The Hypersensitivity of the Right
The American right conceptualizes itself as the only force capable of protecting us from the ill-defined forces of evil, forgetting that they create the evil and are terrified of even minor criticism.
In “The Fascism of Now: Lessons from Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism” I found that one of the central tenets of fascist thinking is its by-design incoherence and internal contradictions. This rhetorical morass elevates fascism in the minds of its followers into something more pure, an expression of traditionalist and apolitical ideas which are above criticism—this is necessary, because even a surface-level evaluation of right-wing claims and practices reveals their lack of merit. In this way, rightist ideology abandons any pretenses of internal moral consistency and quickly becomes a cudgel to be used by elites to stifle dissent and oppress various underclasses. Despite its occasional appeal to working class trappings, right-wing ideology is the domain of the rich, who use their outsized influence, culture war propaganda, racist fearmongering, and exclusion of outgroups to convince the very targets of its oppression that they have something to gain by joining the ranks. One contradiction that quickly becomes evident from any conversation with a right-winger is the manner in which they treat masculinity, viewing themselves as paragons of jingoistic old-fashioned toughness and the militaristic no-nonsense rejection of “weakness” (i.e. accepting others for who they are), yet very quickly crying oppression at even polite, minor criticism. They are paradoxically the most hypersensitive political force, but the weakness and internal contradictions of their belief system require that rational inquiry be quickly shut down, in the same way a misbehaving child might wish to move the conversation away from the mess they just created.
This contradiction goes beyond fascist conceptions of masculinity and applies to the lionization of machismo itself, which is defined as “strong or aggressive masculine pride.” Aggressive behavior such as that which leads to conflict is a inimical to modern society, which naturally must repress these artifacts of evolution in order to function, lest war and conflict threaten the foundation of civilization, which is a natural reciprocal cooperation for the benefit of all members that most successfully arises naturally (see the many instances of arbitrarily-drawn post-colonial maps leading to strife). The kind of individuality expressed by the overtly masculine charade is inherently incompatible with our species’ move from the state of nature into a necessarily cooperative, forward thinking, conciliatory mode of existence in villages and cities. Its expression in a few individuals does not threaten or derail civilization, but when a sufficient number of males are encouraged to act out on their aggressive nature (say, by a jingoistic fascist government), wars of conquest and imperialist exploitation are the result. In the past, even these manifestations of hostility were regrettable but not life-threatening to the human project, but with the proliferation of nuclear weaponry and the ongoing, all-consuming threat of climate change, the stakes are too high to promote anything less than thoroughly pacifist ideology. The basic principles of peacefully living side by side others is philosophically incompatible with machismo, which is why its insecure promoters must deemphasize and corrupt philosophy itself and spurn the kind of thinking that leads to criticism of their actions. The natural outcome of this fragility is the death of truth-telling in favor of slanted agitprop.
The most compelling example of this phenomenon is the US military, which goes to great lengths to protect its image and its members demand a uniformity of coddling among the American public that one would expect from a spoiled child. The worship of the military in the US is a “protest too much” style betrayal of our collective, subconscious acknowledgement of its barbarous practices, from our fathers’ and grandfathers’ abuse of civilians in Vietnam in the service of increasing “kill counts” (the metric of success adopted by commanders) and battling a conveniently amorphous opponent (the spread of communism, an ideology portrayed as emasculating and un-Christian) to the uninvestigated widespread torture, rape, and murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the current program of assisting warlords and carrying out wildly inaccurate drone strikes in multiple countries and then covering up the collateral damage. Nowhere else is the gulf between an organization’s true character and its portrayal in American media as wide as it is in the case of our armed forces. Even American police are not treated to such a heroic regard, but this might be because American citizens have more direct encounters with them and more opportunities to see how they actually operate. True to this nature, the military requires any media that uses their equipment (which is essentially necessary to make a realistic film or movie about a war) to effectively function as pro-military propaganda:
Recently, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed from professor and filmmaker Roger Stahl. Stahl researched 30,000 pages of Defense Department documents, retrieved through Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as "available archives at Georgetown University." Stahl found that "the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows."
And this happens all the time. The CIA heavily revised Mark Boal’s script for Zero Dark Thirty. It made the torture in the movie look crucial to finding Bin Laden, when in fact his location was actually found by just pouring through files the CIA already had. It also happened when Top Gun: Maverick commits the same omission as the first movie, and again never names the enemy, to keep allies on our side and not ruffle any feathers.
Of course, none of this is new. The first Academy Award went to Wings, a movie that had the Pentagon's support. And when Ridley Scott wanted to do Black Hawk Down, the military was so behind the movie that they gave the weapons, vehicles, and Ranger training to the movie for a deep discount (some people say almost nothing).
The Department of Defense and Hollywood deal is that if a producer wants to use U.S. military equipment in their film, the department will provide funding and multiple resources in exchange for adherence to strict regulations on how the military and its personnel are portrayed. We would publish this list of rules, but it's not made available unless you're making one of these movies.
Some mishaps with these rules include Man of Steel, which, according to an article in Fortune Magazine, was denied the support of the military initially because they thought the Army members in the movie were cartoony. How much money did they save by changing the script? Of the reported $225 million budget for Man of Steel, it cost less than one million to use all the military apparatuses and tech in the movie.
What other things set the military off?
We look back to that Los Angeles Times report, which also lists "depictions of war crimes, torture, security of the nuclear arsenal, veteran suicide, sexual assault, and racism in the ranks" as possible reasons the Pentagon flags your screenplay.
In other words, accurately portraying the US military will essentially scuttle the production of a piece of media. The police, though not as highly regarded as the military US, are similarly afraid of the light:
The City of Uvalde and its police department are working with a private law firm to prevent the release of nearly any record related to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 19 children and two teachers died, according to a letter obtained by Motherboard in response to a series of public information requests we made. The public records Uvalde is trying to suppress include body camera footage, photos, 911 calls, emails, text messages, criminal records, and more.
“The City has not voluntarily released any information to a member of the public,” the city’s lawyer, Cynthia Trevino, who works for the private law firm Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech, wrote in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The city wrote the letter asking Paxton for a determination about what information it is required to release to the public, which is standard practice in Texas. Paxton's office will eventually rule which of the city's arguments have merit and will determine which, if any, public records it is required to release.
The letter makes clear, however, that the city and its police department want to be exempted from releasing a wide variety of records in part because it is being sued, in part because some of the records could include “highly embarrassing information,” in part because some of the information is “not of legitimate concern to the public,” in part because the information could reveal “methods, techniques, and strategies for preventing and predicting crime,” in part because some of the information may cause or may "regard … emotional/mental distress," and in part because its response to the shooting is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the Uvalde County District Attorney.
Cops are meant to be our protectors, the only force strong and brave enough to keep the citizenry safe domestically, yet they cannot be expected to countenance some public humiliation over their deadly inaction? The information contained in those records must be horrifying if the police are willing to endure the embarrassment of withholding the information rather than simply allowing the truth to come to light. Their actions are motivated by another fascist tendency, though: in refusing to release the records, the police send the message that they are above recrimination and owe the public nothing in terms of allowing scrutiny, another dichotomy between their brashly arrogant machismo in one moment and childlike vulnerability in the next.
What is emerging from Uvalde is the realization that American police are at best a useless boondoggle which cannot effectively protect anyone and at worst a racist arm of capitalist oppression. Do not think the police and their enablers are unaware of this, and their fragility is telling: anything less than the full acceptance that the police hold society together and protect and serve the innocent will lead to chaos and disorder, similar to imperiously guarded ideas about the importance of the nuclear family or the free market.
This is the kind of emotional fragility that leads anti-LGBTQ+ rightists to proselytize about the dangers of such “sinful” behavior leading to the downfall of civilization. Such catastrophizing betrays their true thoughts about the weakness of our way of life, if it is vulnerable to threats by something as harmless and natural as alternative sex and gender practices. The fear—that anything but adherence to traditional nuclear family structures will lead to social decay and disorder—was never legitimate or honestly maintained, but actually reflected a hatred of change and the increasing acceptance of the idea that people can be happy in their own ways, which do not necessarily line up with the right-wingers’ own values. It is quite plainly not a fear of the LGBTQ+ community forcing a lifestyle on anyone, but in legitimizing its existence as another equally valid and consequence-free choice. They do not fear the tyrannical “no, you can’t,” they fear the empowering “no thank you.”
Another self-styled paragon of old fashioned manliness and no-nonsense rejection of social justice extremism, Elon Musk, recently fired several employees who wrote an open letter criticizing him for his embarrassing presence of Twitter, where he reacts to criticism with characteristically fascist accusations of unfairness and bias:
SpaceX, the private rocket company, on Thursday fired employees who helped write and distribute an open letter criticizing the behavior of chief executive Elon Musk, said three employees with knowledge of the situation.
Some SpaceX employees began circulating the letter, which denounced Mr. Musk’s activity on Twitter, on Wednesday. The letter called the billionaire’s public behavior and tweeting “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment” and asked the company to rein him in. Mr. Musk is currently closing a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.
By Thursday afternoon, SpaceX had fired some of the letter’s organizers, according to the three employees and an email from Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer. In her email, which was obtained by The New York Times, she said the company had investigated and “terminated a number of employees involved” with the letter.…
In May, Insider reported that a flight attendant said Mr. Musk propositioned her for a sexual massage during a flight to London in 2016. The flight attendant said he also exposed himself to her and offered her a horse, according to the article, the details of which were not independently verified by The Times.
Mr. Musk called the accusations “utterly untrue” and joked about horses and his genitalia on Twitter. Last month, Ms. Shotwell said in an email to SpaceX employees that she “personally” believed the sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Musk were false.
Musk, who was recently revealed to be a sexual abuser who retaliated against and then paid off a flight attendant for her silence about the incident, is also in the process of buying Twitter, in a further attempt to stifle criticism. He reacted to the brewing controversy by proclaiming his newfound love of Republican politics and forming a “hardcore litigation department” at Tesla to intimidate and bog down future accusers, a series of tantrums which were both inaccurately targeted and disproportionate to the criticism he would eventually receive:
One need only converse with a few right-wingers to very quickly find their reaction to even light criticism is similarly disproportionate and histrionic. The fragility of their egos scales proportionately with the level of expression of their macho self-image, indicating that it serves as nothing more than a distraction to cover up and confound deep insecurities which are the inevitable product of espousing a worldview and lifestyle that is inherently predatory and could never last when adopted by more than a small percentage of society. This is why sites such as Twitter are the subject of manufactured controversy so frequently, much as American universities and the news media used to be held up by the right as leftist indoctrination factories: the right confuses the existence of a numerous userbase which is unafraid to correct their misinformed blather and ridicule them appropriately with an overarching ideological bias among the site’s administrators. Much like Fox News and right-wing talk radio came about to offer “alternative” viewpoints, Truth Social, PragerU, Daily Wire and other “defiantly” right-wing sites are in reality lucrative echo chambers where only rationality-destroying mob mentality exists, radicalizing its members in a dangerous way. Without the pervasive hypersensitivity of the right and the associated victimhood complex, these sites would not exist. But their users forget that in the hands of the power-holders, unsupported claims of victimization become something dangerous and preemptive, more akin to the Dolchstosslegende than real persecution.
The use of Kyle Rittenhouse’s image above was not a cheap joke at his expense. Following his acquittal in 2021, Rittenhouse has emerged as something of a conservative celebrity and now plans to face any criticism of his character by becoming litigious, a tendency typically frowned upon among the right, but not when lawsuits can silence critics and create a chilling effect:
Kyle Rittenhouse says he’s now feeling inspired to push ahead with his own defamation lawsuits after Johnny Depp’s victory in court this week.
“Johnny Depp trial is just fueling me,” Rittenhouse tweeted Wednesday, hinting at a big announcement to come. Rittenhouse was acquitted last year of all charges related to killing two people and wounding another with an assault rifle during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020. “You can fight back against the lies in the media, and you should.”…
In a series of interviews with right-wing media in the weeks and months after his acquittal, Rittenhouse named several individuals in the past who he said he was planning on suing for labeling him a murderer or white supremacist.
But on Thursday, McMurtry named just one person: Mark Zuckerberg.
"Let's just use for an example what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg said about [Rittenhouse],” McMurtry said. “They said that he was involved in a mass murder incident. This was not a mass murder incident. It was clearly factually false. To call somebody a mass murderer is seriously defamatory. And then to use the power of social media to basically … censor any views that would take opposition to that mass murderer statement is a serious effort to destroy his character.”…
While Thursday’s fundraising email didn’t name any target aside from Zuckerberg, in the past Rittenhouse has said his potential targets include “a few politicians, celebrities, athletes.”
He’s also singled out actor Whoopi Goldberg: “She called me a murderer after I was acquitted by a jury of my peers. She went on to still say that,” Rittenhouse told Fox News in February.
Never mind that Rittenhouse is indeed a murderer, a coward, and now an opportunist. His suits are not meant to clear his name but to prevent truthful criticism of his actions and the miscarriage of justice that allows him to walk freely from coming to light. As a celebrity, he has no rational expectation to be free from scrutiny and condemnation, but in the right-wing sphere, he is the victim of unfair smears and though it may be distasteful, he has to resort to legal action to combat this pervasive bias. These lawsuits are in reality performing the same function his gun did in 2020.
To the rightists who cynically adopt fascism to serve their own ends (typically financial but often social) as well as the comparably guileless true believers who were indoctrinated or are simply confused, that their ideas are ever criticized is tantamount to tyrannical oppression but in reality any backlash they receive is no more damaging a consequence than being punished by one’s parents after acting out. Without reservation or guilt, we should send these children to bed without dinner.