America’s Rejected the Far Right Democratically — So Now It’s Trying to Take Society by Force
Nov 21
Member-only
Save
I’m going to use a word I don’t use often, or lightly.Sinister. There’s a thread running through recent events, and it’s a sinister one. That thread goes like this. From Twitter to terrorism, the far right won’t take no for an answer. What do I mean by that?
The other day, a fanaticopened fire at a gay club in Colorado Springs, killing five people.Police are investigating it as a hate crime, and odds are, that’s exactly what it’s going to be. You hardly shoot only a certain kind of people and kill them unless youhatethem.
Meanwhile, over at Twitter, the Creepy Billionaire who Burned $44 Billion did exactly what he said he wouldn’t do, and yet we all knew he’d do anyways — hereinstated Trump, without the “council” that he pledged making the decision. Andnot just Trump— butlunatics and fanatics of all kinds. Twitter, as a quite predictable result, immediately boiled over with theworst kinds of hate, now that the leash was off — 99% of tweets directingracial slursat footballers haven’t been deleted.
What connects those two things? Anything? Everything. Both are ways the far right is trying to control and dominate social spaces — even if it means coercion, invasion, violence, brutality.On Twitter, hate speech is now OK — and of course, thatturns into actual hate crimes, of extreme violence, like murder. And the far right shrugs and pretends like these things aren’t connected. Just joking!! Ha-ha!! But of course, it’s not magic, and they’re intimately connected. Having been repudiated, the far right won’t take no for an answer, and isresorting to forcenow instead, to control social and public spaces.
Let’s put that in context, so it’s even clearer. What did America just do? It justrejected the far right, in a big, historic, even globally singular, way. Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins more or less across the board. Americans said “we’ve had enough,” loudly, firmly, and they meant it. Enough of what, though? Enough of the childishness of the fanatics — and enough of the hate, too. Americans seem to want a return to civility, to decency, to a society where people aren’t at each others’ throats, where minor political differences aren’t suddenly the stuff of death and rape threats. They want a functioning society grounded in norms of comity again. That’s remarkable stuff, becausethe world is going theotherway.
But — and it’s a big but — the far rightisn’t taking no for an answer.You see, it begins from a place of anti-democratic pseudo-philosophy — so why should anyone’sconsentmatter?
Hence, its new crusade goes like this: if it can’t have what it wants politically, well,it’ll just use force. And both Twitter and the atrocity in Colorado are perfect examples of that. In them, you see, with stunning, disturbing accuracy, how hate speech gives way to the real thing, hate crime, how the point of hate is to become violence.
When I say “if the far right can’t have what it wants politically, it’ll just use force,” what is the “it” that it wants?Control.Of what? Social and public spaces. The norms which exist in them. In order to achieve its ultimate goal, control over relationships. To the far right, only some kinds of relationships are “permissible.” Gay ones, for examples,aren’t. Using death and rape threats, meanwhile, to establish a relationship of intimidation is perfectly alright, especially if they’re against women. The point is to control a society’s relationships. Why?
To achieve the larger purpose of the far right. A cleansing. Purification, where the subhumans know their rightful, moral place, and it’sunderthe superhumans. All of this goes right back to our old friend Nietzsche, who literally described all this set of relationships as “master” and “slave,” dividing the world up into “ubermen” and “undermen.”
Hence, the point of controlling public spaces is to control relationships, and thus to control social existence.You can’t date that person. You can’tbethat. You can’t exist as that kind of person, in that way. Gay? Sorry, not allowed. A woman, in love with someone who’s not of “pure” blood? Questionable. A kid, who wants to read this kind of book, because maybe you might be…that’s banned. And to police these boundaries of social relationships and existence, the far right uses hate, which becomes violence, even while its disavowed as a “joke.”
But is it? Is it really a joke when there are now reinstated accounts on Twitter whose quasi-philosophy is that minorities are the cause of the woes of the pure and true, that women are weak, and yet they poison men with their sexual wiles, that women and minorities are parasites, that homosexuality is unnatural and that any deviation from binary gender is a sickness, that all these people are “subhuman,” and barely worthy of life, only deserve to exist if they don’tpush it, and only in the ways that the “superior” see fit…and then in the “real world,” others go out an enact those beliefs, with violence, right down to the point of murder?
Ha-ha!! Just a joke!Is anybody sane laughing, though? I think that more and more, Americans can see the obvious links between all this. The far right pundits and whatnot get on Twitter and announce, basically, that subhumans, whether they’re women or minorities or gays or “communists,” whoever they even are, shouldn’t exist, and all those people deserve to have their rights taken away, and live in indignity and coercion — and then fanatics and lunaticsacton that message, and do very real violence.
I think that Americansget thatby now, and that’s exactly why they repudiated Trumpism — which is a rejection of the far right — in such a visible way.
And that repudiation is setting the stage for what’s happening.If the far right can’t convince the average person with Big Lies and propaganda and billionaire backed campaigns to spread them — which the midterms shows that it’s now failing to do — well,it’ll just try to take control instead.
How did Americans learn the lesson — that hate becomes violence, that it’s rarely just “rhetorical”? Well, theysaw it in spades on January 6th. If, by that date, you’d thought that those who’d warned of hate becoming violence were going too far, that surely the Trumpists wouldn’t resort to actual brutality, that nobody was going to, LOL, launch a coup — what are you, an alarmist — you learned the hard way that day that theywereinextricably linked. You saw before your eyes how a demagogue can lead a mob to commit acts of senseless brutality just like — snap!! — that, right down to the point of storming Congress. That day, America’s sensibilities changed. It was un undeniable warning signal to Americans, it turned out, that Big Lies and hate and death threats — these things weren’t just cheap talk.The fanatics really meant it.
And so Americans backed away from Trumpism. You could see it in the months and days that followed. In the way that the January 6th hearings were subjects ofintense national interest.And in the way that Americans, too, woke up, after being spellbound by demagoguery, and realized, “Christ, it’s not just hateful. It’s not even solving our real problems. Enough is enough!” That’s not criticism — that’s praise. It takes a courageous and noble people to admit they were wrong, which is the key to that epiphany, and many nationsdon’thave it, at least not for decades, often longer.
So Americans then sent a message heard round the world. Enough is enough to Trumpism, to fanaticism, to lunacy — it resounded everywhere. Take it from me, my little European dog park is full of people from around the world, and right about now, they admire Americans. For doing the right thing, while too many in their own countries aren’t.
Even the far right heard that message. That’s precisely why they’re trying to take over public and social spaces with force now, right down to violence.They know that they’ve lost, democratically. That part of the project is over. They haven’t won people’s consent to the folly of hate and bigotry as defining principles of social order. And yet they’re not giving up, either. They’re just shrugging, and doubling down. So what if you don’t like it? Don’t want it? We’re going to take controlanyways.
The Cheesy Billionaire’s reinstatement of Trump is a perfect example of all that. Putatively, it was backed by a (LOL) “poll,” in which 52% of respondents wanted Trump’s Twitter account reinstated. Democracy at work! Not even close. That doesn’t account for, obviously, not just the bots and trolls —70% of the dude’s followers are fake— but, more deeply it doesn’t account for the millions who’d already left, anticipating such a thing, nor for advertisers, horrified by such a prospect, nor the many, many people who aren’t part of Twitter, and might have been some day, if only this hadn’t come to be.
The far right took Twitter by force. It’s a crazy, bizarre thing to see, and it’s worth thinking about for a second.The Billionaire bought it — backed by huge amounts of Wall St money —without a business plan, fornakedly political reasons. Then the accounts of rank fanatics were reinstated, then Trump, and on and on it goes. The net effect of all this is, predictably, that hate is seeing a veritable tsunami. And that, of course, is the point. That’s what social control of a public space is, in this context. Gay? Woman? Minority? We don’t like you. We hate you. You don’t deserve to exist. Not in our society. Not in our social order. And we’re going to let you know.
Know what, though? That you’re a subhuman. That you deserve violence. That we want toharm and hurt you.
Wait, you want to…what?
Oh, sorry, ha-ha, just kidding!! God, snowflake, can’t you take a joke?
Bang-bang. There’s a gunman opening fire. At a gay club. On kids. On women. On trans people.
Hate turned into violence, disavowed, yet openly, loudly championed and flaunted, gaslit away as “just a joke” — but to those it was meant to reach, to active, to incite — well, they heard the message loud and clear.Go out and annihilate those hated subhumans. Get rid of them. We’re the ones who are under attack. They’re coming for our wives and our kids. For our land and our homes. They want to seduce us with their gayness. They want to pervert us, and then there’ll be no more left of us — the master race.We’re the persecuted ones.So persecuted that we have to pretend it’s all just a joke. But you know we mean it, don’t you, kid? You know what we mean when we say “march to Congress.” Then you say “hang Mike Pence.” You know what we mean we say that gay people are “f*gs.” Then you go out and…kill them.
See how this works?
The far right isn’t giving up. It’s doubling down yet again. Precisely because it knows it’s failed democratically.It hasn’t won consent for its form of social order, based on domination and violence, consisting of taking people’s rights away, and limiting freedom, not expanding it. And so it’s justtakingcontrol. By force. That is the sinister thread of now.
There are two sides to it, though. Americans don’t take kindly to this kind of thing, once they’ve made up their minds. The far right isn’t going to do itself any favours — its reputation and backing will only shrink, the more force it uses, and you can already see that in how the Cheesy Billionaire’s shredded not just $44 billion, buthis own reputation as a genius, too. Meanwhile, the far right will grow more desperate as it loses support, and resort to even more flagrant, loud, violent stunts. Its violence and fanaticism will increase, the more of a fringe it becomes, having failed as a mainstream political movement.
Americans aren’t going to stop rejecting the far right just because it controls Twitter and gives fanatics a platform all over again, or because those inspired them go and shoot up gay clubs. Wrong. They’re going to reject it more, and with more of a disgusted sneer, too. This is how social movements die. And that, at least, is a relief.
UmairNovember 2022
