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The wealthy and powerful spent decades creating a hateful, paranoid environment where conspiracy theories enabled the dismantling of government as a public good, culminating in Trump and an outright fascist movement.
Now it’s time to pretend they’re horrified by their creation.
Now it’s time to pretend they’re horrified by their creation.
This crisis was facilitated by the wealthy elite who fought modest reform, regulation, and any attempt toward equality by disseminating white supremacist paranoia into the culture and undermining all efforts by linking them to fascist conspiracy theories of old.
The New World Order. Birtherism. The Deep State. QAnon. Just iterations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zions, the same story wielded as a weapon by the Right to demonize reform efforts by the Left in order to maintain power and profit and redirect resulting rage.
Fascism doesn’t just happen. It’s a process of exploitation and manipulation. The underlying factors are there, including white, misogynistic, evangelical forces, but these elements have to be mobilized and directed as a defense by the powerful as they pursue more profit.
The story of this moment and this crisis is so much more complicated than the Trump-centered focus that is dominant in our discourse, and until we start dealing with the true causes - white, misogynistic, evangelical supremacy and exploitation - it’s only going to get worse.
Any story about Trump, the GOP, and this fascistic, antidemocratic movement, is incomplete without a deep dive into how the wealthy and powerful used them and their vast alternate reality ecosystems to dismantle government, further profit, and redirect anger to vulnerable people.
The reason all this can seem so strange and inexplicable is because the actual nature of our politics and efforts to destroy government and halt reform has been largely lost in the shuffle. These conspiracy theories, this fascism, this moment is part of a larger effort.
If you’re looking for a primer on how we’ve arrived at this bizarre moment and how fascism took root with the help of the wealthy and powerful, or if you’d like to turn some people onto the truth, here’s a presentation I put together.
