The Right is a Monolith of Hate
Conservatives naturally need an “other” to demonize.
Starting this one off with a bang, aren’t I? I promise, there is some meat to the title and not just clickbait.
I have stated that the right is much more of a monolith than the left, which is more like a patchwork of different liberal groups that tries to have cohesion but generally fails at it. Well, one of my friends pointed out something about an article I wrote the other day, and I wanted to share it with everyone here.
Bear in mind that a lot of what I am about to say focuses on large chunks of the right and their tactics, but is not representative of every right-leaning person ever. There are plenty of people who identify as politically right-leaning who aren’t racist bigots who are full of hatred for anyone who isn’t a white guy. They just don’t have much of a voice in the modern Republican party these days.
In a nutshell, if you want your group to have stronger social bonds, make it exclusive. Point at something or someone and say “we don’t want to be that, and we don’t want to include them.” Make it so that certain people are excluded by nature, an “other” group so you can point and say “it’s us vs. them.” And, for bonus points, make that group out to be an evil villain.
This has been the right’s tactic for a long time, and it helps drive cohesion in their ranks. In the past, the right has publically demonized a lot of groups: Jews, Catholics, black people, Muslims, Asians, immigrants, the list goes on. Eventually, all of those groups have been “accepted” into public life, and the risk of demonizing them becomes higher than the reward of group cohesion.
If you try to make an “other” of all black people, you risk being called out as a racist bigot, and if you try to make an “other” out of Jews, you risk getting called out as anti-Semitic. That doesn’t mean people on the right don’t still hate those groups, it just means that the risk of being vocal about it is higher than the reward it brings.
And, as I wrote about the other day, the right is focusing a lot of its efforts on the LGBTQIA+ folx, who make for a convenient “other” that they can make a fuss about. Whether it’s gay marriage destroying the institution of marriage in general or the (more recent) “issue” of trans folx wanting to use the bathroom, queerness is one of the big public focuses of the right lately.
And, while queerness is one of the current “other” groups in the focus of the right’s outrage machine, that doesn’t mean that most of the past “others” aren’t still targets. It may not be wise to be explicitly racist toward black people these days, but it’s more acceptable to be against the Black Lives Matter movement, which does have legitimate flaws as an organization.
However, the right tends to weaponize those flaws as a way to de-legitimize the movement as a whole while simultaneously deflecting onto another “issue” that shouldn’t be an issue. Whenever I see a “thin blue line” flag or a “Blue Lives Matter” sign, I tend to identify those as racist dog whistles, whether the person displaying it realizes it or not. “I support our police” has become code for “I am racist but don’t want to explicitly condone the extrajudicial killing of black people by police.”
The “other” dog whistle tactics are all over the place. Quite a few right-wing conspiracies are rooted deeply in anti-Semitism, and immigrants are a classic “other” punching bag. Generally speaking, this all has to do with racism — immigrants tend to be much more acceptable if they’re from, say, Brittain as opposed to Pakistan or Mexico.
Even the othering of Asians, the so-called “model minority,” never fully went away as evidenced by the response of the right to COVID. Calling it “the China virus” and other such things was just beating a little bit more breath out of the dead horse of anti-Asian hatred.
The right desperately needs an “other” group to maintain its cohesion, and it is fascinating and horrifying to watch it work. Seeing an angry white dude sweat profusely as he screams about gay frogs would be hilarious if it weren’t terrifying as to that angry white dude’s influence. Watching Donald Trump dance around his implications of racism, sexism, and all sorts of other -isms, then responding to criticism with “I didn’t actually say that,” is like watching a train wreck.
Sadly, these tactics work. Republicans have grabbed onto power in so many places and done everything they can, fair or otherwise, to hold onto it, and their base will unfailingly support them every step of the way.
Meanwhile, the left can’t keep its shit together enough to identify that the “other” that they should be excluding and fighting against is, you know, fascism. There was a goddamn coup attempt not all that long ago, the fallout of which is being broadcast on nationwide TV right now, and we can’t convince enough people that it actually happened to get anywhere right now.
My only hope for the future is, of course, the youth. They’re more liberal, less white, and more queer than any generation before them, and I desperately hope that enough of them vote in the upcoming elections that it makes a difference. I have some reason for optimism — Texas had a massive turnout for presidential elections in 2020, and it wound up being a closer one than it had any right to be.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that we older folks can slack off. The left needs all the help it can get to keep fascism at bay, and the right’s monolith of hate is looming large these days. I hope that we can make it through the next election cycle okay, but we’re getting a lot of mixed results with the current primaries, so we will see how things go.
Go out there and vote like your life depends on it because honestly? It probably does.
Or, you can support me over on Ko-Fi if you’re feeling particularly kind.
If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!
Here’s some other things I’ve written:
