Yeah, I agree with that regarding the undemocratic character of US elections. While it’s also true that what the public wants and what is implemented seldom align, it seems clear in the case of the MAGA movement that (false) solutions were on the MAGA table and not on the Democrat table. Ignorance, naivete, and desperation could all be good explanations as to why some groups voted the way they did. I also think, however, that leadership can set a kind of hegemonic tone. Much of the MAGA movement, I think, is a reaction to the 8 years under Democratic rule, through Obama, and the kind of tone that set nationally. That was an era where liberal darlings and their media platforms like Jack Dorsey and Twitter were actively “combating” hate speech, celebrities were being held to account for their right-wing sentiments in full public view, and the Me Too movement was actively prosecuting and ostracizing sex pests and serial r*pists alike out of the public eye.
This presented an atmosphere that squashed right-wing sentiment, drove it under ground, and made people weary of expressing any kind of conservative thinking. The broad social attitude had shifted, and platforms had shifted with it. The one thing that had not shifted, however, was the economic situation, which gave rise to Sanders and his working-class message. When his campaign was struck down, it really broke the hold on the liberal hegemonic tone. 2017 marked a shift that allowed Donald Trump and Republicans to hitch their racist agenda to an economic promise they knew corporate Democrats had no answer to. They no longer had the full package, a liberal social perspective, with populist economic policy; they just had more of the same old neoliberal nonsense in Hillary Clinton.
This opened the door for the hardcore and casual racists who had been swallowing their tongue for 8 years. It finally gave them state power to back their racist worldview. It took several years to really cut the liberal hold on public discourse. From the Unite the Right rally to the crackdown on BLM protests, eventually the shift crystallized in 2020 around COVID and its racist linking with Asian Americans and Chinese people specifically. It again allowed these people, who already had these ideas from the H5N1 era, to finally express these ideas publicly, with a state that would see the public reaction to this racism and say, “No, what you’re doing is wrong, and these racists are correct.” The public backing of the Proud Boys by Trump allowed other right-wing groups to be more public and begin canvassing more publicly. This included the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and the founding of new organizations like the Patriot Front and NSC-131.
The incoming Administration didn’t have the same social power and charisma that Obama had to allow it to size control of the tone. The conflict over the election results, the events of January 6th, and the total lack of meaningful material consequences for it meant that the conservative hold on discourse remained intact. There would not be 8 years of charismatic leadership out of the Democratic camp to attempt to re-calibrate the national tone, and many democratic supporters were becoming radicalized by the events unfolding in Gaza and the total bipartisan crackdown from the state on those sympathetic to Palestine. Liberalism was and still is being attacked at both ends, and its unwillingness to give in to its left flank and its need to turn to the right for the preservation of capital, et al. means giving conservatism more control over the national tone.
Couple this with an alliance between Musk and the MAGA movement, his acquisition of Twitter, transforming it into a Nazi playground, and being another powerful voice, one that even staunch liberals viewed as one of their own, the gates were now wide open for even liberals to join in on the act and finally say what they all had been thinking for years, to finally speak and have the backing of powerful figures to codify what they believe into the public canon. Anti-trans sentiment had a stark rise during this same time frame. It isn’t as if the world during the Obama years was suddenly less transphobic, and that suddenly there has been a change of heart. Transphobia had always been omnipresent; it was simply kept behind closed doors until the sentiment of the state shifted enough to allow those people to finally express those thoughts publicly.
At the end of the day, it IS ignorance, as you have pointed out, but that ignorance can be silenced through social pressure, but silencing ignorance doesn’t create tolerance; it only makes the tolerant louder.
Yeah, I agree with that regarding the undemocratic character of US elections. While it’s also true that what the public wants and what is implemented seldom align, it seems clear in the case of the MAGA movement that (false) solutions were on the MAGA table and not on the Democrat table. Ignorance, naivete, and desperation could all be good explanations as to why some groups voted the way they did. I also think, however, that leadership can set a kind of hegemonic tone. Much of the MAGA movement, I think, is a reaction to the 8 years under Democratic rule, through Obama, and the kind of tone that set nationally. That was an era where liberal darlings and their media platforms like Jack Dorsey and Twitter were actively “combating” hate speech, celebrities were being held to account for their right-wing sentiments in full public view, and the Me Too movement was actively prosecuting and ostracizing sex pests and serial r*pists alike out of the public eye.
This presented an atmosphere that squashed right-wing sentiment, drove it under ground, and made people weary of expressing any kind of conservative thinking. The broad social attitude had shifted, and platforms had shifted with it. The one thing that had not shifted, however, was the economic situation, which gave rise to Sanders and his working-class message. When his campaign was struck down, it really broke the hold on the liberal hegemonic tone. 2017 marked a shift that allowed Donald Trump and Republicans to hitch their racist agenda to an economic promise they knew corporate Democrats had no answer to. They no longer had the full package, a liberal social perspective, with populist economic policy; they just had more of the same old neoliberal nonsense in Hillary Clinton.
This opened the door for the hardcore and casual racists who had been swallowing their tongue for 8 years. It finally gave them state power to back their racist worldview. It took several years to really cut the liberal hold on public discourse. From the Unite the Right rally to the crackdown on BLM protests, eventually the shift crystallized in 2020 around COVID and its racist linking with Asian Americans and Chinese people specifically. It again allowed these people, who already had these ideas from the H5N1 era, to finally express these ideas publicly, with a state that would see the public reaction to this racism and say, “No, what you’re doing is wrong, and these racists are correct.” The public backing of the Proud Boys by Trump allowed other right-wing groups to be more public and begin canvassing more publicly. This included the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and the founding of new organizations like the Patriot Front and NSC-131.
The incoming Administration didn’t have the same social power and charisma that Obama had to allow it to size control of the tone. The conflict over the election results, the events of January 6th, and the total lack of meaningful material consequences for it meant that the conservative hold on discourse remained intact. There would not be 8 years of charismatic leadership out of the Democratic camp to attempt to re-calibrate the national tone, and many democratic supporters were becoming radicalized by the events unfolding in Gaza and the total bipartisan crackdown from the state on those sympathetic to Palestine. Liberalism was and still is being attacked at both ends, and its unwillingness to give in to its left flank and its need to turn to the right for the preservation of capital, et al. means giving conservatism more control over the national tone.
Couple this with an alliance between Musk and the MAGA movement, his acquisition of Twitter, transforming it into a Nazi playground, and being another powerful voice, one that even staunch liberals viewed as one of their own, the gates were now wide open for even liberals to join in on the act and finally say what they all had been thinking for years, to finally speak and have the backing of powerful figures to codify what they believe into the public canon. Anti-trans sentiment had a stark rise during this same time frame. It isn’t as if the world during the Obama years was suddenly less transphobic, and that suddenly there has been a change of heart. Transphobia had always been omnipresent; it was simply kept behind closed doors until the sentiment of the state shifted enough to allow those people to finally express those thoughts publicly.
At the end of the day, it IS ignorance, as you have pointed out, but that ignorance can be silenced through social pressure, but silencing ignorance doesn’t create tolerance; it only makes the tolerant louder.