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In the process of researching maskless rallies and the various far-right grift, and realizing how much the mainstream media (e.g. WaPo, NYT) plays into the myth creation of the far-right heroes.
In their quest for "the average dude" to present to their audiences, journalists are helping to create an entire mythology for the far-right by uplifting people who are NOT average but instead have political aims and goals (e.g. grifters)
The same happened with people like Joe Arpaio. All of the breathless stories about his policies created the mythos that others use to support their own stories.
I think one way journalists can avoid this is by being clear about who people are and how they found them (e.g. are they REALLY random people on the street?).
I like to remember the historical roots of everything. There's very little that's new. This just helps erase the specialness of individual acts.
There's the adage of uplifting other voices, which I think is helpful, but I increasingly think those voices need to also be uplifted in a historical context as a line of resistance and creation.
I guess this gets to the question of, who are journalists writing for? Who is their audience? Increasingly, the audience is often the subjects themselves who use the stories to amplify their own mythos.
