Unreasonable, "Reasonable" and Rising Fascism

It seems astonishing that anyone with a functioning brain could claim that a door-to-door vaccination initiative could give the government an opportunity to "take your guns, take your Bibles". I mean, we wouldn't want public health to be a top concern of government--what if people start expecting action to improve their lives?

Charles Holden notes there's a long tradition of conservatives attacking expertise in pursuit of their agenda. 

[T]he goal was not to win a debate ... ; it was to stop social change they objected to.

[A]ttempts by "the experts" to set the record straight will most likely be seen as more proof that the world is out to get them.

Even the notion of "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" is just more ideological nonsense argues Greta Christina.

You can't separate fiscal issues from social issues. They're deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm.

[I]t lends credibility to the idea that conservatism is reasonable, if only people would do it right.

But the real crazy shit comes from the growing far right. In an interview with David Masciotra, Alexander Laban Hinton discusses the threat of genocide in the United States.

If we look at Jan. 6, it is almost remarkable that there wasn't a lot more violence. If there had been, it would have sparked more violence across the country.

So, moving forward, Biden comes in. We have a strengthening of the buffers, the pandemic is improving and the economy is improving. That takes things down from the rapid simmer, but what is worse is the lingering polarization and the belief that Biden is illegitimate. This overlaps with the GOP now having white grievance as its default issue.

At the time of Charlottesville, it is a small group of extremists. They are savvy on social media, but appear as if they are on the fringe. By the time we get to January of 2021, the white nationalist movement is millions and millions strong.

If [Dear Leader] can return to a dynamic social media platform, or if his former campaign strategist, Jason Miller, can succeed with the social media platform that he has created, that is the ingredient that can escalate the crisis.

Update (July 12):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Annette Gordon-Reed ties the insurection to the ongoing resistance to multiracial democracy in the U.S.

[T]here are people right now here in the United States who do not take [the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments] of the Constitution seriously. They are imagined as "true" Americans, and are given the benefit of the doubt when, for example, they attack the Capitol building.

[Muslim or Black attackers] would have been mowed down. They would not have gotten inside the Capitol building. Historians cannot predict the future, but Jan. 6 is going to be looked at as potentially a turning point in the country's history. If there is no proper reckoning, then the United States is facing serious problems. The whole concept of democracy and the republic are at stake.

Update (July 28):  Amanda Marcotte calls out the GOP as cowards for gaslighting the public over election "integrity". They pretend their criticism of the January 6 investigation isn't about the fact they actually support the attempted coup.

All these Republicans are betting that [Dear Leader] will soon ascend to the dictatorial powers he aspires to, and they want a piece of the pie when that happens.

This is really one of those rare moments in life where there's no nuanced middle ground. Continuing to support [Fuckface] means supporting fascist insurrection, and no rhetorical games played by Republicans can change that.

Update (July 29):  John Stoehr thinks Republicans are pushing people into becoming "partisans for the United States" when they refuse to take the January 6 investigation seriously.

[B]eing an American is so politicized there are now two sides to the controversy. One side is for democracy. One side is against it. One is for the Constitution and the principles it enshrines. One is for the GOP and its fuhrer. One side honors duty and sacrifice. One side belittles them. One side sees selfishness, disloyalty and betrayal as fair game. One side has unvarnished contempt for treason.

Update (August 9):  In an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Michael Bang Petersen argues that the spread of false beliefs and conspiracy theories isn't about ignorance.

[A] lot of beliefs don't really exist for navigating the world. They exist for social reasons, because they allow us to accomplish certain socially important phenomena, such as mobilizing our group or signaling that we're loyal members of the group. This means that because the function of the beliefs is not to represent reality, their veracity or truth value is not really an important feature.

Petersen mentions research finding that ethnic massacres are typically preceded by a period of rumor-sharing. 

[I]f you look at the content of the rumors, that's not so much predicted by what the other group has done to you or to your group. It's really predicted by what you are planning to do to the other group. So the brutality of the content of these rumors is, in a sense, part of the coordination about what we're going to do to them when we get the action going — which also suggests that the function of these rumors is not to represent reality, but to serve social functions.

Those kinds of rumors are similar "to the kind of misinformation that is being circulated on social media". 

This suggests that a lot of what is going on in social media is also not driven by ignorance, but by these social functions.

There may be an evolutionary pressure underlying the value of such misinformation. 

[T]hese false beliefs don't just exist to make you feel good about yourself, but exist in order to enable you to make changes in the world, to mobilize your group and get help from other group members. I think that's an important point to think more about: What it is that certain kinds of beliefs enable people to accomplish, and not just how it makes them feel.