So one of the few reasons I still occasionally go on reddit is because I have a weird fascination with right-wing conspiracy theorists, their incredible levels of confirmation bias and confused way of thinking. That kind of community just doesn’t exist on lemmy (not complaining).
One thing I have noticed in the past couple of years is that not only do they seem to become more popular, the community also seems to simultaneously move further right and, in some confused ways, more to the left.
They simultaneously think immigrants and the LGBT community is to blame for everything while thinking that it’s WEF that is secretly planning everything.
To name one example, there was a post today that was incredibly bigoted not just against LGBT people (which is pretty accepted in those circles obviously), but also criticizes “race mixing”, which is quite extreme even for those circles (it has since been removed due to breach of reddit ToS)…
At the same time, some people in the comments seem to be so close (yet so far) to becoming full blown socialists. For example, here is one comment:
“I often wonder what’s stopping us from taking what they have? As far as I can see, laws are the only thing protecting them. If they aren’t following the laws than we shouldn’t either. For example what would Bezos do if employees decided they wanted to take control of his warehouses simultaneously? There is nothing he could do. There isn’t even available law enforcement to tackle a scenario like that.”
And yes, I checked, this is a full blown right-winger who thinks illegal immigration is ruining America, not some kind of undercover leftist, as far as I can tell.
So what do you make of this stuff? Does it say something when even the confused fringe right essentially flirts with the idea of a “socialist uprising”? Or is it just classic far-right populism/fascism using leftist talking points to divide the working class? Does this mean that there could potentially be some kind of hope that those people reach some kind of class consciousness or are they just too lost and confused?
The similarities with socialism has to do with what I believe that they come from the same source, the oppression of capitalism, that leads them to feel, accurately that there is something really wrong, but they have the necessary cognitive dissonance to feel the issues of capitalism but also love the system, therefore the answers communists give must be worng, so they need to fabricate a fantastic and flexible explanation that allows them to stay right wing and enraged, fascism serves a similar purpose to the upkeep of the system
Conspiracy theories (and conservatism in general really) are kind of like “pressure release valves” for capitalist society, a way for steam to be released without the whole system blowing up.
These are people who can fell that something is wrong, very wrong, but lack the education/critical thinking skills/environment/time and energy to actively figure out what. Conspiracy theories are the junk food version of leftist ideas. It’s a quick, easy scapegoating of some group or another (real or imagined) and blaming them for all of society’s ills.
My own personal conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theories are heavily pushed by the US establishment and CIA in order to distract the people. This is why they always lead further right and emphasise hyper-individualism instead of leaning left and emphasising group action.
Right-wing conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism for those who are clearly agitated by the material conditions they are under, while at the same time being unwilling to let go of certain ways that they remain or have previously been privileged.
I think what really gets my goat is the double think around Israel. The same people who firmly believe that jewish folks are evil lizard men from space and control the world are also violently opposed to any ceasefire and call anyone pro-Palestine a Hamas terrorist. That seems less like cognitive dissonance and more like full on schizophrenia.
I think it boils down to cognitive dissonance, these people can grasp that the state is a tool used by the ruling class to oppress the working class, that their material conditions have been in decay, that the empire is reaching its end.
But this directly contradicts their internalized american excepcionalism, they are caught in this struggle and they simply do not have the tools+energy to resolve it and continue developing their views. Add in internalized racism+anti-communism and you end up with these freaks.
