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Lee Bebout

The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 5: Emotional Manipulation, Victimhood, & Attractiveness

The late 1960s saw campus conservatives refine techniques of emotional manipulation that would echo down through the years, even in larger contexts such as the Republican Party and in various national media endeavors.  Lauren Lassabe Shepherd’s Resistance from the Right outlines two that I want to highlight today that fall in the realm of emotional manipulation: weaponized victimhood and an obsession with attractiveness. By 1968, Shepherd tells us, organizers of the campus right felt that their work, or “branding,” would be “more effective if it promoted a shared aggrieved attitude rather than a coherent set of principles” (p. 79).  Emotions, Read more