Recognizing MAGA Propaganda

A Musk Primer

Elon Musk is using his ownership of Twitter to bombard the social media space with MAGA propaganda. It is critical that we recognize it and fight back with facts and ridicule. Here is one obvious example of his propaganda machine working at peak efficiency.

1. One of the big X propaganda accounts with 2.1 million followers makes a breathless post that starts in all-caps (screaming for attention) and includes an alleged Musk quote:

   🚨🇺🇸ELON: 40% OF SOCIAL SECURITY CALLS ARE FROM FRAUDSTERS—DOGE IS FIXING IT

   “They steal people’s Social Security. They call in, pretend to be retirees, and reroute the money to themselves.”

   

   Sounds scary, right?

2. Musk then quote-tweets the original propaganda post to his 218 million followers:

   It’s crazy. Retirees are having their money stolen!

   

   Note there is no proof that anyone’s money is actually being stolen. Just an accusation following his own original claim about “40% of calls” being fraudulent. Literally the only source for any of this bombastic claim is Elon Musk himself.

3. The MAGA horde amplify the propaganda further by retweeting Musk on their own timelines. In short order millions of people see the claim.

   
   The MAGA messaging is that Social Security is being massively ripped off by “fraudsters” and DOGE is in there doing only good work by “fixing it.” In other words, there is nothing nefarious about DOGE digging into hundreds of millions of Americans personal and financial data.

   
   Notice that Musk never says how many of the calls are actually successful at redirecting retiree funds to the criminals. This is an intentional omission because the truth is that it’s negligible. Even Musk’s Grok refutes his claims:

   1. The 40% figure is a lie:

      However, this 40% figure appears exaggerated or misinterpreted—official SSA reports suggest improper payments (which include fraud, errors, and other issues) are less than 1% of total payouts, with fraud being a subset of that.

   2. The actual losses to the SSA from all forms of fraud (not just phone-in bank redirection fraud), including false disability claims and so on, is approximately $100 million. That is not an insignificant amount of money, but SSA pays out $1.379 trillion in benefits to 67.1 million beneficiaries so $100m is a relative drop in the bucket at .007%.

   3. Successful imposter fraud almost never happens:

      The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides some related context: in 2018, they reported over 35,000 complaints about SSA imposter scams, with losses totaling $10 million, averaging about $1,500 per victim.

All these facts are great, but look at how long it takes to refute Musk’s simple propaganda lie.

This is how propaganda works.

Making false claims alongside legitimate, but misinterpreted facts (which in this case are also a lie) allows the association to form in the listeners’ brains. The lie becomes true for them because A) they trust the source (Musk) and B) they feel smart about themselves because they brilliantly made the “logical” jump from the 40% lie to the even bigger “retirees are having their money stolen!” lie.

How do we fight back?

It is not easy, especially since Musk owns one of the largest social media networks in the world. He uses X to amplify his propaganda lies while simultaneously shadow-banning dissident accounts like my @GOPJesusUSA account and all the other, even larger left-wing accounts.

Nevertheless, progressives do have a voice. Respond with facts and/or with ridicule or contempt. Do not let the propaganda go unanswered. Our replies will not be seen as much as the original propaganda, but at least we can get the truth out there.

For more ways to fight back, be sure to subscribe to my Substack and read my ongoing Organizing Blueprint to Kill MAGA series.

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