Thread by @jholbo1

I would like a better theory of the psychic appeal of Qanon and, in general, right-wing nuttery. I suspect - but this is admittedly off-the-cuff analysis - it is guilt and resentment rooted in the following manner. 1/

https://twitter.com/AlKapDC/status/1317198971123662850

American pop culture seems 'liberal'. That is, the media is liberal. That is, with the exception of "Sweet Home Alabama", the left has the good, political songs. And TV and movies are 'liberal', too. We'll see about "Hillbilly Elegy" but it ain't no "Birth of a Nation". 2/

That is, we don't get major, right-tilted media products that express - forthrightly - the view that American is going to hell in a hand-basket because sexually loose black people are taking over, due to communists like Martin Luther King, Jr. 3/

We don't get movies about how women shouldn't enjoy legal equality or about how Jews are the root of all evil. You get a lot of movies & tv about evil, rich, white dudes, oppressing minorities (racial & sexual), abusing women, finally getting what's coming to them. 4/

You don't get a lot of movies about righteous, powerful white dudes heroically stemming a dark tide, putting uppity blacks and immigrants back in their place - sending them 'home', while teaching women important life-lessons about not being feminists. 5/

There are plenty of movies about evil, white Christian religious fanatics doing more or less obviously bad shit. There aren't a lot of movies about the hegemonic, LGBTQ ruling class - you know, the soft totalitarian pink police? - really sticking it to defenseless Christians. 6/

Hollywood doesn't churn out parables about the evils of same-sex marriage (it could be some Midwich Cuckoos thing.) Hollywood doesn't tell stories in which cruel, intolerant gay people learn it's ok to be nice and Catholic, after all.

The reason we don't get these things is because Hollywood is liberal, yes. But also because conservatives have changed their minds about a lot of stuff. The left has semi-won certain fights, not just politically but, morally, in hearts and minds. 6/

As a result a lot of 'conservative' stories, if people tried to tell them on the big screen, would seem morally laughable. Even to conservatives! It would just seem insane. But it's hard for conservatives to have this as their origin story. It's hard to be the baddies. 7/

'The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice. We conservatives have fought a rear-guard action against that on many fronts. But we lost repeatedly. And that's why you should be proud to be a conservative!' There are colorable exceptions! Reagan & the Cold War. 8/

And (viewed a very selective way) the American founding. But broadly the American right, due to the degree to which it has assimilated left-liberal values, is considerably starved for heroic 'origin stories' of the right righteously triumphing over the evil left. 9/

This creates a psychic pressure on behalf of a hallucinatory rewrite/memory holing of history and the contemporary scene. The value stakes in the battle have to be radically over-written so the right comes out RIGHT. 10/

So we get fights against satanist, cannibalistic, underground pedophile rings something-something. The lurid quality of Q is the tribute vice pays to virtue. And the sheer size of the tribute - all these burning hetatombs of nonsense - says something about the degree of it. 11/

This argument will annoy conservatives who aren't Q-believers. That's fair. You don't have to believe in Q to be against left-liberalism. But the fact that so many who are against left-liberalism clutch at Q seems due to this dynamic. 12/

And that's Trump, too, of course. Why does he retweet a story about how Obama had Seal Team 6 killed to cover up for his failure to kill Osama? Not because that is likely to be true. But because it seems like the sort of thing that OUGHT to seem likely to be true. 13/

America ought to be the sort of place where someone like Obama should seem like the feckless, reckless villain of the piece. And someone who looks like Trump should play the hero, restoring white virtue. That it's the opposite is annoying to conservatives. It must be a trick! 14/

In short Q & Trump are functions of the right resenting the left having all the good songs. It sucks to be the villain of so many shared 'better angel' stories. The right lashes back by doing a heel turn 'fine! I'm the villain!' (Trump) while projecting it on the Other (Q). 15/

Obviously 'fine, if you're going to cast me as villain, then I'm going to be the villain, see how you like it!' and 'I'm not the villain, you're the villain!' are not consistent postures. But if you are guilt-stung, you may reach for both at the same time. 16/

PS: Some people have critiqued granting of the point that 'the media' is liberal. I agree that there are huge exceptions to this but there is also a kernel of truth to the notion, and I think that kernel explains a lot of resentment and grievance, hence Q appeal. /end