Thread by @PnictogenHorses

I wrote some threads recently about #fear, and I'd like to return to that topic. one could fill entire bookshelves with treatises on fear.

Western society, however, has not encouraged an understanding of fear. it's easy to see why: understanding fear would lessen it.

(cont'd)

and Western politics and leadership and most especially Western *religion*, i.e. Christianity (for the West is hostile to all other religions but Christianity), rely heavily upon fear as their chief tool. the practical psychology of #marketing is largely about fear.

(cont'd)

fear furnishes a ready means for *manipulating* people: put a *scare* into people and they panic. they act on fearful impulses, clutching to things for security, behaving in predictable and even ritualized manners that they've learned—coping mechanisms for their fears.

(cont'd)

bigotry is like solidified fear—fear that's been crystallized into a doctrine, something that seems (to the bigot) calm and abstract and hence no longer frightening, even though the fear is intrinsic in the structure of bigotry. @MattWalshBlog's bigotries are *fears*.

(cont'd)

because @MattWalshBlog is a fascistic Catholic, he's been hard-coded with antisemitism—antisemitism is an intrinsic feature of right-wing Christianity, and the fear that it encodes is quite simple: Matt Walsh's antisemitism tells him, "never place much trust in a Jew."

(cont'd)

the same is true of @mtaibbi and @elonmusk and @jk_rowling and @HJoyceGender and other antisemitic bigots: their antisemitism is a condensed fear of Jews. it tells them to be afraid of doing business with Jewish persons, afraid of Jewish sneakiness, and so forth.

(cont'd)

and therefore antisemitism makes people like @MattWalshBlog and @elonmusk *predictable*. they try to hide it as best they can, of course, but usually it's not difficult to elicit a mention of "George Soros" or "cabals" or other antisemitic tropes out of such bigots.

(cont'd)

the bigotry is like fear that's become so regularized and ritualized that the bigot (@MattWalshBlog or @realchrisrufo or whoever) doesn't think of it as fear.

but it's still *fear*. avoiding whole groups of people and believing irrational nonsense about them is FEAR.

(cont'd)

because bigotry is fear, and because fears are great stuff for manipulating people with #marketing and political propaganda, Western society is still saturated with bigotry. #capitalism *wants* us all to be bigots, and has tried as hard as possible to normalize bigotry.

(cont'd)

that's what @SouthPark was all about, and that "Everybody's a Little Bit Racist" song from @avenueqmusical—these were attempts to *normalize bigotry*.

and that was very bad for us, because bigotry really and truly is _irrational_. bigots believe in nonsense.

(cont'd)

and yes, it's true that heaps of racist dullards who think they're the smartest people on the planet—@sama, @elonmusk, @ID_AA_Carmack, @charlesmurray, @EPoe187, whatever elite racist you choose to name—have tried hard to convince themselves that bigotry is Science™.

(cont'd)

they used to pour birdshot into skulls and take careful measurements of noses and such—and they *still do that!* there's probably no end of @Quillette articles not just on more modern forms of "scientific racism", but older fashioned "physiognomy" and other such trash.

(cont'd)

however it's done, the ultimate fallacy of "scientific racism" (from @charlesmurray, @EPoe187, @SwipeWright, whoever) is the same: they think that they can reduce human life to a pile of data, and discern intrinsic superiority (or inferiority) from patterns in the data.

(cont'd)

it's *objectification*—the reduction of human beings to mere objects, mere measurements and test results.

and therefore it's extremely funny, in an appalling sort of way, to see how many CHRISTIANS—@MattWalshBlog, @PastorMark, &c.—believe wholeheartedly in such trash.

(cont'd)

for the Christian bigots ought to have remembered that they (pretend to) believe that all human beings have immortal souls—therefore NO human being could possibly be reducible to mere measurements and test scores. and yet...I think that's what @MattWalshBlog believes.

(cont'd)

in fact I think that @MattWalshBlog, @DouthatNYT, @laurenboebert, and other fascistic Christians left their belief in the immortal soul in the trash a long time ago—because (I'm guessing) they desperately wanted to believe that certain human beings *didn't have one*.

(cont'd)

but that goes against the rules of their own faith. if in fact @MattWalshBlog believes that only certain human beings have souls, he's no longer an honest Christian, but something else—some weird schismatic superstitious other thing, with strange ideas about souls.

(cont'd)

but back to #fear, and how bigotry is a sort of codification or crystallization of fear.

#marketing likes that people have such bigoted fears still lurking in them, because as I've said: fears, especially bigoted fears, make people predictable. marketers like that.

(cont'd)

*gendered marketing* plays on fear, for example. we've all seen ridiculous products that aim to extract money from "toxic masculinity", by making versions of ordinary things that are given a hypermasculine edge—e.g. soap scented with bacon or used motor oil or whatever.

(cont'd)

what drives the purchase of such projects other than *fear*—the fear of being seen with a product that's somehow "effeminate"? these days, thanks especially to overcompensating right-wing dolts like @Cernovich and @MattWalshBlog, even soaps can be too "woke" for them.

(cont'd)

people will pay a LOT of money to assuage fears.

Christian fanatics buy huge volumes of Christian commercial products and consume endless hours of Christian entertainment out of fear—they're afraid that their faith could be damaged, so they need constant reassurance.

(cont'd)

fascist leaders, people appealing to the Führerprinzip like @RonDeSantisFL or @realDonaldTrump (or @elonmusk), rely upon fear. their fans are scared of the world, and Trump &c. keep those fears whipped up to the maximum possible pitch, while promising safety from fear.

(cont'd)

readers of George Orwell's "1984" may remember the form of the "Two Minutes' Hate"—lash up the audience's fears of invading armies and Emmanuel Goldstein (or, if you're in the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @GOP crowd, George Soros), then bring in Big Brother for reassurance.

(cont'd)

@elonmusk &c. are very convincing when they appeal to fears...because Musk &c. are always afraid. it's not clear how much of a conscience (if any) Elon Musk has, but he's at the very least afraid of *discovery*; a man like him has done many crimes and made many enemies.

(cont'd)

at the very least @elonmusk has done a lot of things that would be awkward if revealed to the public, even if they weren't entirely criminal. remember when @jack Dorsey passively watched #MarkZuckerberg murder a goat, then attempt to cook a disgusting meal out of it?

(cont'd)

it was widely reported, e.g.

archive.is/qFeJ5

the deed fills my soul with revulsion; the mere fact that @jack Dorsey took it so calmly truly does say something about his general respect for life—but it wasn't *illegal*, probably. all the same, it was grotesque.

(cont'd)

@elonmusk's (and @mtaibbi's) life is, beyond doubt, full of incidents of a similar caliber—for these are people who have lots of money and privilege, people who don't think twice about hopping round the globe on a lark so...they're bound to have been up to *mischiefs*.

(cont'd)

@mtaibbi hinted at some, in his "journalism", but it turned out to be "satire" so that's good. but surely that's not the only bit of questionably "satirical" fun that Matt Taibbi has been up to...the sort of fun that makes for awkward press.

so Matt Taibbi has _fears_.

(cont'd)

and because he's a propagandist, @mtaibbi's got an excellent way to share the burden of his fears...he can rewrite them slightly, and then pass them along to others.

really it's a #marketing job—this is the sort of emotional transmogrification at which marketers excel.

(cont'd)

it's easier to put more energy into the sales pitch when you're *terrified*.

~Mona Drafter of Pnictogen

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