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Matthew Sheffield

3 Nov, 11 tweets, 4 min read

Hello and welcome new followers! Here's a thread w/some of my writing & shows about right-wing brainwashing.

The most critical aspect is the manipulation of religion. I know because I experienced it first-hand before breaking free: flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

It all began in the 1960s when anti-New Deal reactionaries decided to use fundamentalist superstition/hatred as a leverage point to flip the "Solid South" to GOP.

The voters didn't want far-right economics, but it didn't matter bc of identity politics. flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

GOP consultants learned long ago that the majority of Americans don't want to slash the govt.

But a large enough minority are so full of rage about desegregation/secularism/feminism/LGBT that as long as they kept the focus on those subjects, GOP could win

Far-right media is the key to almost all GOP electoral victories, esp in off-year elections. It keeps up a minority of crazies so angry 24/7 that they vote...or go to schoolboards.

But this deeply cynical strategy has had very bad long-term effects flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

The pct. of people who are vulnerable to this manipulation campaign has continued to shrink as Christian fundamentalist beliefs have declined and college education has increased.

Instead of easing off and moderating, the GOP decided to welcome outright racists and crazy ppl

This is what has destabilizing American politics. Trump and the GOP have decided to give lunatics and haters real power.

Now, even GOP elites talk about their fantasies of dying for Jesus. This is not an exaggeration: flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

The decades of frenzied lying and cocooning Christian fundamentalists from reality has had devastating effects on the reactionary mind.

Even pre-Trump, truth had become what one could force others to accept. He only made it worse. flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

At the same time, more "lawful evil" Republicans like Mitch McConnell began abusing the filibuster to make it so that the reactionary minority could rule even when Democrats controlled the Senate. flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

Through right-wing media and the cooptation of Christian pop media, there are now tens of millions of Americans who literally think they are living in a Bible story, constantly under attack by Satan himself and his legions of demons/Democrats flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

There's so much more that I would like to tell. If you know of any podcasters, producers, or editors that would like to host me, I would be happy to discuss our nat'l crisis.

I grew up in trailer parks & tents. Never went to fancy schools. So I need all the help I can get now.

Even if you can't help that way, retweets or written Apple podcast reviews are very helpful: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the…

Thanks so much! /end

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More from @mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

3 Nov

If Terry McAuliffe goes down in #VAgov election tonight, it shows:

🟧 Trump weakens the GOP. In 2020, Trump lost VA by 10 points. Youngkin publicly (though not privately) avoided Trump.
🟧 Corporate centrism is a loser for Dems, esp w/a GOPer who brands as non-Trumpy

One of the big things to keep an eye on will be turnout in #VAGovernor race. It may come down to a base vs. base race. GOP "critical race" obsession was about firing up its reactionary voters while puzzling everyone else. But McAuliffe played into that w/parent education comment.

We'll see what the final totals are, but here are some stats on the two-party VA topline votes:
2013 (D gov win): 2.08 million
2016 (D prez win): 3.75 million
2017 (D gov win): 2.58 million
2020 (D prez win): 4.38 million
2021 (?): 3.16 million (estimate)

Read 15 tweets

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

2 Nov

@MoustafaAyad

1/x: It's uncomfortable to contemplate, but it's a reality that Western white nationalists and Islamic jihadists are starting to come together.

I talked about how and what it means w/@MoustafaAyad on @TheoryChange flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

Terrorist propagandists aligned with the Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda and other groups have wholesale adopted Christian radical memes. They have hundreds of them now, mixing white nationalist iconography with jihadist slogans and people.

This emerging trend is a mirror of what happened in the West when Christian supremacist groups began coming together in the 1970s, but especially in the 2000s, putting aside sectarian grievances in pursuit of the larger goal of eradicating religious freedom for everyone else.

Read 7 tweets

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

28 Oct

@MatthewBoedy

Charlie Kirk's audience member who asked "when do we get to use the guns" is the natural consequence of GOP elites' violent rhetoric.

A thread about @MatthewBoedy's latest essay for @DiscoverFlux:

flux.community/matthew-boedy/…

Here's the video in case you haven't seen it yet:

The fact that Charlie Kirk, the leader of a Christian nationalist youth group, would be asked about when the time would come for right-wingers to begin killing people has been linked to Trump's sore-loser lies about 2020.

Unfortunately, this tradition of violence is much older.

Read 7 tweets

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

26 Oct

@PressSec

Biden talking about how Fox News's vaccine/testing requirements parallel his own policies is drastically undermining the credibility of FNC.

Biden, @PressSec, & her entire team should focus on this point on a 𝗱𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘀 for this reason. mediamatters.org/coronavirus-co…

Why should Biden press Fox's callous hypocrisy daily? Because right wing politics has become inverted.

Democrats' real opposition is the right wing media, not Republican politicians.

GOP voters hate their elected officials, so attacking them does nothing for Dems.

Reactionaries have created so many media outlets that they fully insulate almost all GOP voters from reality.

The system is protected further because the media outlets don't have to make policy. So they have no accountability for their lies and dumb ideas.

...

Read 7 tweets

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

26 Oct

The Claremont Institute, employer of John Eastman, is trying to claim it's not a radical organization.

At the same time, one of its Lincoln Fellows recently appeared on a white supremacist podcast where he said he hoped to learn from "terror groups." angrywhitemen.org/2021/10/04/cla…

@EyesOnTheRight

The show, as @EyesOnTheRight reported, is hosted by one of the organizers of the "Unite the Right" fascist rally of 2017.

Claremont also has hosted a full-length podcast interview on replacing American democracy with monarchism, as @DamonLinker revealed theweek.com/politics/10030…

@jaredlholt

Initially, Claremont was a relatively mild-mannered right wing group. It was always big on the "God made muh constitution" myth though, which led to much worse things.

The spiral downward began with nonsense about "multiculturalism" as @jaredlholt noted rightwingwatch.org/post/pizzagate…

Read 8 tweets

Matthew Sheffield

@mattsheffield

25 Oct

The deranged rant just delivered by Jim Caviezel, the Christian extremist actor, sounds like a bunch of random nonsense.

Instead, it's an example of a large-scale "spiritual warfare" delusion that predates QAnon by decades & is believed by millions more. flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

QAnon became popular for two reasons: 1) It's an updating of much older conspiracy theories that fundamentalist Christians battle daily against Satan and his mortal dupes/worshippers. 2) It was deliberately promoted by greedy social media companies

Most religious movements have the concept of "hidden knowledge," information that can only be known by the righteous, or God's chosen people.

Over time and at great cost, society accepted the idea that knowledge comes from observation. Mainstream religions accepted as well.

Read 9 tweets

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