🧩 BND Motif Index · M1761
Circular firing squad
A side caught fighting itself is told to turn its guns on the other side: its people's fury at one of their own is scolded as aiming at the wrong enemy and a gift to the opponent.
📣 Exhortations🗂️ Things fall apart
- 4claims filed under it
- 2left shows it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
- 2claims retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🪜 rests on 🧩 Political infighting
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (2 left-leaning, 0 center, 1 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Democrats win majority in house and senate 2026-11-05 to 2026-11-08
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “Now Im hearing the noise,infighting, division. Stop giving the GOP reason to keep talking shit.” “Y'all calling to bitch at Dems because you're too chicken shit to yell at your maga relatives” “You will bust up a coalition selfishly.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-11-02 “Protesters blaming Zohran Mamdani for the Gaza genocide are fighting the wrong battle: he is not the epitome of their complaint.” 1
Told on the right 0
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the right so far.
Told on both sides 1
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-10-23 “Republicans are more concerned with a controversial advertisement than with Democratic policies.” 2
Retold online 2
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-10 “A critic of Democratic congressional leaders is dismissed as an ignorant moron who doesn't understand what party leaders do, and scolded for remarks about race.”
- 2026-11-09 “People should stop complaining and start celebrating the Democratic wins.”
M1761 · first seen 2026-11-09 · what this is · how the index works