Why we’re frustrated beyond reason
Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.
Ignazio Silone
The Republican outrage machine kicked into high gear last week over former FBI director James Comey posting (and then taking down) a photo of sea shells arranged to create a string of numbers. Why, by posting that image the demonic Comey was calling for the assassination of the president, they raged. I pointed out that if they really believed their own bullshit, they wouldn’t keep reposting the damned photo now, would they? I presented ten samples from high-profile Republicans that by now have nearly 100,000 retweets and many more “likes.”
Parker Molloy reflected on time spent at Media Matters and knew the pattern well: “take a Democrat’s statement, strip it of all context and reasonable interpretation, then breathlessly claim it was a call to violence or some other nefarious act.”
Comey isn’t even a Democrat. He was a Republican for some years before registering Independent in 2016, proving Molloy’s point that context and reasonable interpretation don’t matter when patented rightwing hissy fits are in play.
Molloy writes:
The double standard would be comical if it weren’t so cynical. When Democrats use metaphorical language about “fighting” or “battling” in a political context — standard political rhetoric used by everyone, everywhere, forever — it’s framed as literal incitement. But when a Republican explicitly calls for violence, it’s just colorful language.
This level of deliberate obtuseness and bad-faith interpretation would be almost impressive if it weren’t so exhausting. The Great Seashell Panic perfectly illustrates how the right-wing outrage machine operates—take something innocuous, strip away all context and reasonable interpretation, claim it’s an existential threat, demand consequences, and then use it to feed the grievance industrial complex.
David Roberts reposted Molloy’s commentary to draw attention to the operation of the faux outrage machine that “you will *never* see acknowledged in the MSM”:
Why do they do this? As I’ve said a million times, the goal is to create a permission structure. Lying? Violence? Voter fraud? “Hey, everyone’s doing it, so we can do it too.” So you relentlessly accuse your opponent of what you want to do. It’s crude but it works, every time, without fail.
It really is the root driver of fascism: convincing the broad public that the *real* threat is the professors & queers & artists & do-gooders. Fascism is always “a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.” I did a thread on this at the old place:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1686514452647329793.html#google_vignette
Roberts wrote in that thread:
This is why the only mode of moral argumentation you ever see from a reactionary is whataboutism. The point of “they did it first” (for whatever “it,” censorship or voter fraud or whatever) is not that “it” is bad & no one should do it, but that *it’s ok for us to do it too*.
It’s not even really a moral argument. It’s just a permission structure — they did it, so we can’t be held accountable for doing it too.
So when they create this mythology about Dem voter fraud, the point is not “voter fraud is bad,” the point is, “it’s ok for us to do it too.”
You won’t see the media point out that either.
It used to frustrate me beyond reason that these patterns are so obvious and they don’t get acknowledged. What I’ve come to realize is that these lizard-brain level fascist instincts are widely shared & even many “moderates” *want* to fall for it. They *want* permission.
The same way commoners vote for the rich and against the estate tax because they dream of being counted among them someday. Wouldn’t want to clamp down on misbehavior before we get to indulge in it ourselves.
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