For example, remember Jesse Watters’ appearance at Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA conference in December, where he seemed to use broadcast-network lingo to call for stochastic terrorism against Dr. Fauci? Well, some echoes can be heard in this YouTube video about the weird history of the death of Commodus, of all things. What stood out as something in common was the mention of how long the supposed action might take. That’s an odd correspondence to share.
Just last week, Laura Ingraham provided a segment to her viewers that, if I read her words correctly, lays open exactly what these nazis mean to do to the populace. They mean to menace. Their plans must begin, necessarily, with their followers, as that’s where their manpower lies.
Many of the adherents of the movement, no doubt, are True Believers; but many must be there because they, like the Cure said so long ago, are just jumping everyone else’s train. Those are the people who might be looking around, wondering if things are a bit too stressful—that what’s going on in this new “instant family” isn’t quite what they signed up for. What the movement might be looking to do at this point is to more thoroughly convince their own hangers-on, while also attracting even more believers. The step from party faithful to cult-minded activist probably would be a jolly jaunt, if somehow the follower could be convinced that the movement’s aims are his or her own.
With such unity, in times of crisis, the group can operate pretty much like a disembodied, semi-autonomous weapon or tool. The key, as they say, is getting all of the believers singing from the same hymnal.
Enter the voiceboxes of the spirit of fascism. Laura Ingraham and Donald Trump, Jr., recently both made remarks that show that they mean to persuade their audiences to drop decency and adopt absolute nothingness as a reigning value.
Jesse Dollemore on YouTube featured a clip two days ago of Laura Ingraham on her show The Ingraham Angle (TIA), where she let her audience know that General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had contracted Covid. As news goes, it is newsworthy that General Milley fell ill; but she didn’t treat it quite that way. Here is Dollemore’s treatment (begun at 1:53 in embed below):
“Laura Ingraham is often described as someone in favor of ‘Christian values,’” [James J. Martin, editor-at-large of Jesuit magazine and consultant to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications, tweeted on Tuesday. “But the last time I checked, we're supposed to love our enemies, not celebrate when they get sick. Jesus had compassion for the sick; he didn't laugh at them. Not sure when hate [became] a Christian value.”
Treatment (dissection of propaganda techniques)
To return to Ingraham’s segment, which featured Raymond Arroyo (apparently renown in his circles for his anti-vax stance), I’ll post the transcript and treat as we go along for particular uses of propaganda. (More technique usage may be present but untreated.)
[Two-head-perspective (aka “shot”) with Ingraham in left panel, Arroyo on right]
Ingraham: Before we go, it’s time for another edition of? [gestures to Arroyo, an almost-handoff] What?
Arroyo: Positively boosted!
Ingraham echoes Arroyo.
[At this point, the shot cuts away to an animated-cartoon full-screen panel. This is not computer generated animation; this is more like what is associated with Saturday-morning traditional children’s cartoons and similar fantastic illustrations. The cartoon features circus-like music in the background, replete with comic slide-whistles, while three hypodermic needles—with smiley faces—appear in succession and also alternate forwards and back in terms of depth from the viewer’s perspective.]
The panel sets up for the audience that what is to follow is cartoonish, a fantasy, to be taken light-heartedly without any bad feelings; it’s just a game.
This is important, because the human brain processes cartoons in particular, specialized regions of its neuroarchitecture. It does not process cartoons in the same way as it does normal reality—that is, cartoons are not subject to the truth-testing process.
The audience, already primed to take Ingraham's news entertainment show as actual news journalism, is ready to further suspend their disbelief for this upcoming segment, because the host has given them permission to do just that.
[The two-head-perspective returns. Arroyo is grinning, with full teeth. Again, this is being presented as silly.]
Ingraham: All right. The triple-vaxxed, Joint Chiefs’ Chairman Milley? [begins clapping, with hands visible] Our favorite Mark Milley tested positive for Covid yesterday!
Arroyo [smiling]: Yes.
Ingraham: And who else? General David Berger, the Marine Corps. commandant—
Arroyo: Mm!
Ingraham: —and also . . . positively boosted!
Arroyo: We—well, Laura, the positively boosted club [here he gestures to the camera with a pointed finger] has now reached the Vatican. The Holy See’s boosted Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Paralin, who just dropped a vaccine mandate on Vatican employees—
[Ingraham strains between a huff and a laugh.]
Arroyo: —firing many of them—he has tested positive, according to a reporter, Ed Pentin.
[At this point, the two-head-perspective is joined by a third panel, filling the majority of the area of the visual panel; this is a still shot of the Cardinal in his official capacity.]
Arroyo: Paralin, interestingly enough, cast doubt on religious exemptions to vaccine mandates last week.
Ingraham: Wow.
Arroyo: We wish them all the best, Laura.
Ingraham: Well, we certainly hope they’re all—[she pulls her full upper body physically away from the camera]—healthy and fine. Um, but stop pushing your mandates on us.
Because the panel has been presented as being in jest overall, the sentiment Arroyo expresses can properly be identified as sarcasm.
What Ingraham does, however, is more pernicious. She also engages in sarcasm, with the “healthy and fine” comment. However, precisely because she’s saying it sarcastically, she in actuality wishes harm. It’s rendered as fantastical harm, because that’s the framing this segment coopts in order to get the audience members to let their guards down. It’s supposed to be light-hearted, so they “get” to laugh. What she’s doing is giving them permission to laugh at the theoretical deaths of their political targets.
Ingraham has encouraged the hate that had already been stoked upon the personage of Milley (Fox savaged him for months following his “white rage” comments) and now she partly directs, partly allows every audience member the opportunity to channel that hate into boisterous wishes. (This is, keep in mind, a death cult.)
Arroyo: [gesturing a wafting-up with both hands from abdomen to chest, suggesting a return to health] Positively recover. [audibly begins snickering.]
Ingraham: Alright, Ray—”Positively recover,” Raymond. We’re almost doing that—[gestures back and forth with alternating open hands toward the camera, then shimmies her shoulders]—that yin-yang! [dissolves into laughter.]
Ingraham: Bar Rescue
Other evidence that the GOP and their operatives are seeking to radically alter the value system of the fascist movement’s new adherents comes from, speak of the deuce, Laura Ingraham. Back in August, she had as a guest on her show John Taffer, host of Bar Rescue, a reality show where he performs Gordan Ramsay “Hotel Hell”/HGTV Extreme Makeover Home Edition-type remodels of failing taverns, bars, and dives.
The way Taffer’s show is structured, the clientele of the establishments come from all walks of life (especially the lower classes—a lot of the neighborhoods where these bars are located are a bit shabby, or otherwise are showing signs of economic strain). However, Taffer himself deals primarily with the owners of the bars. This means that his clientele on the show are all small businessowners. He too is a businessowner.
In August, just as the entirety of the media ecosphere had reared up to wound Biden for daring to withdraw from Afghanistan, that’s when Taffer went on Ingraham’s show. The topic was unemployment and the relief benefits due to remain ongoing through that next month. Ingraham and Taffer exchanged theories as to why more people weren’t returning to work. (Remember, right-wing media outlets at this time were telling their viewers that the virus was no big deal, while simultaneously shaming viewers, trying to get them to take on guilt for staying home and thus supposedly not contributing to the economy).
The two commiserated in public.
[Taffer said,] “We're incentivizing people to stay home. What if we gave that additional unemployment benefits to employers to incentivize people to go to work?"
Ingraham then chimed in and asked what would happen if the unemployment benefits were cut off.
"Hunger is a pretty powerful thing," she said. "I don't mean physical hunger because people who truly are in need, need help. I'm talking about people who can work but refuse to work."
Shortly after, Taffer made similar comments and supported Ingraham's remarks by comparing the current unemployment situation to military dogs.
"I have a friend in the military who trains military dogs and they only feed a military dog at night because a hungry dog is an obedient dog," Taffer said. "Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work, then we're providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home."
It’s just as appalling as it sounds when viewed instead of simply read.
It’s shocking, for me, to encounter folks who have no compunction openly discussing using starvation as a motivational tool.
intrusive suggestion: bypassing rationality
Jason Stanley tells us that in all rational debate, the speakers seek to establish what is called the common ground:
The content of an assertion will be a piece of information, and if the assertion is successful, then that information will become part of the body of information that provides the context for the subsequent discourse.
The common ground of a conversation is the “information in common, or presumed to be common,” in a discourse. (p. 131)
According to [the philosopher Robert] Stalnaker’s account of communication, successful communication takes the form of ruling out situations. (p. 131)
This is an elegant picture of successful communication. An assertion is made; it is a proposal to add a proposition to the common ground. It is debated and, if accepted, added to the common ground. This leads us to rule out possibilities that we had previously entertained. (p. 132, bolding mine)
The most pernicious propaganda, Stanley says, bypasses rational will and thus evades rational discussion or scrutiny. He speaks specifically of the use of linguistic tricks to forcibly elevate certain topics into the common ground without any mutual agreement, thus carting in whole blocks of information that the audience may not have consented to consuming. It is a foisting of information into public space for deliberation without any deliberation itself.
The not-at-issue content of an utterance is not advanced as a proposal of a content to be added to the common ground. Not-at-issue content is directly added to the common ground. For this reason, not-at-issue content is in general “not negotiable, not directly challengeable, and [is] added [to the common ground] even if the at-issue proposition is rejected.” This characterization of not-at-issue content is supported by much linguistic evidence; the evidence mostly involves when it is legitimate to retract a claim. The not-at-issue content is often “semantic, part of the conventional meaning.” (p. 135)
[D]enying the speaker’s claim is naturally understood as denying what is asserted, while agreeing with what is presupposed. (pp. 135-36)
[I]t is not easy to deny this content. It is difficult to respond to (6) [the statement “It must be raining outside”] by responding with “that’s wrong, you are soaking wet.” The communicated content that the agent did not witness the rain herself is something that would be very odd and rude to challenge. So doing would suggest that the agent is deficient in some way, rather than merely ordinarily misinformed. It is not-at-issue content, rather than at-issue content. (p. 137, all bolding mine)
Ingraham and Arroyo insert, uninvited, their depravity directly into the audience member’s cartoon-area of imagination, and encourage the audience member to adopt that depravity as his or her own. Using a very localized area of mentation immunized from truth- or reality-testing, this propaganda is uploaded by these two hatchet-wielders of disinformation, directly into their followers’ imaginations. This is not simply erroneous or dangerous. This type of propaganda has the power to be transmogrifying for those followers’ inner selves, as this type of corruption of ideals, again, bypasses rational argument.
It’s actually difficult for me to describe the levels of depravity these two basically backhoed into the backyards of their viewers’ brains. As Goebbels himself knew, people are far more receptive to receiving information when it is surrounded in entertainment, like a candy coating. Goebbels laced his medicine with sugar; Ingraham, in this instance, could be considered a direct heir. (And she is not the only one.)
Trump Clan’s sleight of hand
Treatment: Donald Trump, Jr.’s TPUSA speech
I’d like to turn to remarks that Donald J. Trump Jr (DJT JR) made on December 19th at the most recent TPUSA conference. (TPUSA is the project of Charlie Kirk, the guy who had a follower recently stand up at a town council and ask, into a live microphone, “When do we get to use the guns?” Kirk, through TPUSA, also attempts to shape Covid policy.)
DJT JR lamented the GOP’s supposed lucklessness as a party (as well as a strong in-group) and suggested instead, in a sales pitch, that those prospective voters reconsider their overall strategy. I quote at length:
They’re the ones that are controlled by the Left. And that’s because we’ve allowed it to happen. Right? That’s why watching a group like this, here, means so much to me. It’s why I got my butt on a plane and flew all the way to the West Coast just to speak for half an hour, only to fly back. [Crowd hoots, cheers, and whistles.]
Because we are the front line of freedom. We are the front line of liberty!
And! If we band together, we can take on these institutions. But we’ve gotta do it together.
[gestures with both hands together with both index fingers pointing up and mirrored outward toward the audience; much like taking the sign language signs for ‘b’ and ‘d” and mirroring them in parallel, then drawing those hands apart, ending in a gesture as to say “no, no”]
That’s where we’ve gone wrong for a long time. And I’ve–you know, you’ve been, you’ve seen me speak here, you’ve heard me say it a thousand times, but: guess what, folks? If we get together, they cannot cancel us all [voice breaks, incidentally, exactly at all]. All right? They won’t!
And this will be contrary to our beliefs [uses pointed-index hands to gesture in opposite rotations], because I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does [points both hands skyward], folks, we’d better be playing the same game. [again, a canceling gesture with “no, no” hands]
Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for the last half a century, while they[‘ve] been playing hardball and cheating. Right?
We’ve turned the other cheek. I understand! [gestures with a double-handed, open-palm signal of closing, ending, finality, negation]
I understand, sort of, the Biblical reference [shakes his head no, gestures with open hands no] . . .
I understand the mentality [another open, waving, clearing motion; also communicating open-mindedness] . . . .
But it’s gotten us [zeroes out his forefingers and thumbs behind his skull while simultaneously thrusting hands upward] nothing.
It’s gotten us nothing. [gestures negation] While we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.
In these very short 105 seconds, DJT JR is imploring the audience to eschew the lessons from the Sermon on the Mount.
Not only that, he is exhorting them to deny those teachings and instead to accept nihilism, specifically Nietzschean nihilism which declared that God is dead and that, precisely because God was dead, the world belongs to the “masters.” In turn, the adherents of Nietzsche’s philosophy would become god-like in their authority and power through subjugating others. It is through persecuting others that enforcers, inquisitors, and others in such positions of authority exercise their power—indeed, it is the source of their power. They exalt negation.
Embrace of the overman through white supremacy
As might now means right—“again”—it is their birthright if they simply take it. This entails rejecting 1) neighborliness as prescribed by the Golden Rule, and 2) non-retaliation. This is important, because this fascist movement bases itself on the idea that not only is their audience’s status overall threatened by risk, due to changing times and demographics, but also that it is being pursued and persecuted, a spurious narrative which, in a survival setting, would necessitate a pre-emptive attack as a method of aggressive defense. This, translated, is simply justified violence. They’re providing a pretext for the acceptance of violence as a method of overthrow.
But note also the dog whistles. DJT JR specifically harkens back fifty years; this coincides with our current post-civil-rights era. Some of us in America in the last “half a century” have been “playing T-ball,” according to DJT JR, which he quickly follows with how liberals during that same time period have been “playing hardball and cheating,” a surreptitious (but clear) reference to affirmative action and how that program is supposedly a “quota” system. So here we have code words atop code words atop code words.
In total context, DJT JR is advocating 1) every individual in attendance (in person and virtually) to denounce core Christian values (lovingkindness and pacifism); 2) adopt an ethos of both nihilism and possibly even hardcore violence to effect a political outcome (that is, terrorism); and 3) a rollback of certain policy gains made in the last fifty years, to remove this “hardball and cheating.”
He is by implication promising to restore all pre-civil-rights-era unspoken understandings of white supremacy.
This restoration of white supremacy would manifest itself as a deference culture:
Deference is the respect or esteem that one person displays and is expected to display to another. In deference culture the [culturally-recognized] superior person in the equation feels an entitlement to gestures of respect from the inferior members of society. Inferior[ity] may be defined in terms of age, rank, status, wealth, talent, skill or abilities [or other traits, such as skin color, creed, or national origin].
… visitors may well understand how the deference system works, because they see it from the outside looking in. They’ve not had constant indoctrination into a certain deference system that instills core values, attitudes and perspectives, ones that are accepted [as] fully valid and true and beyond discussion.
As it turns out, before the civil rights era, the South was just such a culture.
stump man
Similarly incidental, such a return to a region-wide (or, in the case of fascist overthrow, nationwide) adoption of this attitudinal expectation would overlay almost exactly with the kind of deference inculcated in many conservative churches, especially fundamentalist Christian churches which already adhere to a Manichean (good vs. evil), chiliastic (that is, the Endtimes) worldview. These worshippers ostensibly are precisely the people to whom DJT JR is pitching most directly: Give up your most precious tenets. He is trying to convert them, basically over to the diametric opposite of their currently held beliefs.
Deeper indications
At this point, what is being communicated is to reject Covid-stricken people, at a fundamental level. What Ingraham and DJT JR signal through their sarcasm is that viewers should root for the demise, the snuffing, of their political opponents, and to take pleasure in such cheer.
Dieter D. Hartmann, in his “Anti-Semitism and the Appeal of Nazism” (Political Psychology, 1984]), describes how, psychologically speaking, a child “does not distinguish the way and means that bring such an absence” as ultimate destruction, but that the child merely wishes “for someone to be gone, away and out of sight, forever.” This drive was exemplified in the Twilight Zone episode with Timmy, the young six-year-old who “disappeared” all of the dogs in his village with just a wish. Hartmann says, “The Nazis did not want individual sadism; they wanted a world without Jews” (p. 638).
The cultists also indulge in this urge to act as agents or encouragers of death when they actively encourage their true believers to go completely anti-vax, let alone anti-mask. These folks are increasingly all showing particular constellations of traits that identify followers of Trumpism, which was the precursor to our current fascist movement: A Washington Post analysis, just published yesterday, of data from the most recent WaPo/University of Maryland public opinion poll (December 17-19, 2021) finds that Americans who don’t believe institutional racism is a problem are more likely to consider Jan. 6 a protest, not an insurrection, as well as believe Trump’s filmy fraud claims about the 2020 election. This dovetails with previous research, which had already linked another, overlapping, Trump demographic—Christian nationalists—with strong anti-vax attitudes.
time to act and voice our values
In December, I penned an open letter to all members of the American Christian clergy, asking them to recognize the danger that is the Trump clan and what they mean to do: to usurp American Christianity as it exists in any recognizable form. They mean to transform the value system of the American Christian church into one that celebrates violence as a means to power, that thrills in the subjugation and desolation of others. At this very hour the movement stokes the thirst of bloodlust.
We need to combat this growing ideological attempt at an overrun. Some in the past have advocated for the broadcasting of Democratic values, both of the Democratic Party on the one hand, and of the democratic experiment on the other. We don’t stand out to independents, or even to some in our own fold, because they believe we are too similar to the other team. They don't know what differentiates us. So we must show them. We must tell them. We can be teachers in this respect.
The general wisdom during campaign years is to hold back funds (prudent) until campaign “season”. Well, I think we all agree that this year is different, and with that we should attempt something less conventional. Too many people have swallowed the canard that the election results ended in a drubbing. The future is fluid, and we make it every day.
