Conservatives seem to believe some incredibly mind-boggling things: that a Washington, DC, pizza parlor was the hub of an occult pedophilia ring run by Democratic Party operatives; that children caught up in mass shootings are really just 'crisis actors'; that 'creeping Sharia' is a threat to the nation; that Donald Trump is a great president.
But do they really believe the malarky they're pushing? Is it just trolling? Or is it something else?
To answer the first question, if the case of the alt-right blogger known as Seattle4Truth is any indication, I think the answer is no, they don't believe it. At least most of them don't, unless or until their own out-of control lying drags them down their own self-fashioned rabbit hole into dangerous mental illness.
Lane [Davis] was immersed in the digital chaos of reactionary culture and politics that has become an inescapable part of American life. Writing under the name “Seattle4Truth,” Lane was an indefatigable culture warrior and a wildly inventive conspiracist. He left a footprint online as wide and weird as his imprint on the physical world was small and sad: hundreds of YouTube videos, thousands of tweets, hundreds of blog posts, hundreds of Reddit comments, and most of all years of chats — Slack messages and Google Hangouts — with his fellow travelers.
At least, that is, until in a fit of conspiracy-fueled rage, he stabbed his father to death on the back porch of the family home.
This could hardly be surprising from someone who'd said on Twitter that "If you have Democrat family members, never forget that they would prefer if you were dead and in the dirt. They hate you" and "Democrats want us dead. Even your family and friends. Why bother with civility."
His co-bloggers lamented:
It astounded them that Lane had been serious all along. No one could really believe, they thought, in a Marxist plot to enforce pedophilia with antifa shock troops.
“He completely ruined his life with some stupid internet shit,” Ralph said. “He didn’t get the game.”
"I watch Alex Jones," Nora told me. "To me, that’s entertainment. We don’t really think the frogs are gay. I don’t think the protein powder works. I never thought some people watch this stuff and are like, yes, this is hard-hitting journalism. I thought most of us could distinguish between entertainment and facts. I never really thought people were stupid enough to get caught up in this stuff."
You can see what he got out of the toxic nonsense he was spewing. In his 30s, jobless, skill-less, money-less, isolated in his bedroom in his parents' home, he was taking out his rage on the world and pouring it into furious nonsense against blacks, against Muslims, against women, against Democrats, against corrupt elites. He got some money out of it, he got an audience, he got the feeling that he was powerful, able to shape the world in a way he couldn't in real life. He could blame others for his failures. He could feel like less of a loser.
What about his co-bloggers? One of whom says of recent efforts involving Richard Spencer, white nationalism and a hashtag campaign aimed at painting minorities as predisposed to violence, "You have to kill your empathy when you do this shit."
They're in it for the lulz, for the entertainment and the bucks, maybe for feeling like they're part of something, that their lives have meaning. It could have been anything that they happened to fall into that gave them the same kinds of rewards. Only chance and the army of Russian troll-bots ready to hand out constant praise, support and positive feedback made the thing they settled on alt-right politics.
That's even clearer in the case of the supposed Macedonian teenagers who ran the viral fake news sites that helped Trump and hurt Clinton in 2016:
For years, Veles had played host to a multitude of sites that churned out viral articles on healthy food, supplements, muscle cars, motorbikes, and other niche topics. Some local men had made small fortunes from online advertising services such as Google AdSense....
Arsov said the brothers briefly tried running a car site, but soon discovered that politics — especially of the conservative brand — performed better.
Things only took off for them financially once American conservative operatives and Russian troll farms got involved.
I highly recommend reading both articles linked in this post. Both are long and full of detail that makes sense of the online onslaught of fake news — what’s behind it and why it has such a robust life-cycle.
For myself, reading both articles helped me answer a question I’ve been asking myself for the past two years. Do the people pushing this racist, sexist, anti-democratic, conspiracy-fueled BS online really believe what they’re saying? The answer seems to me to be generally no.
But it’s also not quite that simple.
When I see someone pushing the extreme toxic memes that make up today's discourse from the right, I try to figure out what's behind it.
Of course, reality being complicated, it’s often a combination of at least some of all of the above.
When I understand where something is coming from I know how to take it accordingly.
Because the people who are pushing all this right-wing crap in every old-media, new-media, and social-media foothold they can get are sure as hell not reasonable people acting in good faith who just have different ideas from the rest of us.