I’ve been curious, but have never been sufficiently tempted, to watch or listen to right-wing media for any period of time. These two pieces conform my impression that most of its content is about fear and outrage. Fear of a complex world conservatives don’t understand, outrage that nobody does anything about it. They just want to make it all go away, and presumably are pleased that Trump seems intent on dismantling the current government, and making all those icky immigrants disappear. (Which of course he won’t be able to do.)
This short AlterNet piece, ‘Alternate reality’: What happened when an NYT reporter immersed himself in far-right media, posted Dec 13, summarizes this much longer NYT piece:
NY Times, Stuart A. Thompson, 13 Dec 2024: I Traded My News Apps for Rumble, the Right-Wing YouTube. Here’s What I Saw.
The writer watched 47 hours of video on Rumble for this article, beginning two weeks after the election
I started by visiting Rumble’s homepage on Monday morning where I saw my first recommended video. It was about the risk of nuclear war, with an A.I.-generated photo of President Biden laughing maniacally above a headline that read: “WWIII INCOMING?! Biden Authorizes Strike on Russia Ahead of Trump Taking Office!!”
Rumble was once an obscure video platform featuring mostly viral cat videos. Founded in 2013 by a Canadian entrepreneur, it was designed as a home for independent creators who felt crowded out on YouTube. But the platform took a hard right turn around the time of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021, when social networks and YouTube cracked down on users who violated their rules. Conservatives flocked to other platforms, including Rumble, which quickly embraced its new role as a “free speech” haven — and saw its valuation surge to half a billion dollars practically overnight.
Its content today goes far beyond cat videos. Video game livestreams populate its homepage alongside a bizarre face-slapping competition called “Power Slap.” But political commentary and news remain its most popular categories by far.
(The actual article has embedded links to little pop-up videos for “WWIII INCOMING” and “Power Slap,” which I did not copy here. The link above is a gift-link; you can see those links there.)
Just a few hours into the experiment, it was clear that I was falling into an alternate reality fueled almost entirely by outrage.
With examples.
Hour by hour, Rumble’s hosts stoked fears about nearly everything: culture wars, transgender Americans and even a potential World War III.
It goes on and on. One section focuses on a particular pattern: Dan Bongino, one of the channel’s stars, doesn’t talk about issues so much as complain about how “progressive or mainstream media figures” discuss issues. Common across Rumble, apparently.
Nearly every show I watched on Rumble framed issues this way, focusing on how news was discussed by mainstream media, and then complaining about it.
And of course once notice of this NYT article became known, the writer got threats.
After watching Rumble nonstop for days, I realized this very article was likely to fuel its own cycle of outrage on the platform. But I was surprised when that happened before it was even published.
I wrote to everyone mentioned in the article to ask for their perspective about Rumble and its popular shows, but few replied. Instead, people like Russell Brand, the former actor turned political commentator, took one of my emails and made an entire segment out of it. Mr. Bongino called me “public enemy No. 1” and claimed my story would focus on Rumble’s fringiest voices in a bid to get the site banned.
“Don’t ever email us,” he warned. “Don’t. Because you’re going to become part of the show.”
Fear, outrage, and paranoia.
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So remind us what the conservative agenda is, again. Making the world a better place? They might think so, but they only mean for themselves, not people unlike themselves. “Conservatism” seems to mean maintaining the status quo for those in traditional roles in society, at the expense of everyone else.
Washington Post, 13 Dec 2024: Energized by next Trump term, red states move agendas further right, subtitled “Governors, legislators and attorneys general ready plans for the ‘perfect storm of conservative policies’ coming to many state legislatures and Washington.”
Idaho lawmakers want to allow school staff to carry concealed firearms without prior approval and parents to sue districts in library and curriculum disputes. Lawmakers in Oklahoma plan to further restrict abortion by limiting the emergency exceptions and to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, while their counterparts in Arkansas are moving to create the felony offense of “vaccine harm,” which could make pharmaceutical companies or their executive officers potentially criminally liable.
But Texas is most ambitious.
Migrants are a particular focus, with bills to create a “Texas border protection unit” and to repeal in-state tuition for undocumented students, requiring colleges to notify law enforcement if they learn a student is undocumented. They also would require state police to DNA-test migrants taken into custody, allow troopers to return undocumented immigrants to Mexico if they are seen entering Texas illegally, fingerprint and track migrant children in a database, and bar immigrants who are in the country illegally from accessing public legal services.
(Conservatives wrongly think that immigrants are somehow a burden on society, while their policies would make sure they become a burden on society.)
Further examples from Florida, and Tennessee. Conservatives are certain they know what is best, and would impose their ideas on everyone.
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Let’s return to Robert Reich, whose pieces on America’s “four stories” we began yesterday.
Part I goes on with two more sections.
The Democrats’ Initial Success in Telling These Four Stories
Speak to these four stories and you resonate with the tales Americans have been telling each other since our founding — the two hopeful stories rendered more vivid by contrast to the two fearful ones.
These four mental boxes are always going to be filled somehow, because people don’t think in terms of isolated policies or issues. If they’re to be understandable, policies and issues must fit into these larger stories about where we have been as a nation, what we are up against, and where we should be going.
Major shifts in governance — in party alignments and political views — have been precipitated by one party or the other becoming better at telling these four stories.
The stories served to address big business, and deal with the Great Depression and World War II.
When the Democrats’ Changed Their Stories
By the 1960s the economy had changed, and the Vietnam War happened. Democrats stopped talking about the Rot at the Top and the Mob at the Gates.
Robert Reich, 13 Dec 2024: America’s four stories (Part 2), subtitled “The Democrats’ failure to tell the truth about Rot at the Top”
In this second part, Reich describes how various presidents, beginning with Reagan, have told these stories. Long piece in which I’ll to find key points.
Reagan. Mob: the Soviet Union. Rot: big government. Benevolent community: traditional neighborhoods, which he could rely on in order to cut social spending. Triumphant Individual: business entrepreneurs, unencumbered by government regulations and taxes, which through “trickle down” economies, would benefit us all. (Of course, trickle down economics never worked, as objective economists have long point out. The wealthy just buy more yachts, leading over the decades to soaring economic inequality.)
Clinton inherited a huge deficient from the first Bush, and in effect gave up by declaring “the era of big government is over.”
Too long. Briefly. George W. Bush: terrorists were the mob, the benevolent community was identified with faith-based communities, and the Rot at the Top shifted to the “cultural elitists” who ate sushi and drove Volvos, a cliche that endures.
Obama: He came close to offering new versions of the four stories. He linked the Benevolent Community to the Triumphant Individual to a belief in the common good and equal opportunity. The Mob became the villains at the top trying to divide us.
One final segment tomorrow.
