Narrative Warfare Strategy exists beyond traditional political communications, and Zohran Mamdani understands this.
Last week, Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, Democratic Socialist, won the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City. Facing down what seemed like the entirety of the billionaire class and the Democratic Party establishment.
Yes, he is charismatic; yes, he ran on economic populism; yes, he had an almost perfect social media game; and yes, he had a great ground game. But underneath all of that, what grounded his candidacy was an embracing of a Narrative Warfare Strategy, elevating his campaign beyond issue messaging and communications.
What Zohran did, and what Trump is a master at, is create a meta-narrative, letting everything grow off of that. A meta-narrative communicates the meaning of facts or a truth, a truth that a community sees as reflected in their experiences.
Importantly, it isn’t about communicating a fact or truth, but the meaning behind them. This idea originates from Ajit Maan, a Narrative Strategist within the defense industry, who wrote about it in Narrative Warfare. She says, “Narrative is like poetry. It doesn’t make sense to say a poem is untrue or inaccurate. Truth is irrelevant to poetry. What is relevant is that it strikes a chord in experience. The same is true of narrative.”
What is Trump communicating? That the America ‘you’ know and love is lost and under attack, but ‘we’ can take it back. What he is doing is an idea presented by Sefton Delmer, a WWII-era British propagandist, in his observations about Nazi propaganda—using a meta-narrative about grievances that makes people a hero in their own story and part of a grander story. It communicates the meaning of a ‘truth.’ The truth is people are feeling less stable, like they lost something, and Trump constructs a narrative to give meaning to that feeling and the reality they’re experiencing.
Zohran is doing something quite similar; when you pay attention to what he says in different ads and videos, a meta-narrative emerges. That the city, proud New Yorkers know and love, is being lost to billionaires, but together, they can restore it. And while he makes people the heroes of the story, the main difference is that part of the narrative is set in a multicultural democracy rooted in Americana. Both Zohran’s and Trump’s narratives are based on identity, one is radicalizing around nativism and superiority, the other is compelling in a unifying identity of America. Zohran’s narrative was so strong that other candidates, aided by ranked choice voting, were running field using his very narrative, even if it meant Zohran’s election over their own.
One of the most essential parts of all of this is authenticity. Both Zohran and Trump authentically provide a narrative. Trump is an authentic voice of supremacist, sadistic desires. In comparison, Zohran provides authenticity, in the love of the city and what it means to be an American, as well as the current struggles of trying to survive and thrive in New York City within the context of a multicultural democracy.
Meta-Narratives give everything that comes from them action, the ability to mobilize. Perhaps the greatest 21st-century example of this is then-candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Obama, like Mamdani, understood “ideas alone do not mobilize action-not until they are narrated.” Obama’s first demonstration of this understanding was his 2004 DNC speech. A great contrast is Senator Elizabeth Warren's 2020 Presidential campaign, which was filled with ideas and plans, but failed to provide a meta or strategic narrative. Instead, it jumped right to issue messaging, or in other words, a tactical narrative—what is used to address the issues that everyday people are experiencing.
One of the major tasks before us, which will provide us with more tools to win, is not just the creation of a unifying meta-narrative that can be used across organizations and campaigns, but a Narrative Strategy.
A narrative strategy is a form of strategic planning. You create a set of strategic objectives: 1. Design a meta-narrative that determines what truth or fact you want to give meaning to and what that meaning is. It should be one that creates a unifying identity. Doing so allows you to go on the offensive. 2. Designing a counter-narrative (which can be the meta) that provides an alternative to the oppositions’. These two steps lead into the ideas and beliefs you want to communicate, and then, what behaviors you want to change or influence. Finally, messaging comes into play in these last steps.
But most importantly, a narrative strategy goes beyond messaging and traditional communications; it becomes how you integrate the meta-narrative with your organization's organizing efforts and everyday operations. You look at Zohran's campaign and how they operated in the field; it was directly influenced by the narrative they were trying to communicate. Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign did so as well. Their very organizing strategy was rooted in their narrative strategy, one that fed the other and reinforced it.
If you’re struggling to communicate your purpose or adjust your organizing and organizational strategy to the new social and political landscape, reach out today to schedule a free consultation call. Let’s work together to design a Narrative Strategy for your organization, integrated into your daily operations, that will give meaning to the fight for the very idea of America.
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