Clowns to the Left of Me, Groypers to The Right

Deconstructing Blue misinformation while MAGA struggles with racists - BCB #172

Blue misinformation hits different

We’ve elsewhere made the somewhat tedious point that there’s more misinformation in right-leaning sources. (Tedious because the typical reaction is either “duh” or “you’re wrong” without reviewing any evidence.)

However, that’s not to say the Blue information ecosystem is everywhere in good shape. Conspiracy theories seem about evenly distributed, for example. And there is the perennial Red complaint that “woke” is antithetical to truth (Elon is fond of this one, hence Grok is “maximally truth seeking.”) That seems overstated, but there is plenty of misinformation on the left too. It’s just… got a different vibe. Dan Williams finally found a good way to talk about this:

I prefer Joseph Heath’s term “highbrow misinformation”. This is the sort of misleading content spread and consumed by highly educated professionals within prestigious institutions (legacy media, universities, NGOs, public health authorities, etc.). In the current context, this is the most relevant kind of misinformation because it circulates among the very people and organisations most vocally concerned about misinformation. So, it’s the kind of misinformation that opens them up to accusations of bias and hypocrisy.

Heath is a climate change academic, and coined “highbrow misinformation” to talk about a certain kind of Blue falsehood. Did you know that global warming isn’t predicted to reduce world GDP? That’s right, there’s not expected to be any degrowth, even under worst case scenarios. If you’re confused, it’s because true statements have been misunderstood or misrepresented, says Heath:

A very large number of people believe that climate change, under the high-probability “loss and damage” scenarios, within the next few decades, stands poised to lower the standard of living of future generations below what it is today.

Of course this may happen, but it is absolutely not what any of the studies say, or what the IPCC loss and damage reports say. The misrepresentation stems from the way that these studies present their results and how those presentations subsequently get reported.

…

When the authors say that between now and 2050 “output declines by 19%” they do not mean that it literally goes down. Based on underlying growth trends, world economic output is likely to double by 2050. What the authors are saying is that, rather than just the expected increase of 100% between now and 2050, the world economy could be increasing by 119% if there were no climate change. In this respect, climate change will “decrease” output by 19%.

Of course, many people will choose not to believe these projections about GDP growth. Environmentalists have been predicting the end of growth since before I was born. The observation that I am making here is the much narrower one – that the results of this study are being misreported and misunderstood, which is causing the average educated person to have false beliefs about the assumptions that structure environmental policy debates.

So now you know.

I bring all this up because, naturally, misinformation can drive conflict and destroy trust. It has been understood for some time (at least among those who’ve actually looked into it) that there’s a lot of bad information in certain segments of the Red ecosystem. But there’s also some pernicious misinformation circulating in Blue culture. While there’s quantitatively less than on the Red side, Blue misinformation has potentially serious consequences because it’s institutionalized. Williams again:

The main question that I want to explore here is how we should understand, evaluate, and respond to highbrow misinformation. And the main point that I want to make is that too many people either (1) deny or downplay the phenomenon, or (2) exploit its existence to favour an “anti-establishment” information environment that is much worse than what it seeks to replace. Highbrow misinformation demonstrates that our most prestigious knowledge-producing institutions must urgently be reformed, not destroyed or replaced by “contrarian”, “heterodox”, or “alternative” media.

Groypers in DC

Meanwhile, MAGA. If you don’t know what a “Groyper” is, you have lived a merciful life indeed. The word refers to a fanboy of white-supremacist and anti-semitic influencer Nick Fuentes, represented by a frog.

We have previously reported that there don’t seem to be any more “Nazis” in the U.S. than before, at least if you count people involved in organized white supremacy (or hate crimes). Yet, as we also said at the time, there’s no question that some bad ideas continue to have a foothold in Red culture. The past month has shown it publicly.

First came the text messages of Young Republicans praising Hitler, etc. The GOP found this serious enough to disband the New York Young Republicans, while the Vice President sort of defended them. Then we had the spectacle of the president of the Heritage Foundation defending Tucker Carlson from criticism that he softballed an interview with Fuentes, after which many staffers resigned.

All this has led to much discussion about fracturing on the right, but I’m imagining how little any of this gossip is going to matter a year from now. The more important question is: how far does this go beyond a handful of people saying bad things?

Unfortunately, I’ve since run across two credible reports that the Groypers are deep in DC. First is Richard Hanania, who I trust on this because he’s a former alt-righter:

If you’re a conservative now who isn’t an ethnonationalist, you’re just completely outmatched. The other side has the numbers and the energy, and there is such a thing as the internal logic of a movement. Democrats once made their entire moral universe center around oppressed minorities, so one couldn’t expect them to stand up to pushy black trans activists around 2020. The equivalent for the right now is the young male who is racist, angry, and sexually frustrated – the Groyper. People like Trump and Vance can’t denounce them, nor can supposed intellectuals like Yoram, because Fuentes is just the undistilled version of what they’re selling, which is white grievance, showmanship, and anti-liberal posturing.

Conservative Catholic gadfly Rob Dreher tells a more complex story from his recent trip to Washington:

The claim that I first floated in this space last week, quoting a DC insider who said that in his estimation, “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes — that’s true. Was confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who live in that world.

If you think being Christian is some kind of vaccination against anti-Semitism, you’re wrong. Even young Christians — especially trad Catholics, I learned — are neck-deep in anti-Semitism. They even use it as a litmus test of who can and can’t join their informal social groups.

Not every DC Zoomercon who identifies with Fuentes agrees with everything he says, or the way he says it. What they like most of all is his rage, and willingness to violate taboos. I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands). He said, “They don’t have any. They just want to tear everything down.”

Then he went on to explain in calm, rational detail why his generation is so utterly screwed. … F—k that, seems to be the reaction now. Fuentes is a living, breathing illustration of what Hannah Arendt meant when she spoke of people willing to revel in transgression such that they tear down the pillars of civilization, just for the fun of seeing those who had been gatekept away breaching containment.

…

Hannah Arendt, man: like I’ve been saying, she is the diagnostician of our Weimar moment. I won’t repeat myself here — I’ve been quoting her a lot lately — but after these last three days in Washington, I am more convinced than I have ever been that we are moving towards some kind of totalitarianism — or at best, authoritarianism. It could go either way, Left or Right. Said one source, “They [Groyper types] look at Mamdani’s success in New York, and think, ‘Why can’t we do that?’” — meaning, why can’t we try to get a true radical into power?

Those on the Blue side might be shocked to hear this — is Mamdani really that radical? How is Trump not radical? But Dreher says the Zoomercons see Trump as “an out-of-touch Boomer.” As for Mamdani, if you want to understand the American conflict, it’s vitally important to understand that many conservatives (and others) experienced creeping authoritarianism from the left over the last decade. This was recently well put by a conservative writer at Tangle:

And yet, despite being disturbed by what I see as a shift in the party’s ideology, I can still understand my friends and family who find the Trump administration the “lesser of two evils” — I myself even felt that way during the election. While I think major players in the Trump administration are acting in openly authoritarian ways, I don’t think all or even most of the GOP base supports this approach to government. In fact, I think their support of Trump and the GOP is driven by conservatives’ sense that the left has been trending toward authoritarianism. Understanding this feeling — even if you think conservatives are wrong to feel that way — is essential to moving forward from the moment we’re in, and reuniting our increasingly divided nation around the same common ideals.

This will be controversial, so I want to be clear about what I’m saying here:

• There are authoritarian tendencies in current left politics (see here and here for the detailed argument).

• There are way worse authoritarian tendencies in current right politics.

• Whether or not you agree that there are left authoritarian tendencies, many conservatives have had experiences they describe that way, and this deeply shapes our current politics. As one of the Zoomercons that Dreher spoke to put it, fascism doesn’t look so bad if you believe the only alternative is (the authoritarian kind of) communism.

The Good News

Almost nobody actually wants democracy to fail. Many people worry that it is failing, but different groups worry for different reasons. Dreher again:

Let me emphasize here that my interlocutor was NOT cheering for fascism. As our conversation went on, I heard real despair — and well-informed despair — that democracy is going to hold in the West, because the conditions that make for a viable democracy are disappearing: the dissolution of a common culture, the collapse of religion in his generation, the material impoverishment of his generation, and so forth.

Quote of the Week

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Dana, I think that’s fair criticism, and I would like to say humbly I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.

It’s very bad for our country, and it’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

I’m only responsible for myself and my own words and actions, and I am going—I’m committed, and I’ve been working on this a lot lately—to put down the knives in politics. I really just want to see people be kind to one another.

And we need to figure out a new path forward that is focused on the American people, because as Americans, no matter what side of the aisle we’re on, we have far more in common than we have differences. And we need to be able to respect each other with our disagreements.

(source)