Thread by @mariachong

“Mass hysteria about non-existent crimes arising from race fear, that gives pretext for violence against out-group members and subversion of democracy to save children/the nation” is a not a bad description of what Nazism really was (in addition to lying, fascism, antisemitism).

(That’s a pretty good summary also of QAnon, which is a cult-like belief system about false child sex abuse accusations.

It’s a religious, political moral panic that leverages lies about harm to children to generate activism and aggression, including the Capitol Riot.)

When you hear rioters screaming “Hang Mike Pence” and “Pence is a pedophile,” that’s QAnon.

They believe Pence can be executed not just for betraying Trump, but because he is part of a global elite leftwing sex trafficking cabal.

(Justice John Roberts, too.)

There was a similar religious moral panic in the 1990’s about Satanism & child sex abuse—tangled up in a sick rightwing extremist culture of end-times books/films, Tea Party scapegoat politics, anti-government white nationalist militia.

1990’s tabloids = 2020 Facebook & YouTube

The crazed mythology, secret militia camps, irresponsible rhetoric, white nationalist Christianity exploded at Ruby Ridge, at Waco, Texas in the Koresh compound, and in Oklahoma City—where 168 people (15 were children) died at the hands of domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh.

I have mostly dismissed QAnon as a convoluted delusion. But the riot reminds us sick ideologies and words—lies and repetitive meme-like phrases of false accusations of harm (stop the steal, radical left, save the childrenetc.)—are used to trigger disgust, can lead to violence.

On Wednesday, before the riot, we learned that President-elect Biden was choosing Merrick Garland as the new attorney general.

Garland prosecuted the Oklahoma City Bombing case.

There is a right symmetry to the notion that a decent man, respected by all sides, nominated by our first black president, denied a seat on the court through both McConnell’s fiat and the opprobrium of racial hatred—should now serve as the head of our legal system in these times.

Garland would have made a fine SCOTUS judge. (The hypocrisy of the late-term appointment of Ginsburg’s replacement was real wickedness.)

May we, however, put aside the slight and begin a new era of civil rights and house-cleaning.

This Oxford lecture is an excellent primer on “epistemic grooming,” echo chambers, social media reinforcement of moral panic, and conspiracy theories that use evidential preemption to cut off outside critique.

I’VE WATCHED IT THREE TIMES THIS WEEK.

(Watch it!!! Tame that dopamine-addicted squirrel brain.)

And read this beautiful account of a man of decency, a man entirely unlike the sick, destructive instigators of 1995, and now.

npr.org/2016/04/19/474…

And follow C. Thi Nguyen @add_hawk—invite him on your podcasts, news shows, TikTok dance videos, interview him, share the video, order his books, and let him know the idea of gamification of moral outrage through “engineered sticky narrowmindedness” is a powerful concept.

Stay strong, America. We’ll find a way forward together. It’s been a dark 4 years. Nine more days until morning comes.

“And crown thy good
with brotherhood...”

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.