Narrative Warfare 101 w/ Mamdani & Cremieux
The NYT did not slander Mamdani, they are helping him
On July 3rd the NYT published “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application”1. This news story is like an optical illusion, or a good viral tweet, in that there are two contradictory ways to read it2:
👿 He lied on his college application for personal gain, saying he was “black” even though he is not, to benefit from affirmative action.
😇 He does genuinely belong to a minority group, for which there was no option on the form, and picked the closest thing. Perfectly normal & honest.
So, which one is true?
An easy way to find the truth is to look at what story *does*, not what it says.
What this story does is: make Mamdani’s critics look stupid.
To supporters of Mamdani, this looks like a really weak argument against their candidate. It makes it look like there are NO real arguments against him, if this is the best criticism they have.
Citics of Mamdani ALSO see the same thing! They say, “I hate this guy, I think he’s going to make things worse for everyone, but this is silly. There are real reasons why he’s bad, we should talk about those instead”
This is strange, right? If BOTH the supporters & the critics think it’s a silly argument, then…why is this what everyone is talking about?
Who is benefiting from this story getting so much attention?
Supporters of Mamdani are upset at NYT for this “smear campaign”. But, functionally, it’s not a smear campaign, it’s pro-Mamdani propaganda. If you’re a supporter, it confirms that your side is winning, AND invites you to participate in defending him, loudly declaring your support3. If you’re on the fence, it may tilt you towards thinking less of his opposition. If you’re a critic, it creates a lot of noise that drowns out more reasonable criticism.
Let’s think of it from the NYT’s point of view: you receive a tip from Cremieux that he’s going to publish this. Instead of letting him publish it with some other publication, you take it so that you can control the narrative, & put the most positive spin on it that you can4, essentially doing damage control for your candidate.
The NYT article can basically be summarized as:
“there’s this negative thing that some people claim about Mamdani”
“it’s true, but it’s not a big deal, it’s actually not a bad thing”
“also the source for this is a bad person, no one should listen to him anyway”
That last point is articulated in this paragraph:
The data was shared with The Times by an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux on Substack and X. He provided the data under condition of anonymity, although his identity has been made public elsewhere. He is an academic who opposes affirmative action and writes often about I.Q. and race
They’re saying “he wants to be anonymous, but screw that. Go google him, he’s anti all the good things, and pro all the bad things”.
What unfolded here bothered me because it didn’t have to be this way. I can see a lot of people on both sides who genuinely want to know the truth, and they’re confused by why this is happening.
What should have happened is for those on the right to say “Crem, this is a nothingburger”5. A lot did, but many couldn’t resist taking the bait. On the left, people should have seen that the right doesn’t actually care about this. They should have noticed that NYT printing this is the same thing as John Oliver strawmanning a position & then attacking it and “winning”. They should have noticed that they were being recruited to amplify the story, to loudly defend against a made up enemy6.
I think it’s good & important to fight for the candidate you think is best, but every thing that becomes a “current thing” has the potential to either raise the epistemic waterline, or lower it. And this was an example of something that lowers it because it gives Mamdani’s supporters a false picture of their opponents.
I personally want whoever is doing good to win, but if they are eroding the average citizen’s epistemology, then they’re not doing good. They are making it harder for themselves, and anyone else in the future, to do good.
Mamdani is a newly popular leftist candidate for mayor of NYC, allegedly with a lot of grassroots support.
I credit
with this useful frame. In his upcoming book about how to spot propaganda, he talks about how a lot of news functions the same way as the blue/black dress optical illusion: (1) each side sees something different, (2) what they see is real (3) they assume they are seeing “reality” and not “an interpretation” (4) they can’t figure out why anyone would say something that is clearly false, so they conclude the other guy must be either stupid, or evil. This kind of “cognitive optical illusion” can & is often weaponized.This is an extremely significant point, getting people riled up to defend him energizes his supporters, and creates an emotional connection. It’s a very effective strategy.
Also, they make money by being the source of “the current thing”.
I think Crem himself understood this, I think he almost certainly predicted that this would strengthen the candidate he’s fighting against, but he couldn’t resist publishing this because it is a big boost for his career to break this story.
Cynics may say this is not possible, it’s too utopic of a vision, but you don’t need everyone to understand how the game works for the dynamics to shift. You just need a critical mass of people in each tribe, and I think this is already happening. In a future article I want to write about “psyop inflation”, about what happens if you keep winning through methods that erode people’s epistemology. This forces your propaganda to become simpler, which makes it more obvious to people whose epistemology has not been eroded. This is good, as long as those two groups remain in contact. Every friend group & culture should have a subgroup with good epistemology.
Crazy good analysis; I believe this kind of meta-level content HAS to eventually get its hooks into more people once they realize how effective it is.
Are you arguing that the New York Times *intentionally* published the article to help Mamdani? If so, I think that's a little too conspiratorial for me to accept without further evidence.
Also, on Twitter I have indeed seen people earnestly criticize Mamdani for this; although granted, those people were almost certainly already against him in the first place.