There remains a mythology among many who consider themselves politically ‘on the left’ that GOP voters are ‘misled’ into aligning with a fascist regime. This of course offers the opportunity for the members of the fascist crowd to disavow that association when things go sideways, like when some of the rank and file engage in murderous insurrection.
Sadly, it also offers a blanket rationale to those on the left who want nothing more but to absolve en masse the rank and file GOP fascist voters — ‘they simply didn’t realize what they were aligning with’.
This mythology has been with us since the the days of searching for the ‘Good Germans’ who joined with the Nazis.
There is, of course, not a shred of truth to this mythology:
What psychology of mass mobilization can tell us about the Capitol riot.
Research suggests disinfo and demagogues coordinate, not manipulate, the masses.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE/ Ars Technica
1/19/2021
As people struggled to process the horror in the immediate aftermath, Michael Bang Petersen, a Danish political scientist at Aarhus University, weighed in on Twitter with some counter-intuitive commentary. While the predominant theme among many pundits centered on the role of Trump and his enablers spreading lies about widespread voter fraud and then whipping the crowd into a frenzy during that morning's rally, Petersen suggested that perhaps they had it backward. "Did protestors storm Congress because they followed Trump and believed his misinformation about the US election? No," he tweeted. "They followed Trump and believed in misinformation because they wanted to storm Congress." (emphasis added)
Now this view is unsettling for all those who are search of finding some way, any way, to absolve rank and file GOP voters of their complicity in fascist atrocities, because it tells us instead that rank and file GOP voters are adults making a conscious, deliberate, and correctly informed choice when they elevate to fascist regime:
Petersen's background is in evolutionary psychology, and his research focuses on how the adaptive challenges of human evolutionary history shape the way modern citizens think about mass politics. Back in October, Petersen published a review paper in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, making the case for his thesis that "mass mobilization"—like we saw with the Trumpian insurrectionists storming the nation's Capitol—is not the direct result of manipulation by misinformation/wild conspiracy theories spread by a dominant leader. Rather, the paper said, those factors are vital tools for coordinating individuals who are already predisposed to conflict.
This perspective "does not necessarily imply that people do not believe in propaganda," Petersen wrote in his paper. "But it suggests that such belief can be an effect rather than a cause of the deep need for action." He describes a tipping point dynamic, in which a group that has coalesced around, say, Trumpism, suddenly becomes sufficiently coordinated to push it over the critical threshold into mass mobilization. In other words, a phase transition occurs, and a loose group of like-minded individuals becomes a violent mob. (emphasis added)
In other words, they are not drawn, they rally to the fascist figurehead:
I’ve made it clear numerous times in the past several years that I’m no fan of reflexive forgiveness and cheap absolution for all those complicit in mass death and crimes against humanity, which includes each and every rank and file GOP voter. Without the fascist crowd, the regime would not exist.
I also find it strange (and appalling) when credulous benefit of the doubt is extended to those who aren’t troubled by hate speech and calls to violence contend that they ‘vote for other reasons’:
It’s the mainstream anti-immigration rhetoric, not the extreme, that’s shaping American politics
August 13, 2019
Trump has repeatedly spoken about immigrant invaders and has, on several occasions, warned Republicans that they were at risk of being swamped by immigrants coming into the United States to vote Democratic — even if they have to vote illegally. (There’s no evidence that this has happened more than a few times in recent years.)
The focus on the language used in that document, though, obscures the more important factor driving immigration politics in the United States: the mainstream rhetoric used to disparage or undercut immigration…
In 2014, violence in Central America prompted a surge in the number of children arriving at the border seeking entry to the United States. Immigration as an issue quickly dominated Fox News, conservative outlets such as Breitbart and conservative radio. Former Virginia congressman Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, lost a Republican primary that June in part because of a relentless focus by conservative media on his approach to immigration, which was perceived as overly generous...
One thing is clear. We’ve spent more than a week debating the extent to which Trump’s rhetoric influenced the El Paso shooter. There’s little question, though, that his rhetoric has shifted how Republicans broadly view immigrants to the United States leading to an administration official literally suggesting that the wording on the Statue of Liberty was too generous to those seeking to come to the United States.
That administration official, Cuccinelli, has ancestors who came to the United States from Italy and Ireland, like those of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. Those two groups were targets of anti-immigrant rhetoric more than a century ago, seen as dangerous infiltrators aiming to steal American jobs.
Another way to afford cheap absolution is to characterize the insurrectionists as ‘fringe’ members of the GOP, participants in ‘extremist groups’, rather than as ordinary, unremarkable rank and file GOP voters.
For all the derangement on display, for all the rabid violent intent (make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have been brutally murdered by the criminal thugs who entered the Capitol, just as they beat a police officer to death), it is a convenient and comforting fiction to refer to the insurrectionists as unusual, somehow separate from the larger fascist crowd that makes up the GOP.
But who entered the Capitol with firearms and incendiary devices, waving Nazi and Confederate flags?
A real estate agent who flew in her private jet to participate.
Off duty police officers from around the country.
Current and former GOP state representatives.
School teachers.
Lawyers.
Ordinary individuals from every profession, most financially in no distress:
"They were business owners, CEOs… [w]hile "any crowd that size is bound to include people who are struggling financially," Serwer said, the bulk "weren't 'low class.' They were respectable," rioting because "they believed they had been unjustly stripped of their inviolable right to rule."
The criminal thugs who assaulted police, intent on murder and the destruction of our democracy, are indistinguishable from the GOP rank and file as a whole.
They live in non-descript communities, and are your neighbors, co-workers, former classmates, perhaps erstwhile friends. Some might be part of your family.
They are the literal embodiment of what Hannah Arendt described as the banality of evil:
… some American literati have professed their naive belief that temptation and coercion are really the same thing, that no one can be asked to resist temptation. (If someone puts a pistol to your heart and orders you to shoot your best friend, then you simply must shoot him. Or, as it was argued - some years ago in connection with the quiz program scandal in which a university teacher had hoaxed the public - when so much money is at stake, who could possibly resist?) The argument that we cannot judge if we were not present and involved ourselves seems to convince everyone everywhere, although it seems obvious that if it were true, neither the administration of justice nor the writing of history would ever be possible. In contrast to these confusions, the reproach of self-righteousness raised against those who do judge is age-old; but that does not make it any the more valid. (pg. 137)
People show themselves by their choices and actions, many of which they are quick to disavow if they are faced with adverse consequences, and public condemnation. (Caught up in the moment, indeed.)
Those that provide the foundation of a fascist regime, the framing and fuel for violence, by their choice to align with the GOP, by their conduct in voting for insurrectionists, are not exonerated because they personally did not beat a police officer to death.
That officer would be alive if they did not participate in the fascist crowd in sufficient numbers, and in roles and institutions that grant the badge of privilege and armor of impunity.
Not one can claim that they were duped, or intended any other outcome.
They chose to create the GOP they prefer. And it’s a violent, white supremacist, fascist cabal.
Odds and ends: