Branding, Name Equity, and Politics

In many areas your name can be your most valuable asset. That intrinsic name value is why a company with few hard assets can be worth millions of dollars, why something as small as a web address can be so coveted, and why Donald Trump claims to have a net worth that fluctuates from day to day.

Many organizations will attempt to protect and nurture a valuable name in order to maintain it's value in the future. Others look to sell the name to cash in on it's value immediately. And still others look to purchase or commandeer a name to suck the value out of it in one way or another.

A brand being robbed of value is very common in the business world. A company will purchase a highly respected but niche player, use it's name to sell products with a premium price, and lower the quality of the product to boost profit margins. When the name value no longer fetches a premium price, the brand is discarded.

This happens in politics as well. Most notably in our lifetimes, the Republican party commandeered the Christian brand and utilized it's name value to increase it's political power. As a part of the effort, the Republican party gains a sizable and reliable constituency block united under a common banner, the Christian leaders gain political power, and the Christian brand is slowly drained of the clout it once had.

Are we experiencing something similar with the alt-right movement? We know that the term alt-right was created as a rebranding effort for the nationalist movement, and the term itself seems intentionally phrased to tie itself to the broader spectrum of right wing politics typified by the Republican party. Is the alt-right movement leveraging the brand equity of the Republican party to raise their own image, and if so will it have the long term effect of draining brand equity from the Republican party itself?

Just as feminism today is more viewed as a manhating thing, rather than fighting for equal rights, judged equally?

I don't think alt-right is there yet. It is paving the road for getting there, but it isn't there yet.

I'm a foreigner, so my impression of alt-right might be quite different than what most people in the US have of it.

Alt right means nothing just a stupid names thrown at anyone who doesn't tow the line.

The term was originally defined and pushed by white nationalists. You can claim it's a pejorative but it was coined by the white supremacists themselves as a form of re-branding. This isn't a term that originated by anyone on the left.

I know I was just saying that people throw it at people they don't agree with even if they have no affiliation with alt right.

Such as....who? Who has been associated with the alt-right recently which you do not think fits the mold? If you're referencing recent events in Charlottesville, the protesters themselves self identified as such as well.

Alt right is a term coined by it's adherents. Therefore it means something.

The fact that people in this thread are deflecting ownership and coverage of the term alt-right seems to indicate that people know it's toxic.

I follow people from the skeptic community on youtube who often get labelled as such usually by MSM.

Again, which youtubers?

The far-right/alt-right is the same all over the world, they tend to be either Nazis and a strong hatred towards immigrants.

Of course the Alt-right is toxic, exactly like the alt-left is toxic and nothing but hate filled extremists who think violence is the answer.

I'm assuming you are aware of the differences in relation to the topic, no? It starts with self-branding, the embrace within the parent party, and the fact that their policies are currently on the agenda and making their way into bills.

In short, in relation to the topic, the alt-right has much more influence over the Republican brand than whatever you're calling the alt-left has over the Democratic brand.

There is no alt left. That's a term made up by conservatives but not a self identified name which alt right is.

Yep. The alt-left term is the Thomas Aquinas response from conservatives to the alt-right.

"If there's an alt-right, then there MUST be an alt-left in equal proportion!"

I don't know the answer to your main question, but why do you think that the Christian brand will be drained of it's clout when they gain more power from the deal? Perhaps if I understand that I will be able to come up with a reason as to whether or not the republican party will ultimately lose it's own brand equity.

I have a better question. Why lump all Christians together? They do have different political ideologies.

It's a (arguably unwitting) trade of long term brand equity for short term influence. By joining with the Republican party in name and policy, they gained an immediate means by which to push for their preferred policy proposals. However, that same melding of religion and politics has repelled more and more individuals as time has gone on and led to a perception that Christians are ingenuous. It's not that the name will be drained, but that it is actively being drained.

While the policy implications were immediate. brand equity is sticky and tends to take a long time to taper off (which is the very reason it's valuable in the first place).

That is actually where you are mistaken, you have that all reversed.

The Alt-right has no hold over the republican party and certainly not over the president, well at least not if he wants to get anything done and not alienate his own party.

Where the self-righteous far-left has a much more powerful hold on the democrats, Just look at the things they have gotten past, like No-whites allowed , Black graduation day, etc etc. etc. without a outcry or even a pip from anyone, well except the conservatives who just get laughed out of the room.

That's a great question. The short answer is because it's a shared mass-understood banner.

The Evangelical community really made an outsized share of the decisions leading down this path, but that term is not as well known outside of the Evangelical community specifically and even the Christian community at large. Nearly everyone has some knowledge and experience of the broader Christian community though, and the Evangelical branding choices effect the larger Christian brand as a result.

Its a bit irresponsible to do this on a specific level as obviously a Christian democrat in California will most likely have a very different ideology from a Christian republican in Alabama.

That said there are connections that are unintentional and intentional, where one, despite having a very different political ideology, can very easily support and maintain the other. This is also why its a bit silly to excuse religion by saying "moderates".

The example i tend to use i use because most people lived through it and saw it first hand and often from multiple angles, is the example of gay rights (and if you're willing to dive into history you'd find this is the same story with interracial marriage, civil rights, slavery, etc).

When it comes to gay rights it was not until 2010 or so, when we broke the 50% marker of Christians who believed that they should have equal marriage rights. The political and religious "wing" that was most vocal (and active within our political system) about this and worked to ensure they restricted these rights represented about 15% of Christians. The others, the larger percentage, the "moderates", those not viewed as "bigots" generally took a neutral stance or would say something like "i dont care but the lord does" or something stupid like that. The point is that this was as politically and socially diverse of a crowd as you can find in America, yet because of this common ideology, they all worked together to oppress other people.... intentionally or unintentionally.

So while it is a bit irresponsible to do this, there is a fairly high degree of accuracy and we can actively demonstrate how this ideology affects the political and social ideas of entirely different peoples.

So basically, if the influence of Christian leaders were like a gallon of water that refills naturally over time. The water represents the influence. The water/influence can be used at the discretion of the leaders, and those leaders have allowed republicans to partner up with them and thus hand over some measure of control to the leaders in the GOP. Christian leaders have done this to get what they want more quickly, pouring out their influence at a faster rate than it is being restored. I can definitely see that. I can also see the potential for it to go the other way. If the policies that they want end up being decent for society, then society may increasingly see their influence as a good thing. On the other hand if the policies go poorly Christianity in the US will be more greatly linked to corrupt politics. Christian leaders will have received both the policies they want and the negative consequences that come with it.

With that said the same could happen to the republicans. If the alt-right policies go well it could mean that republicans will be looked favorably upon and actually gain some of the notoriety that the alt-right has won. If they go poorly both the alt-right and the Republican party in general could receive the blame and lose influence over time.

You could say a similar thing happened over the course of the Obama administration, perhaps even the same. Democrats attached themselves to the corporate elite to get the policies it wanted and eventually it lost majority control of both the states and the eventually the federal government.

I think, politically speaking, it's very hard not to do this. For success in the world of politics you ultimately need people to work together, and different factions join up to gain a majority coalition that can win the day. Eventually shit goes wrong, and you see the people you are aligned with lose the influence and strength it once had and things fall apart.

What?

It is absolutely very hard not to do this with anyone. As you state, politics is largely a game in which you must form a majority coalition with disparate groups and interests.

That being said, you can certainly choose who you form a coalition with and what planks you allow into your platform. The mere fact that a coalition must be formed does not absolve one of responsibility for the composition of that coalition.

Hey man, I just listened to this podcast on npr that interviewed two evangelical pastors and it touched upon the themes of this topic. They discuss the problem of aligning with a guy like Trump and the potential for a waning in influence that Christianity has on the nation. Just thought you would be interested in listening.

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/03/568206452/evangelical-leaders-say-christians-who-support-trump-face-an-ethical-challenge

Im still trying to figure out whats alternative about the "alt right". From where i stand, they seem to be exact to the far right wing racists of the 80s and 90s.

@Serraph105: Excellent read. It's too bad it took a true deviant for some members to realize the costs they're paying.