Thread by @AlexandraErin

The Hunt is 100% pro-conservative propaganda that just takes right-wing conspiracy theories and the kind of rhetoric people close to Trump put out all day long as the basis for a horror movie with MAGA as heroes and liberals as monsters.

But Trump is raging over it all the same.

CNN was in Trump's pocket in 2016. The New York Times had a clear slant in his favor. Both of them in more subtle ways than The Hunt, but it shows a principle: you can't win Trump's favor just by being biased in favor of him

You have to be *his*, body and soul.

I have a learned correspondent in my mentions telling me it's not pro-conservative propaganda because the director is a liberal. But it is. You can go watch the trailer. It's a survival horror movie with MAGA heroes. The premise mirrors QAnon-style conspiracy theories.

Why would a liberal director make a pro-conservative film? Because Hollywood has never been as across the board liberal as conservatives make them out to be, and Hollywood liberals aren't usually super politically savvy. It's the age of Trump; they're making movies for that age.

Now, here's the thing. I said anybody who doesn't belong to Trump body and soul is viewed as against him. Comey helped get him elected. CNN helped get him elected. The New York Times helped get him elected. But they refuse to be HIS, so that makes their power dangerous.

And as always, Trump is the funhouse mirror version of conservatism, magnified and distorted. The myth of "liberal Hollyweird" (how many top movies has Steve Mnuchin financed?) exists because conservatives must define as enemies anyone else with the power to shape ideas.

And here's the other side: imagine everybody DID belong to Trump, body and soul.

He'd still need to pick out minions to act as his enemies, because he needs enemies. Conservatives needs transgressors to guard The Sacred Culture against.

Second person to tell me it's "literally the plot of" or "an adaptation of" The Most Dangerous Game.

Please don't try cultural criticism without warming up first. It shares a core of premise with and may be inspired by. It's not literally the same.

https://twitter.com/BelisariusCool/status/1159918570014478337

The fact that you can sum both up as "rich, elite powerful person(s) hunting other people" is nutshell thinking. Harry Potter and the TV show Merlin are both about people who find out they're wizards; so, the same story.

The biggest difference, thematically, between The Most Dangerous Game and The Hunt is the idea of who is a powerful, remorseless elite that wants to hunt humans for sport. In The Most Dangerous Game, it's an aristocratic big game hunter. The Great White Hunter archetype.

If you take The Most Dangerous Game and make the hunter a banker who recites from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it becomes anti-Semitic propaganda. Even though it's in all other regards still literally just The Most Dangerous Game.

In The Most Dangerous Game, the hunter's idea was that humans were the only prey whose challenge would be equal to a human. He was killing people but he didn't view it as murder, because they could kill him. That was what was exciting about it, to him.

The trailer for The Hunt, though, makes it clear that the hunters think of their targets as sub-human and that they think of it as slaughter. They aren't going out to seek the thrill of a life and death challenge, but the thrill of taking life, of wielding the power of death.

And most importantly when we're talking about the difference: the motives of the killers in The Hunt are political. They are targeting people based on their political belief.

(And again, for any MAGA searching the movie title: within the film, the hunters are the bad guys.)

The only thing the two stories have in common are human beings hunting one another.

That dispensed with, I shall continue.

"Outrage marketing" is the other half of that claim - I really don't think it is. I don't think the filmmakers anticipated blowback from the right.

They made a movie that validates right-wing views and makes right-wing "Real Americans" the heroes against monstrous elites.

The outrage is being generated by right-wing pundits and blowhards (right up to the blowhard-in-chief) because they *need* an enemy, they *need* a whatabout target for rhetoric that incites violence.

So here, after disposing of those distractions and objections, we come to the point, which why this movie is dangerous.

Right-wing projection is not *just* about making their actions defensible to others or muddying the waters to dilute accusations.

It's how they self-justify.

If you spent any appreciable kind of time monitoring the right-wing mob tactics behind GamerGate, Sad/Rabid Puppies, ComicsGate, any alt-right cesspits, etc.... when they go on the offense, they tell themselves and each other it's fighting BACK. "We don't want to do this..."

"We don't want to do this, but they're doing it to us. Or they will, if we let them."

The right doesn't just spread stories of murderous cabals (check the etymology of that word, please) of liberals who would happily commit genocide on them because everybody likes a scary story.

The MAGAs are right... this movie is inciting violence. It's incinting right-wing violence against anyone they perceive as liberal, against anyone they think might be connected to a cabal (again, see etymology) of globalist elites. Jewish financiers, United Nations, etc.

I am fully sure that the thoughts behind the movie were more a mix of "this will be this hilarious over the top dark comedy that everybody will know better than to take seriously, it's so ridiculous" and "how do we get The Real America to come to the theater?"

I don't think anybody with any appreciable level of power over the production approached it with the idea that "Yes, let's make a right-wing propaganda piece. Let's rile up some Q cultists and militiamen against liberals."

They're playing with things they don't understand.

Already it's not even that most MAGA are looking at the movie and going, "Yes, this is portraying in an over-the-top fashion what is basically happening, or going to happen." They are so ready to feel validated, they see the movie itself as a murderous attack by liberal elites.

I wish I could be amused that conservatives en mass are misreading this movie that shows them as victims and heroes (their two favorite modes!) and liberals as monsters as being an incitement against them, but this isn't funny to me.

It's frightening.

And there's no real solution. We can't just be like, "Watch the trailer, you're not getting the point." because the point is only marginally better.

And also, the God Emperor has already spoken. They dare not believe their own eyes even if they do watch.