that make sense of political life.
Murdoch and Trump have always held a media-centric theory of power, and, for the most part, their theory has proven to be correct. With the decline of unions and so many other forms of civic life, media organizations have filled the void and have even usurped some of the traditional duties political parties once played….
We are scholars who have spent years studying right-wing media and interviewing those who consume and produce it. We have little sympathy for its ideological content, yet we can’t help but envy how the Right has spent decades building an alternative media sphere — one with many strengths the Left lacks. While the Left has a vibrant sphere of publications, Substacks, and niche podcasts, these overwhelmingly cater to an already highly engaged, college-educated audience. The Right, meanwhile, has dedicated much more effort to reaching working-class communities and audiences beyond conservative elites.
Peck and Nadler continue:
To build a media ecosystem that rivals right-wing media in both reach and impact, progressives need moving and compelling stories of public life that reach new audiences. Left politics must be presented in ways that make working-class experiences central, using storytelling that is dynamic, accessible, and engaging. This media can’t be boring or overly wonky — it must speak in popular vernaculars with style and panache. More than just informing, it should create pathways for weak partisans and nonideologues pathways to feel connected to a broader left community. This is a media-movement strategy that is fundamentally oriented toward democratic persuasion.
There’s understandable disillusionment about persuasion today. People rarely change their minds — especially on big political questions — just because they are presented with “the better argument.” At the heart of media building, however, is a persuasion different in kind from the narrow notion of debaters’ talking points. As the Right’s best propagandists intuitively understand, much of the real persuasion happens before the policy debates even occur.
It is a game of creating long-term cultural and emotional bonds between media and audiences. This can happen through a political talk radio program, a Fox News morning show, or even ostensibly nonpolitical spaces. After all, some of those who appear to have been Trump’s most potent messengers this past election came from outside traditional news media — video game streamers, YouTube pranksters, anti-woke comedians, and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters. When the moment for arguing Trump’s case arrived, vast portions of the online public were already pulling for the Right to win the exchange of ideas. The goal wasn’t just to win debates; it was to position Trump as the champion of pink- and blue-collar workers, farmers, multiracial small business owners, Christians, young men, and any other group the Right could claim to represent.
The Democratic Party is facing an uphill battle in this moment of populist rage because in the minds of many “working-class” everyday Americans, it has been made into the face of “the elites,” the status quo, and “political correctness” with its empty symbolic politics that have failed to protect them from the vicissitudes of cannibal capitalism and declining social mobility. Donald Trump and MAGA have filled that political void.
The Democratic Party needs to rebrand itself. Central to that effort must be the creation of its own experience machine. Of course, the Democrats and “the resistance” cannot and should not copy the content of the Trump-MAGA Experience Machine. But they can learn from its design and the decades-long strategy by the right-wing that created it. Unfortunately, the Democrats and the larger pro-democracy movement do not have years and decades to build their own experience machine and integrated media apparatus. They must act quickly and create something scalable.
The Democrats and the larger pro-democracy movement have the people, money, talent, and other resources to build a powerful experience machine. There is also a huge audience in America which is desperate for an alternative to Trumpism and the larger right-wing and its authoritarian populism. In this time of rapidly worsening crisis, the question is do the Democrats and the pro-democracy movement and “the left” broadly defined have the discipline and will to give those Americans what they want and also need? Even more importantly, will they be able to do it fast enough as the window to stop Trump’s victory march over American democracy and civil society is rapidly closing?
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