Flick Harrison on Fri, 8 Jan 2021 20:29:25 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> made for TV, made for social media




On Jan 8, 2021, at 08:24 , mp <mp@aktivix.org> wrote:

Are they all stupid, or all fascists, is that the meaning here?

Yes, absolutely the Capitol rioters are all stupid.  In the sense that they believe the election was stolen, that they think a Satanic cult of Democrats is living under the city, sexually abusing children.  In the sense that they follow Donald Trump, an oligarch of the first order (who is also profoundly stupid), in the sense that they wave Confederate flags, in the sense that they removed American flags and replaced them with Trump flags, in the sense that they blame immigrants and women for their problems, in the sense that they turn to the Republican Party to defend their working-class interests, in the sense that they think they are oppressed by “reverse racism.”  In the sense that they fear socialized health care as some sort of slavery.

And in the sense that they seemed genuinely surprised and shocked that the police used deadly force to defend the elected legislators whom they were preparing to kidnap and terrorize.  One person in the vicinity of the deadly shooting shouted “Active shooter!” as if they, and not the police, were the ones performing normality and the Democracy defenders were somehow the lunatics.

Profoundly, Deeply, Genuinely Stupid.

And yes, they are all fascist, in the sense that they pretend to be poor while having their own full-time Youtube channels, in the sense (again) that they blame immigrants, Jews and women for their problems, in the sense that they reject and violently resist any social process that reduces their privilege.  In the sense that they refuse to accept facts and instead assert their own alternate universe as a type of purity test for their value system.  In the sense that they regularly carry weapons to civil-society actions.  And again, that they follow a thuggish oligarch of the first order, who is 100% fascist himself.

Surely you don’t see Donald Trump as some kind of agent for change in favour of working Americans?  Please connect the dots for me there.

Does that mean that poor, white Americans have no sense of the local, of 
community, of constitutional rights or anything like a good 

The people storming the capital have none of those things, no.  The fact that you port them into a representation of “poor white Americans” suggests a leap of logic that isn’t supported by facts.

Trump / Republican supporters skew higher-income.




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