Labels

Friday, November 27, 2015

The Coming Trump-Trutherism


The Omnivore is calling it now: As Trump rises in the polls--even after mocking a reporter for his physical disability--we are going to soon see a new realm of denial: Trump-Trutherism. Here is the quote from the link:
Anyone who is left defending him at this point has to be regarded as basically being okay with making fun of disabled people for their disabilities. Which, is to say, we can finally dispense with the fiction that anything can or should be done to woo these folks to vote for the Republican in the general when Trump inevitably loses.
Now, what Leon Wolf is saying here is that Trump-voters shouldn't be coveted in the general as they are pretty much horrible people. That's a reasonable position. However, it is just a harbinger of what The Omnivore thinks is sure to come: Disavowal of Trump's supporters as members of the Republican party in the first place. It'll probably look something like this:
  1. Trump voters are all new voters who probably never even registered or voted before and Trump's draw is from entirely new horrible people who are not and never have been members of the Republican party.
  2. Many of Trump's voters are actually Democrats or independents who have crossed-over to swell the ranks of The Donald.
  3. As a corollary, all White Supremacists / Nationalists and NRx guys who are claiming Trump are entirely out of step with the GOP (or neoreaction) and were never the guys who would have backed a legitimate GOP candidate.
Basically: faced with the too-painful-to-acknowledge (and suicidal to try to correct) truth about Trump and his support, the move will simply be to deny it. To pretend it never happened. This is because fixing it would be  . . . fatal.

Trump, White Nationalism, and the NRx and the GOP

From the link:
8chan, a message board that rose to prominence after some users dismissed 4chan as too censoring, loves NRx. Many 8channers subscribe to the NRx theory that the world is on the verge of a massive societal collapse, one that should be actively encouraged. The end game for these users is race war, revolution, and the installation of a leader like Donald Trump, whose picture appears at the bottom of every 8chan thread.
Nick Land, one of the larger lights of the Neoreaction, is upset that White Nationalism, Race-War provocateurs, and Trump-supporters are running under the banner of Neoreactionism. This is ... maybe ironic? Maybe ... denialism. 

Here is Nick Land (Outsidness) on Twitter talking about the ill-effects of White Nationalism (WN) on the Neoreactionary movement.


Firstly? The above is true. Land is no idiot: he can see that White Nationalism is going to turn off potential converts. He also, probably, understands that under Trump's very, very explicit text there is a sub-text that is almost as loud: That Trump will be an American strong-man who will rescue white-middle-America. He's right about that. However . . .
What Land is coming face-to-face with--what the GOP is coming face-to-face with--is that the conditions that create modern right-wing conservatism and the NRx are the same conditions--the same emotional drivers--that create White Nationalism. You can purge the ranks all you like--but if you really succeed you'll be knocking your own foundations out. What does The Omnivore mean?

Well, look here (MoreRight, an NRx blog): Murder Rate Would Fall By 91-Percent In An All White New York
Donald Trump’s next tweet should be: “Chicago men 13 to 19 times more dangerous than women. Chicago blacks 32 to 38 times more dangerous than whites.” That’s 113 characters.
Intellectual Response: What might these numbers and this thought experiment say about race essentialism?
Emotional Driver: I want to live in an all-white NYC . . . HOW CAN I DO THAT??

How about here (Neoreactionary, an NRx blog): Why Progressives Fear Trump, Red Pills, and NRx
If Trump detroys [sic]  political correctness, suddenly every office in America becomes a battlezone of free speech once more, a zone where the white male statistically punches above his demographic weight.
Intellectual Response: NRx, like Trump and the Red Pill are all about looking hard-truths hard in the face.
Emotional Driver: Finally, I'll get my due instead of having it taken from me by SJW thought-police!!

And here (The Right Drama, with the NRx tag): Daily Kos Writer Gets Something Right Entirely By Accident, Is Still Retarded
True, Trump may be a bit liberal and progressive on other ends, but it is impossible for NRx to deny that even the dumbest of proles is flocking to an elite, upper-class strongman who can un-fuck America. Trump has proven that putting the church of Dildolech on full blast is now a profitable, successful strategy for campaigning.
Intellectual Response: Yes, Trump is at least somewhat NRx.
Emotional Driver: Trump is "one of us." Trump is a strongman who will save us--the white race.

And so on . . .

The emotional drivers behind White Nationalism involve an identity of victimization (the White Genocide) combined with hatred for an out-group that takes the blame. The WN believes their life and/or their future would be much better if the hostile agency were removed. The emotional drivers for NRx are around a gnosis which elevates the individual--and their life would be much improved if the hostile agency (progressives, the cathedral) were overthrown.

These two elements are animating the Republican base and a segment of NRx support--these are the people who are susceptible to what Trump is selling (an unyielding strength that will bring vengeance down on those they despise). Donald Trump is not a Cuckservative, after all. He's an American strongman who'll get things done.

If you managed to purge Trump's believers from your base you would have to do things like:
  1. Acknowledge that minorities have valid complaints about the way they are treated by the majority.
  2. Call negative-opinions about race, even if based on statistics, a kind of racism (acknowledge structural/institutional racism)
  3. Buck the NRA on collecting stats for firearms use.
That last one is in there--and there could be hundreds more--because people who are just fine using statistical data to talk about race generally don't dovetail with the people who would like improved statistical gathering around firearms use (the theory being, of course, that the stats would be misused to build a fake case against gun-ownership . . . of course statistical data would never be used to build a fake case in favor of white / Asian biological superiority).

In other words, to have a real purge you'd have to betray your core emotional drivers. This is why purges won't work--and the ones that have been tried are about circumscribing certain extremes of behavior rather than the behavior itself. It's why GamerGate can't get rid of misogynists: it's core emotional drivers are all about women in formerly male-dominated arenas (in some cases: literally).

For the GOP to disavow Trump or the NRx to disavow White Nationalists--they'd have to self-destruct.

No True Scotsman 

The Omnivore is well aware that the defense against guilt-by-association is that anyone espousing [ anything the speaker doesn't like ] isn't actually a part of [ the #hashtag movement ]. This is how it works for Social Justice, GamerGate, and so on. The problem is that it doesn't really work: If you are an organization of Scotsmen, employing the No-True-Scotsman defense just means your organization is bankrupt (it's not "A few bad apples mean the bunch will be just fine" for a reason).

Trump is not flying the NRx banner--but he's also not flying the White Nationalism banner. He's just appealing to the underlying emotional drivers of both. Nick Land sees this coming and doesn't like it. The GOP saw this coming, amplified it for gain--and is now starting to regret it.

The party that backed Sarah Palin all the way is going to have a hard time convincing people Donald Trump is unfit to be president. Faced with a truth too painful to acknowledge head on (that the GOP has become a home to racists) they're just going to deny it ever happened.

2 comments:

  1. I've said it before: 9/11 is this generation's Reichstagsbrand. The basic strategy hasn't changed in the intervening 83 years; nor, as you point out, have the emotional drivers.

    -- Ω

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the Epic Troll that is DT is trying to get the Republicans to kick him out of the party -- until I realized he's still left of Ted Cruz.

    ReplyDelete