With respect, Why do fash studiers on tumblr study books of historical fascism and listen to secondary sources like, I don’t speak German of all podcasts??? Maybe this is because I prefer to be in deep cover with actual fascists but why not just get the milk from the cow. Any modern fascist movement worth its salt is keeping everything of value behind Getting Vetted ™️ anyway. What’s left in the clearweb are 764 Larpers and the remnants of the alt right who still think it’s ‘16. Overarching feeling on the hard right is “get the fuck off the internet”.
I can't speak with any authority, but I have a hunch. I think it's a distancing mechanism for our own mental health. Fashstudy is already an activity for freaks. It's a repellent special interest. Studying ho-scaring politics makes you yourself ho-scaring.
And, beyond that, just because of the nature of fascisms, indulging in this interest by studying primary sources FURTHER puts you at odds from your friends. You get desensitized to some of the awful shit fascists say and suddenly you're muttering "bix nood-a muddafugga" under your breath eat Eataly and you have to check yourself.
Imagine that your vegan bestie just got really into slaughterhouse creation and running slaughterhouses. It's all she talks about now. And she spends so much time around slaughterhouses, and talking to the people running them, and looking at their memes, that one day you walk into her room and she's 3D printing a to-scale flayed pig corpse, 'as a joke.' Even the strongest-minded, most secure-in-her-own-values person gets a little scathed.
Secondary sources give you a tether to the spaceship.
I suspect that's why I personally like podcasts-as-secondary-source. I'm overhearing a conversation between my friends and we all a) have a baseline understanding of what's going on and b) agree it's kind of fucked up. And I mostly like written-down primary sources because I retain a 'critical eye' better when something is written down (as opposed to spoken). So, it depends on the fashstudier, but my sources are a mix of primary (see: that BAP washout guy and the Christian nationalist slopmaiden from twitter recently, my slowly and agonizingly making my way through IMPERIVM) and secondary (antifa podcasts). I think I have a pretty good mix of primary and secondary sources (I'm always going to be socially alienated by virtue of my particulars, so I have less to lose by getting weird) and I try hard to keep it balanced. The ratio of primary to secondary varies from fashstudier to fashstudier. I wouldn't trust a fashstudier who exclusively uses secondary sources.
It sounds like you might know something about rightist organizing. If not online, and not IRL (unless you count marching at the fair organizing, in which case, fair enough), where is it taking place, Anon? How might a nosy tourist poke her head in? It's safer than ever to be a twitter Nazi. Why aren't there more of the guys online?
Also, small sidebar: IDSG is only really good for chisme. I hope nobody's citing it as a prestigious source. It's People Magazine for da fash-- The People's Magazine. Völkisch Magazine, even. If you want a podcast secondary source, TENEpod is the superior fashstudy product. QAA and TrueAnon and Weird Little Guys are all more researchy-y than IDSG too.
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