Nicholas Grossman has an interesting piece in The Bulwark explaining how Republicans and conservatives seem to be talking to each other, in fanboy-ish code impenetrable to anyone who’s not very online or very dedicated to watching Newsmax, more than communicating to the general public:
In-speak has taken hold in right-wing media, too. Peruse Conservatism Inc. these days and you’ll see it’s become so dependent on inside references and shared fictions, that it’s inaccessible to the general public, even as it’s more thrilling to fans.
Except instead of “radiation can give you superpowers,” it’s stuff like “Donald Trump won the 2020 election.”
This closed system of conservative media didn’t start in 2021. For example, in September 2018, former president Barack Obama gave a speech arguing against “appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another.” By way of response, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro dismissed this idea by noting, among other things, that Obama “declared that a slain black teenager could have been his son.” That was it, no further explanation. Shapiro was referencing the Trayvon Martin case — over six years old at that point — and his audience had to both (a) know that and (b) already have internalized the conclusion that expressing empathy about it in the past was a bad thing.
In 2019 David Roth coined the term “Fox News Cinematic Universe” (FNCU) to describe the reference-heavy style of Trump tweets, such as those that mention, without context, “the very dumb legal argument of ‘Judge’ Andrew Napolitano” and “low ratings Shepard Smith.”
It’s not new, but the universe — which includes Fox, Newsmax, OANN, various websites, podcasts, and Republican officials — has gotten even more insular in recent months. The main reasons include:
[…]
Biden is an old, white Catholic. The bigoted attempts to other him, which worked to some degree with Obama or Hillary Clinton, aren’t available. Attempts to attack him indirectly, via his son Hunter, have fallen flat. And accusations that Biden is not of sound mind set a low bar he has easily cleared over and over—in debates, town halls, and speeches.
Yet the Republican party and right-wing media are committed to opposing Biden, to pushing the Big Lie that his election was illegitimate, and to casting their supporters not as people who disagree with the president, but as perpetual victims living under existential threat. So they retreat further into their bubble, fixating on hyperbolic dangers posed by, for example, Hasbro slightly rebranding Mr. Potato Head (they still sell Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, but the whole line is now called “Potato Head”).
That’s as unimportant as it sounds, but GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz goes around lamenting that Mr. Potato Head “got canceled,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld claimed Mr. Potato Head got “neutered,” and Sean Hannity put together a panel to discuss the “controversy and confusion.”
Popular culture has become more fragmented than ever, and politics is more like entertainment than ever, so it’s no surprise that politics has become more fragmented and cliquish.
And yet…these past few weeks have seen many right-wingers leaving absolutely no doubt what they’re really talking about.
The phrases “white supremacy” and “racism” can be overused and abused, but when you see a prospective Republican Senate candidate posting this, what else can you call it?
Then there’s Tucker Carlson - and, yes, that the third newsletter this week in which I’ve discussed that cynical prick, which shows how well his new schtick is working - declaring that the fourth-largest country in the world is too crowded:
He doesn’t mean too crowded with Belgians.
Ron Johnson, once the standard-bearer of the country-club businessman Republican Party, is now very vocal about the fact that the beer belly putschists didn’t scare him. It’s not like they were BLM protesters, wink wink.
Speaking of January 6, the number of Republican Congresspeople who wouldn’t support a resolution supporting the Capitol Police reached double digits.
And I bet all twelve have sincerely tweeted #BackTheBlue at some point.
Even as someone who considers himself “conservative,” I am not naive about racism on the right side of the political spectrum. It’s not a new phenomenon. But it sure seems like the racists on the right are way more brazen about it than they were ten or twenty years ago. (I wonder if the last two Presidents contributed to this, one unintentionally and the next extremely intentionally.)
It’s kind of ironic that this is coming from people who profess their principled refusal to wear masks to hold down the spread of a pandemic. Lot of masks are being thrown on the ground and stomped on these days.
Progressives: “I am so fed up with American racism. I wish the USA could be a more progressive and inclusive society, like Denmark.”
With so much happening in Europe right now, yesterday’s news from Denmark hasn’t quite got the attention it deserves.
The gist of it is this: the Danish government is proposing to limit the share of ‘non-western’ residents in a particular neighbourhood to a maximum of 30%. It plans to achieve this goal within 10 years.
This begs a number of questions. For a start, what exactly do they mean by ‘non-western’? Who will be covered by that definition and how will they be identified? Do the restrictions apply to non-citizens only or will immigrants acquiring Danish and/or EU citizenship still fall under the same restricted category? And what about their children or grandchildren?
Will the policy be achieved through social housing allocations only — or will it also apply to private rented and owner-occupied housing? In neighbourhoods where the proportion of ‘non-western’ residents is already over 30% how will the goal of the new policy be achieved? Would ‘surplus’ residents be removed against their will?
If the Danish government wants to avoid the “risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies” (as The Guardian quotes the Danish interior minister as saying), does that apply to all parallel societies — or only to those deemed ‘non-western’? Would a monastery fall foul of the definition? Or a Jewish neighbourhood? Or a Chinatown? What about Freetown Christiania — Copenhagen’s long-established anarchist commune — is it deemed sufficiently western not to count as a ‘parallel’ society?
[…]
The irony is that Denmark has always been idolised by progressives in Britain and America. Indeed, along with Sweden, it is the epitome of the liberal welfare state. It’s also worth noting that it’s the Left not the Right in power right now. The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen is a Social Democrat, and her administration is supported by parties even further to the Left. Furthermore, her hardline approach on immigration is proving popular — in most countries Social Democrat parties are struggling, but not in Denmark.
Meanwhile, the Swiss voted to ban Islamic face coverings, and they weren’t being subtle about it:
None of this is to say that the United States or Canada should feel smug about racial issues in their countries. Especially not in the wake of a white American man’s shooting rampage in which most of the victims were Asian, and who may very well have been targeted precisely for that reason.
But European societies are far more complex than most North Americans - left-wingers who see Western Europe as an enlightened near-utopia, and right-wingers who think they’re all Godless socialists - give them credit for.
In the mid-seventies, David Duke wrote a book which purported to be by an African-American militant, designed to forment a race war:
David E. Duke, the media‐conscious Imperial Wizard of a newly packaged Ku Klux Klan that is appealing for new members on the basic of “nonviolent” racism, admits that he and fellow Klansmen are the authors of an “attack” manual ascribed to a fictitious black militant:
Mr. Duke denied in an interview that the manual, written under the name “Muhammad X” and carefully salted with misspellings and bad punctuation, was intended to stir racial animosities among whites.
Instead, he said, it was intended to allow the Klan to compile, through mailorder sales, a list of “radical blacks” that. it could use in the event of racial warfare, which Mr. Duke said he and his followers were sure would occur. He declined to say precisely how the Klan would use the list.
The manual, called “African Atto'—translated as “African Attack'—.is copyrighted in the name of C, E. Hardin, the maiden name of Mr. Duke's wife, Chloe.
That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw what The Root, purportedly an African-American news site, has been up to lately.
The oft-professed idea that racism is about structural power, and therefore people of color cannot be racist, has been such a gift to toxic people looking for ways to become even more toxic.
The guy who wrote this will suffer no consequences. Unless we can find some politically incorrect tweets he posted in high school.