Thread by @PnictogenHorses

I'd like to talk about #fear, which is probably one of the favorite subjects of right-wing discourse, especially if (like @mtaibbi and @NateSilver538 and @DrLeanaWen) you've got some ideological commitment to telling lies and spreading nonsense about #COVID19.

(cont'd)

it's not a good sign when people talk constantly about fear, while pretending the entire while that it's not *their* fear they're talking about but someone else's.

imagine being next to someone on the street, and they start asking you over and over: "are you afraid?"

(cont'd)

imagine it. "are you afraid? are you afraid?" over and over.

that's not how a brave person is used to talking; courage is *controlling* fear, whereas needlessly pushing fear into conversations is a great way to *generate* fear—which is what @NateSilver538 *&c. WANT.

(cont'd)

endlessly harping on fear *increases* fear; that's to the advantage of propagandists like @NateSilver538 and @mtaibbi. they want a *scared* audience.

their "reporting" is calculated to be maximally uncertain, a cause for anxiety—they dribble out hints and implications.

(cont'd)

there's *practical* benefits to this method too. @mtaibbi &c. have mountains of data they want to get maximum value from, in their propagandistic imitation of journalism. the best way to stretch all that material out is by slow, dripwise revelations of bits and pieces.

(cont'd)

so @mtaibbi, @NateSilver538, &c. get a longer career out of leaking juicy tidbits and hints and allusions to deeper darker mysteries, while the audience is kept maximally fearful by it all—what's coming next? how much worse will it get?

all familiar stuff—for TV shows.

(cont'd)

for @mtaibbi / @NateSilver538 / @ShellenbergerMD style "reporting" is merely the application of "reality TV" methods to journalism and reality.

these are people who have learned from popular entertainments how to keep people on the hook for years and even *decades*.

(cont'd)

and *fear* is their strongest ally. the goal of @mtaibbi &c. is an audience that sees only Matt Taibbi (and his friends @elonmusk and @ShellenbergerMD and @bariweiss and the rest of Musk's crowd of noisy reactionaries) as safe harbors in a world beset with dangers.

(cont'd)

moreover, it *helps* this process (to some extent) for @mtaibbi and @elonmusk and other such persons to be unreliable and self-contradictory. because the goal is keeping an audience permanently unsettled, one way to do that is simply to act in an unsettling matter.

(cont'd)

@mtaibbi can promise big new #TwitterFiles, *fail* to deliver on them, and yet his fanclub has been conditioned to interpret such lapses as proof of Taibbi's lies; they can always tell themselves, "someone must have gotten to him." the cultist logic is self-reinforcing.

(cont'd)

make them afraid, then give them handy canned explanations for the fear—that's the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @bariweiss method, and that's also the @GOP / @Conservatives method.

deliberately stoking fear is standard right-wing politics. they've been at it for decades.

(cont'd)

it's only lately, though, that that @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @GOP crowd have been so *transparent* about it—whether it's via burbling about "George Soros" and other antisemitic tropes, or scaring people with ignorant talk about a "population crisis". fear is the *point*.

(cont'd)

get them so afraid that even a catastrophic man-baby like @elonmusk (or @ThisIsKyleR, for that matter) seems like a hero in comparison—and with this simple method, American #conservatives hope to win politics for all time.

I rather hope they don't succeed.

~Mona Drafter