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The media’s rhetorical quandary over what to call Trump’s most enthusiastic followers is, um, instructive. Some thoughts.1/
They tried ‘protestor,’ but that was inadequate. CNN keeps using ‘anarchist,’ which is obviously wrong. Some commentators use ‘terrorist,’ but two decades into the War on Terror, that always racialized word has been emptied of what little meaning it had. 2/
They are clearly uncomfortable with ‘fascist,’ ‘white supremacist, ‘white nationalist,’ ‘authoritarian racist,’ ‘Nazi,’ etc, though all of those are arguably more accurate than any of the terms they have been using. (Cf the Confederate flags, the guy with the Auschwitz hoodie.)3/
The mainstream political vocabulary evidently has no place for non-leftist white people stepping out of line. 4/
The unnameable violence on which the entire system rests exists solely to protect the privileged status of the very people who smashed the windows of the Capitol yesterday, a privilege shared by most editors, producers, pundits, etc. 5/
This makes their actions fundamentally inconceivable, and renders them unnameable. So in the end the papers fell back on the trusty, ancient language of class, and went with ‘mob.’ 6/
Last, ahem: the debate a few weeks (years?) ago, mainly among white academics, about whether Trumpism could be called fascism sure didn’t help. 7/
