1. "Excuse me ma'am, I speak wingnut." Ben Carson's comments linking the Kavanaugh accusations to the Fabian Society might sound like gibberish. But if you are fluent in right-wing mythohistory, it's perfectly logical.https://twitter.com/christinawilkie/status/1043272137677721600 …
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9. I'd argue that structurally speaking, some sort of conspiracy theory or mythohistory is necessary for the right. If they acknowledged change came from mass mobilization of groups with grievances (workers, women, POC) then they'd have acknowledge real grievances.
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10. So instead of acknowledging politics based on mobilization against real problems (economic injustice, patriarchy, racism, imperialism) the preferred theory to blame some small group of eggheads (Illuminati, Masons, Fabians, Frankfurt School, Soros, etc).
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11. The weird thing is that the Fabians were, in context of socialism, the most moderate form of social democracy: advocates of slow, gradual change over many decades or centuries: the herbivorous left.
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12. Tangentially, the high-brow version of this is conservative intellectuals blaming large historical change on some philosophical heresy: gnosticism, nominalism, Machiavellianism, etc. As if ideas caused reality rather than reflected it.
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13. So: in 1940s and 1950s, lots of right-wing Americans were grousing about Fabians. Ben Carson is echoing this distant conspiracy theory in his remarks.
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You’d think they would follow the lesson of the revolutions and divide and conquer the left, rather than going to war before any possible compromise.
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Don’t forget the Joos in every global conspiracy theory
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so, RWNJs live in a bubble of selfdelusion & alternative symbolic universe. seems right.
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RWNJ: Right wing nut jobs (took my awhile
) - Yep. I grew up in the Goldwater era in a RWNJ conspiracy thinking bubble. Just like Fox News now. They never change and this thread has touched on many aspects of how their thinking is a reaction to what they fear.
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[Raises hand] Grew up in 60's during Goldwater era. I remember conspiracy thinking well: Father believed in "researching" these conspiracy theories, Illuminati et al and continued for years until he died.
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