During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made the blunder of disrespecting Trump supporters in the campaign. In particular, they were called “red neck”, meaning that they are primitive people living in a rural environment, not burdened with much knowledge.
It’s one thing when you attack your opponent, another thing when you try to humiliate his constituency. It is wrong not only from an ethical point of view, but also in terms of political technologies, because it can negatively affect one’s own supporters as well. If you don’t respect others, you might not respect your own supporters. By the way, Trump and Vance are making similar mistakes now. Conversely, today’s Democratic vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, presents himself as “a regular guy from Minnesota.”
In Armenia, it is also observed that especially those with oppositional views attach insulting labels to Pashinyan’s supporters. Psychologically, it is understandable, especially when you hear their judgments directed at the people of Artsakh. “You would have stayed, you would have kept your country, you let it and runned away, now you are complaining about Nikol. What could Nikol do?”
These conversations, which we hear every day on the street and read on Facebook, are monstrous, inhuman, disgusting. The temptation is great to respond angrily to them by referring to the intellectual level of that mass.
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But there is no need to rush to condemn those people, because I am sure that they ARE VICTIMS. Their anti-national, anti-state beliefs were not taken out of thin air. They were deliberately formed over the course of decades, initially by the opposition, and after 2018 by the government. The propaganda work of those decades was systematic and professional. it is possible that it was managed by foreign specialists.
But to repeat, insulting the victims of propaganda is a gross mistake from every point of view. People should be educated, brought up, not bullied.
Aram Abrahamyan
