Let's talk about that couple who pointed their guns at peaceful protesters and how the racist, paranoid reality they're drowning in is one of the cornerstones of American life and continues to put all our lives at risk to this very day.
I know it's easy to make fun of these people. They look ridiculous. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that they threatened innocent people with loaded guns and a massive tragedy could've played out.
We have to address this and recognize how we got here.
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All around American paranoid white people are threatening protesters with guns, chainsaws, knives, clubs, bats, waiting for "antifa buses" and hordes of protesters to show up and destroy their towns.
They live in a manufactured alternate reality and are primed for violence.
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Of course, we must talk about Fox News and Donald Trump and how they have created this tinderbox of racial paranoia, but to start there means that we dismiss America's LONG history of racist paranoia.
We have to confront ourselves and our past if we want to get out of this.
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We have to go back to the very founding of America, to where a white oligarchy framed a Constitution they weren't even authorized to make and then told states they either authorized it or were going to be subjected to deadly attacks by Native Americans.
That was the appeal.
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Even back then, in the 18th century, American media framed the narrative as a do-or-die struggle for white people.
They either went along with the plans or else they were going to be subjected to slaughter by people of color.
That's the cornerstone of this country.
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We like to think about the Confederacy as this aberration, but the Confederates believed they were in line with the Founders, and they seceded citing paranoid conspiracy theories that shadowy organizations were meaning to cause slaves to rise up in violence.
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The story of America that is largely hidden and kept from people is a story of white paranoia and is tinged with these conspiracy theories that people of color must be controlled lest they spontaneously turn to widespread bloodshed and violence.
It permeates everything.
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This is something people misunderstand.
White supremacy is about believing that people of color are naturally inferior and violent and susceptible to manipulation.
White supremacists believe they're caring for people of color, that they're stewards for them.
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Time and time again, white supremacists have de-legitimized protests and movements by people of color by claiming outside manipulators are using them.
For a long time the scapegoat was communists and this led to widespread violence and lynching.
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This continued into the Civil Rights Movement, where white supremacists rationalized their violence by citing paranoid conspiracy theories that communists were agitating people of color to protest.
In their minds, they were warding off an invasion.
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These are aspects of our history that are just conveniently left out of our curricula. White paranoia has shaped response to people of color and has directed the scope and breadth of the violence.
It is this fear of potential manipulation and violence that leads to this.
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Again.
What we are talking about here is white supremacy, or the belief that people of color are just naturally barbaric and unless they are controlled by a superior race they will be manipulated and will simply destroy society.
That's what's happening now.
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Across the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, people were murdered, beaten, bloodied in the streets.
The people doing it believed they were protecting themselves and fighting a communist invasion. It was weaponized white paranoia turned into violence.
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And it wasn't just white supremacist politicians in the South stoking that paranoia.
As high up as J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, people believed they were fighting a communist invasion in Civil Rights. They infiltrated groups, harassed them, infringed on their rights.
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Meanwhile, protesters were brutalized in the streets and treated like animals.
People of color were dehumanized, turned into "savages" or pawns in a larger game of white supremacist control.
White Americans thought they were fighting an invisible war.
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That idea of an invisible war was forwarded by Neo-Confederate preachers like Jerry Falwell.
If you haven't, please look up my Cult of the Shining City writings for further information, but what he proposed was that communists and Satan were manipulating protesters.
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Over time, the idea of an invisible war between white supremacists and outside agitators took shape into the New World Order conspiracy, in part because of the tragedies of Ruby Ridge and Waco.
It didn't help, of course, that a Democrat was president at the time.
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The sad truth is that there was money to make and power to be had in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Conspiracy theorists gained purchase in the culture and showed how these tragedies could be juiced for maximum effect.
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Organizations like the GOP and NRA spun a narrative that liberals were traitors in league with the so-called New World Order and that they, in league with manipulatable minorities, were going to overthrow America and threaten white Americans
This proved incredibly lucrative
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Using conspiracy theories, Republicans gained power in the government and raised unbelievable amounts from paranoid white people. The NRA grew in stature and raked in the cash.
It was obvious that white paranoia was primed and ready to be cultivated.
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Of course, this story wouldn't be complete without mentioning the murderous consequences of stoking white paranoia.
Believing he was in an invisible war, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building in OKC.
He believed the lie wholeheartedly.
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Despite this and other tragedy, Roger Ailes formed Fox News with the understanding that there was a major marketing niche for selling this paranoid alternate reality to terrified white Americans.
This is the basis of FNC. Always has been, always will be.
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Fox News sells to its viewers a sanitized, cleaned-up version of the New World Order conspiracy theory.
They'll never use the name, but the narrative is explicitly NWO and follows the narrative that cabals and liberal traitors are using minorities as weapons.
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The way Fox does it is to appeal to white nostalgia, to call back to an America where people of color were quietly oppressed and dissenting voices unheard
They do it as a way of stoking the paranoia that liberal traitors are intentionally destroying the country.
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In recent years, with Obama and Hillary Clinton, the message has gotten progressively clearer.
They allege a major international conspiracy to undermine America. It is, again, the New World Order conspiracy theory in message and shape.
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The effect has been a massive spike in gun sales, which is part of the goal. Fox and its partners commodify white paranoia into industries like guns, prepping supplies, gold, and the like.
It's about creating and exploiting fear.
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That's what prepping is about. The commodification of white paranoia that a race war is coming, that the New World Order is coming to take their guns and put them into white slavery.
It is the fear that pushes the needle for Fox, the GOP, and the NRA.
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It also happens that this white paranoia wins elections. The GOP can no longer win unless it hatches up the electorate and gets paranoid white people to the polls to vote for protectors against the invisible threat of the New World Order and radicalized people of color.
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But there are consequences.
Other than widespread racism, people like McVeigh who believe they're soldiers in this invisible war kill on a mass scale. They mow people down. Slaughter them in cold blood.
They live in the reality the GOP, NRA, and FNC have peddled.
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If you believe the New World Order conspiracy, if you believe there's an invisible war, then murder is acceptable. You are, after all, a soldier defending your family and country.
This is how fascism becomes acceptable, through a fake, propaganda threat people believe.
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There's nothing innocuous about those people pointing guns at protesters. There have already been mass tragedies coming from this white paranoia.
We'll be INCREDIBLY lucky if we avoid more bloodshed because these people truly believe they're engaged in an invisible war.
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We do ourselves a disservice when we continue to focus on politicians as the drivers of politics versus a larger economic trajectory.
Instead, we need to recognize this environment rewards corruptible and corrupted individuals to carry out the business of other forces.
Trump is the perfect avatar of this moment. A man without principle who has shown a willingness, time and again, to sell out anything and everyone for personal profit.
These are the types of individuals who make ideal servants of authoritarian energies.
The Mark Robinson revelations are disgusting. But we can’t lose sight of something.
This is who the GOP is. A political party that represents a deep, deep unwellness in our culture that is based in -self loathing turned into hatred and violence.
We knew who Mark Robinson was before these posts were unconvered. All you had to do was listen to him launder Nazism, attack gay and trans people, say women should be subservient, and call for violence against his enemies.
The rot he represented was on full display.
We are largely in denial about what the GOP represents, but we have a wealth of research into what drives authoritarian beliefs.
It comes down to self-hatred and loathing that is sublimated and then projected onto the rest of the world.
You’ll notice our media is always most concerned when Trump tramples norms.
But we never hear about the fact that Trump is just a spokesman for wealthy authoritarians who have systematically dismantled democracy and our institutions.
This week, Trump revealed that he would be happy to either place Musk in his cabinet or put him in charge as a czar over government resources.
This is a wildly dangerous and frightening development that Musk has worked his way into through financial support and manipulation.
Despite accusations that our media is “leftist,” the truth is that it is from a corporate lens as it is controlled by a small group of wealthy individuals and corporations.
This pushback, the first against Harris from our media, is telling.
Harris’s proposals are anything but radical. They’re common-sense shifts that maintain the system and address some of the glaring problems. The vitriol and anger reveals a desire by the wealth class for a continued push for accumulating wealth and power despite warning signs.
The most important story of the 2024 Election is going untold.
Kamala Harris isn’t just facing Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the GOP. She’s squaring off against fascist Tech billionaires using them as puppets to destroy democracy.
Vance becoming Trump’s VP pick was a political marriage between MAGA and Far Right Tech Fascism. They are now a front for Musk, Theil, and a generation of tech oligarchs who have been quite open about their desire to co-opt government for power and profit.
What is happening with the Tech Fascists is the same thing we’ve seen before. Industrialist always use their obscene wealth to corrupt government and then find authoritarian puppets to finish the job and multiply their power.
This is yet another chapter in a long, long story.