Skip to main content

Making Sense of Nonsense

I would also argue that all six factors are present on the American right.
1. The perpetrators must see civilians as threats, rather than innocent bystanders. Why else would you set out to victimize teachers and racial minorities?
2. The aggressors must transform the victims into perpetrators, accusing them of committing serious crimes. A lot of people on the left don't get it, but the reason a lot of people on the right excuse things like voter suppression and insurrections is that they have been filled with almost 30 years of propaganda telling them that the left is cheating in elections for the purpose of destroying America, perhaps even of replacing white people in the population. Much of the left also sees the right as motivated by malice.
3. Perpetrators must strip the enemy population of any shared identity. I once had a discussion with someone who ended up maintaining the Real Michigan is conservative. It is just those people down in Detroit that screw things up. You can see similar arguments playing out about Real America, constitutional sheriffs, and so on.
4. The aggressors must celebrate acts of extreme violence against the enemy population as virtuous patriotism. January 6 was "just peaceful tourists (Paul Gosar)" persecuted by the government for exercising their free speech rights and deserving of a blanket pardon (Donald Trump).
5. State propaganda must present violence not as a goal in itself, but rather as part of a strategy to obtain larger goals that the broader population desires. Fox News is not state propaganda (yet) but it is propaganda. This is what motivates voter intimidation and the notion of "taking America back." From whom? Other Americans? Or are they not really Americans?
6. Finally, violence becomes more likely when state propaganda makes it seem like there is no alternative to mass killings or war crimes. This justifies armed invasion of pizza restaurants, the FBI, the US Capital, and Nancy Pelosi's home. It is behind Trump's call to terminate the Constitution.
In Russia, these factors lead to the com,mission of war crimes. The only difference in the US is that we are not currently in a civil war, despite the best efforts of people like Stewart Rhodes, Dylann Roof and Timothy McVeigh.
In Russia, these factors lead to the com,mission of war crimes. The only difference in the US is that we are not currently in a civil war, despite the best efforts of people like Stewart Rhodes, Dylann Roof and Timothy McVeigh.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tis for Today in 1925

Today is the birthday of the author and illustrator Edward Gorey, born in Chicago, 1925. His stepmother was the woman playing the guitar during the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca. The New York Times credits bookstore owner Andreas Brown and his store, the Gotham Book Mart, with launching Gorey's career: "it became the central clearing house for Mr. Gorey, presenting exhibitions of his work in the store's gallery and eventually turning him into an international celebrity." Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following.[7] He made a notable impact on the world of theater with his designs for the 1977 Broadway revival of Dracula, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Costume Design and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. In 1980, Gorey became particularly well known for his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bend and Stretch. Reach for the Stars. There Goes Jupiter, There Goes Mars...

On this day in 1976, during an interview on BBC Radio 2, British astronomer Patrick Moore announced that a very rare planetary event was about to take place—that Jupiter and Pluto would soon align in relation to Earth, and their combined gravitational pull would momentarily override Earth's own gravity and make people weigh less. He called it the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect, and said that if people jumped into the air at exactly 9:47 a.m., they would experience a floating sensation. Moore signaled, "Jump now!" over the airwaves, and within minutes the BBC switchboard was flooded with calls from people who claimed it had worked. In 1957, the BBC TV show "Panorama" ran a segment about the Swiss spaghetti harvest enjoying a "bumper year" thanks to mild weather and the elimination of the spaghetti weevil. Many credulous Britons were taken in. In 1998, Mark Boslough fabricated a press release claiming that the Alabama legislature had legally...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Simpsooooooons.

On this day in 1987, the longest running prime time sitcom in TV history debuted. The Simpsons began as a video short on The Tracy Ullman Show. Two years later it was spun off on its own and has now aired more than 650 episodes. It has received numerous awards. The Simpson family has their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Matt Groening has said that his goal in creating The Simpsons was to offer audiences an alternative to the "mainstream trash" they were watching. And while the show often tackles heavy-hitting topics like religion, climate change, poverty, gun control, and nuclear power, its silly jokes and occasionally coarse humor have put some people off. In the early '90s, President George H.W. Bush encouraged Americans to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. First Lady Barbara Bush called The Simpsons "the dumbest thing she had ever seen." But to be like Simpsons may not be so bad after all. The characters embrace and reflect...
Post a Comment
Read more