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Something I haven't been able to get out of my head after all these (kid gloves) profiles of rioters showing many are well-educated, wealthy. Media too often removes agency from narratives of right-wing radicalization and treats it as something that just “happens to people” 1/
The frame of so many of these profiles treats the scourge of disinformation as something that otherwise good, well-meaning people just happened to fall into or get addicted to, poor them, without little of their own agency. They’re written from a position of overall sympathy 2/
We get dozens of stories of Facebook being an “addiction machine," trapping a helpless audience. Fox News is written about as something that just happens — as if once its on your cable package, its inevitable you’ll fall victim to it 3/
Yet the Rs of course claim to be the party of personal responsibility. They’ve used that logic for decades to deny needed services to the poor, to deny treatment to those with drug addictions, etc. “If only they’d taken more responsibility!” “They should have known better” 4/
But to turn that logic around: watching Fox News isn’t a passive choice. Every person who has Fox News on their cable package also has CNN. Joining a QAnon FB group isn’t a passive choice. You don’t have to credulously believe everything that passes by on your FB feed 5/
I’m not defending FB (FB sucks) or Fox News. But many tens of millions of American adults, of all ethnic and economic backgrounds, have proven perfectly capable of not watching Fox News religiously, despite it being on their TVs, and using FB without losing their minds 6/
Where is the moral condemnation and rhetoric about personal responsibility when it comes to white people on the right? Why is the media frame about these people inherently so sympathetic? (And yes, I know the answer, just venting.) /end
