Carpe Datum

Tour Guide

The Sideshow links to a blogger's summary of a year spent following a couple of major right-wing blogs. Some observations match what I've looked at, though I'm not usually able to stomach the conversation enough to follow it more than once in a while:

A few definitions: Bloggers on The Free Republic are known as “Freepers”, while bloggers on Little Green Footballs call themselves “Lizards”. My observations are based on a year of daily reading of these blogs, and by necessity relies on both my own interpretation of what I encountered as well as generalizations. I invite readers to check out the blogs I mention for themselves, and welcome any feedback that disagrees with my views.

So let’s start with the obvious: many of the stories posted and comments on these blogs are racist beyond belief. Nearly every crime story posted there featured a criminal who’s name evoked comments about their ethnic origin, invariably African American or Hispanic (and all Hispanics are illegal aliens, or so the belief is in Freeper World). Theirs is a world in which almost all African Americans are welfare exploiting criminals raised in single parent homes, and Hispanics are mostly “illegal aliens” also sucking up undeserved government dollars and having multiple “anchor babies” while undermining American wages.

Freepers and Lizards use the exact same language about Muslims that the Nazis did about Jews. In Wingnut World, Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison is a traitor and an Islamist terrorist, and Barack “Hussein” Obama, as they call him, is often referred to as “Hussein” or “Osama”. Little Green Footballs wins the dubious award for religious bigotry here, with the posters screeching endlessly about “Mooslimes” and other crass descriptions of Muslims, endless sarcastic references to the “Religion of Peace” and characterizations of Muhammad as a child molester. They engage in frequent flights of fantasy whereby they, the “Lizards”, as they refer to themselves, engage in killing Muslims, and desecrating the Koran or mosques.

Right wing bloggers are homophobic to a degree I’ve not seen in any other segment of the US population. Gay people are “queers”, “fags” or worse. When Heath Ledger died, his appearance in Brokeback Mountain was cited as a huge mark against him. A few brave posters posited that while Ledger’s appearance in the evil movie showed bad judgement, he was, after all, just acting. No matter - NO healthy straight man could kiss another male for any reason, acting included, others retorted. Besides, that movie had an “agenda”. Gay people and liberals all have agendas, as does the “Mainstream Media” (also known as the “Drive-by media”, coined by one of their icons, Rush Limbaugh. The media is all liberal, by the way. Even Fox News is insufficiently “accurate” when it comes to reporting the TRVTH.)

Rudy Guiliani’s failure to hate gay people sufficiently is cited as proof he’s probably evil, and Mitt Romney apparently didn’t have sufficient homophobic credentials either - he’s suspect on this one. In fairness, there are degrees of this, but it is a rare poster that takes another poster to task for their openly stated hate views. This is a striking variance from progressive blogs; post something there that passes as hate speech and you will be called on it immediately, if not banned.

Right wingers use very different language in describing their political intentions. Instead of simply saying, “I won’t vote for ___”, they often say, “No one I know will vote for _____” or “No one in THIS house will be voting for ____”. I was often reminded of “Mary Poppins” and Edwardian England in general. They are immersed in authoritarian group think. You will frequently encounter the statement, ‘No one I know likes _________(fill in the Democratic politician) or “no one I know approves of __________ ( fill in the suspect activity). They avoid the need to tolerate differences by trying to eliminate those with opposing views from their lives.

Progressive bloggers, while overestimating the level of political engagement of most Americans, are far more realistic than the Freepers and LGF’ers. Example: The Freepers, literally up to the last minute, believed that Fred Thompson was surging and would be the GOP nominee. They did not believe he’d drop out. Even after he’d done so, some continued to deny it. Their hold on reality is tenuous at best. It would be - has been - extremely easy for any politician to deceive them simply by telling them what they want to hear (in a deep daddy-like voice, of course).

They are extremely insecure about their masculinity. (most are males, by the way). They enjoy discussing their guns in some detail and it is common to read elaborate descriptions how they’d commit this or that violent act on anyone who dared ________ (break in their home, try to take their gun, etc.). “Give me five minutes with that camel jockey”, they say (from their mom’s basement). “They won’t need to water board him after that!” They are a parody of themselves , and don’t realize it. Calling someone a “woman” is the worst imaginable slur. Hypocritically - and that’s a word that would expire from exhaustion if I used it every time it applied to the blogs I monitored - they attack Muslim nations for their own misogyny with great vigor.

Right wing bloggers engage in significant magical thinking about the realities of the economy. Poor people, struggling people, all those who are not prospering under our present oligarchy, are in this predicament because they are lazy, stupid, or wanted something for nothing. To admit the obvious: that they too are at risk of failing, would be too earthshattering to their worldview. By hating and blaming the victim, they are protected from a similar fate. This is the essence of magical thinking, of course - be it counting by fours to prevent disaster or avoiding cracks in the sidewalk to keep one’s mother’s spine intact. People who are viewed as “failures” - the weak, the sick, the poor, the oppressed - are hated. For a group that embraces “creationism”, they sure are social Darwinists.

“Freepers” spend a lot of time posting pictures of “The Enemy” (Helen Thomas, any of the Clintons, Chelsea included, any Democrat or “Liberal”) and urging other posters to “caption this photo!” This, combined with the requisite “Barf Alert” when posting any article or new item that doesn’t conform with Accepted Wingnut Assumptions, also astonished me. They are in a state of arrested development, stuck, unfortunately, somewhere around fifth grade. They cannot bear to be exposed to ideas that do not conform. Discussion is not really possible on right wing blogs. They are a community of “dittoheads”, to borrow a phrase from their real stronghold, talk radio.

Performing artists or other public figures are discussed in positive terms only if their political views are slightly to the right of the Kaiser. The world of right wing blogs is a very binary place - good and evil, black and white, gay and straight, us and them. Karl Rove knew his base well.

There are a few figures in American life who send both the “Freepers” and “Lizards” into paroxyms of hate. The Great Satan is currently Hillary Clinton, with Bill a close second. Attacks on Hillary are as misogynistic as you might suspect (though, again, the Muslim religion is attacked by them as anti-woman), with the un-creative monikers of “Shrillery” “Hitlery” and “The Hildabeast” frequently used instead of her name. George Soros is the Source of All Evil Funding. He is the Chthulu, the ultimate evil, of finance. Michael Moore, Jane Fonda (still), the Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen, all disparaged constantly. But the Lifetime Achievement Award, despite strong competition from the Clintons, for evoking righwing blog hate must go to Ted Kennedy. He must be doing something right. Or, er - left.

If I had to sum up my view of wingnuts based on the blogs, I would use one word: Fear. They are afraid of everything and everyone who don’t exactly mirror themselves, or how they imagine themselves to be. And even then, even in the secure walled garden that is the right wing blog, they are unsure…newbies are highly suspect, and any newbie that doesn’t immediately fall into line tends to be quickly banned.

I’m not sure how much one can extrapolate about the right wing in the US based on a few blogs. One thing seems certain: The views of the Freepers and Lizards are reflective of the right wing “base” of the Republican party. I would be interested in an analysis of the socio-economic status of the readership of these blogs. It seems to me that many of these bloggers are archetypal angry white men, wedge-issued away from recognizing the real cause of their alienation and anger (an unjust economic system), spewing their fear-driven hatred on a variety of convenient scapegoats.

Kind of like Germany in the late 20s and early 30s…..

This pretty well fits the right-wing trolls and right-wing blogs I've run across. Sadly, this little fraction of the population (10%? 20%? 30%?) is never going to go away. We as a society have to learn how to function knowing that a large group of us thinks this way. I'm not sure whether to feel pity toward them or annoyance or just hatred because these are mostly grown men who ought to know better.

Posted by Observer at February 1, 2008 02:26 PM