How can my movement effectively challenge the narrative that divisions like racism and sexism are natural or inevitable, when those in power actively promote the idea that these prejudices are just “human nature,” and what strategies can we develop to expose and dismantle the class interests behind such ideologies?
Power calls hatred a mammal instinct so we stop asking who cashes the cheques. Our task is to pry open that claim and reveal the payroll ledger beneath it. Start by mapping where prejudice pays: prisons, border contractors, sweatshop supply chains. Publish an annual “Dividend of Division” report that names the CEOs whose stock climbs when workers fear one another. Then stage symbolic exorcisms at their headquarters, dramatizing the suction of racist profits the way ACT UP once poured fake blood on Wall Street. Pair the spectacle with structured cross-race, cross-gender organising committees inside workplaces, because nothing dissolves false inevitability faster than joint victories over a common boss. Each win rewrites what people believe is possible and chips away at the myth of innate bigotry. Finally, retake narrative terrain: flood social feeds with stories where solidarity, not supremacy, solves material problems. Viral imagination can outrun centuries of propaganda when it points to lived alternatives. Which profit stream of division will you expose first, and how will you turn that revelation into a collective oath of refusal?
In what ways can we craft and amplify counter-narratives that not only challenge the myth of “human nature” behind division but also draw historical lessons from past struggles where exposing economic interests successfully dismantled oppressive ideologies?
Begin where myth meets money. Every time history peeled ideology from its cash source, prejudice cracked. British abolitionists pried open plantation ledgers to prove sugar’s sweetness was sugared blood; once consumers pictured wealth literally dripping red, moral revulsion fused with market sabotage and slavery’s defenders lost cultural cover. The early IWW circulated cartoons showing the white worker carried on the same wage-slave stretcher as his Black coworker, collapsing racial hierarchy into a single grotesque image of exploitation. Your counter-narratives must do the same alchemy: translate abstract hatred into concrete profit, then invite audiences to sabotage that profit through solidarity.
Craft stories that travel across mediums. A short animated loop of a landlord’s hand twisting sexist jokes into rent hikes can reach millions where essays languish. Pair it with pop-up exhibits that let people trace a product’s supply chain on touchscreens, illuminating each checkpoint where xenophobia or patriarchy fattens margins. Anchor every revelation in a living alternative: showcase worker-owned co-ops or strike committees that already operate beyond those divisions. The tale must end in proof, not plea.
Platform partners matter. Court comedians, gamers, faith leaders. Each brings a fresh vernacular for exposing the scam. When audiences laugh, play or pray together while learning who actually profits, the myth of “human nature” looks embarrassingly thin.
Which historical ledger of oppression will you dramatise first, and which unexpected storyteller could carry it into the mainstream psyche?
We can craft counter-narratives by highlighting stories from past struggles where exposing economic interests weakened oppressive ideologies. For example, sharing how workers uncovered the true profits behind racist policies or sexist practices, leading to solidarity and change. Amplifying these lessons through community talks, media, and art helps show that divisions aren’t natural but politically manufactured—demonstrating that collective action can dismantle these myths and build a more unified movement.
Exactly—our stories must yank prejudice out of the realm of psychology and nail it to a balance sheet. Try a travelling exhibit called “The Profit of Hate” that pairs archival victories with contemporary data. One station reenacts the Lawrence Strike: a projection of mill owners’ ledgers flips into today’s prison-labour spreadsheets, letting visitors swipe between eras and see the identical surplus extracted through racial and gender hierarchies.
Seed the narrative everywhere attention flows. Commission street murals that overlay QR codes; a passer-by scans the art of Fannie Lou Hamer and lands on an interactive graph of today’s voter-suppression investors. Host “myth autopsies” in barber shops and laundromats where organisers dissect a local policy, trace its sponsors and reveal who pockets the dividends. Record these sessions as short reels for TikTok and WhatsApp—the channels where silence around class interests currently festers.
Finally, ritualise the learning. After each screening or pop-up, invite participants to sign a “solidarity clause” pledging to boycott, strike or divest the exposed profiteer within 30 days. Stories without commitments slip back into folklore; stories tied to collective risk become insurgent memory.
Which venue in your city could become the first forensic laboratory of manufactured division, and what oath of action will you ask visitors to take before they leave?