There's a thought about how constructing mistrust of government as a "far right" position makes trusting the government a "progressive" position and that makes a bunch of people willing to swallow obvious, blatant propaganda just because a right winger called it out as propaganda first.
It's the same thing that happened with the construction of the "conspiracy theorist" in the mid-20th century. You pick a crazy person, get him to say some shit, all that shit gets associated with being crazy, and you miss that actually, he was right about the nuclear testing? And sure, he thought that the nuclear testing was being done by aliens who were using Earth as a planetary petri dish but no, the nuclear testing actually did happen.
It happened with Alex Jones and the "gay frogs" thing. You've probably seen that post, and I can't find it now to link it. But if you haven't seen that post, the truth behind the "lol gay frogs" meme is that an herbicide commonly used in industrial agriculture gets into the water supply and it fucks up the sexual development of frogs, creating hermaphroditic, sterile males. (Which obviously has huge implications for the continued survival of the species.) That pesticide, atrazine, is actually banned in the EU now, but the EPA continues to argue that it's totally fine.
But you totally missed that, because all you heard was "crazy right-wing nut job thinks the libruhls are turning the frogs gay for the Gay Agenda."
Actually I think Alex Jones was paid to do stuff like this, because there's a suspicious number of situations like this in his history, where there actually was a nugget of truth in there underneath all the crazy bullshit. Most people will brush off the whole thing, and the people who believe him will swallow all the crazy bullshit, and nobody even notices the nugget of truth. Also his finances are really shady, and not just in a "shitty dude trying to escape the IRS" kind of way, but also in a "wait, where is his money actually coming from?" kind of way.
Another example is how isolationism has become a right-wing position, which creates this idea of interventionism as a "progressive" position and turns self-identified progressives into bloodthirsty imperialists because well, if the republicans think we shouldn't do war, obviously that means we should. No further analysis necessary. The right wing believes one thing, therefore the opposite is the truth.
I don't think it's necessarily exclusive to the right wing, but I do think that's the most visible example of it. I think there are some left-wing cranks on the propaganda payroll, too. I think their job is to turn people away from actual left-wing ideologies, either by making socialists look ridiculous or by shitting on actual socialism and reframing liberalism as if it's socialism. Often both. But since left-wing ideals aren't mainstream in the US anyway, you're not likely to see those guys unless you go looking for them. Their job is to stop people who might be interested in socialism. Whereas Alex Jones had a nationally-syndicated radio show, and his job was to muddy the waters about mainstream issues by burying real issues under an avalanche of insanity so nobody takes any of it seriously.
And like, I could go on with examples like this forever. QAnon is insane, but uh... they weren't too far off the mark with the pedophile thing. There really was a pedophile sex trafficker deeply embedded with the highest eschelons of global political power. We all saw the Epstein thing go down. (And if you think he was the only one, you're an idiot.) The rest of it's crazy, but they were right about that specific thing.
Or like, speaking of QAnon, QAnon's poisoning of the concept of the "deep state." They didn't invent that term. It was originally invented to describe a very real thing - the highest levels of American bureaucratic, military, and intelligence power, who are not elected, have immense power, and are essentially unaccountable to the public. That is a very real thing. But now you can't even talk about it without sounding like a nutjob.
That one is particularly obvious, because if you go to the Wikipedia page for "deep state," it describes a lot of different things that have been described as, or accused of being, deep states. It describes the concept and the allegations pretty neutrally until you get to the US, where it's suddenly called a conspiracy theory. The QAnon version of it is a conspiracy theory, but the "deep state" definitely exists.
And I'm not trying to argue that we should hold hands and sing kumbaya with right-wingers. I'm definitely not saying that you should take Alex Jones or QAnon seriously. But I do think that nobody is immune to propaganda and propaganda relies on eliciting knee-jerk reactions instead of careful analysis. Sometimes people are right for the wrong reasons. Sometimes there's a kernel of truth in a conspiracy theory. That's not always the case - sometimes people are just wrong and crazy. But you can't tell the difference from a knee-jerk reaction.
But maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist.
"you're not likely to see those [left-wing] guys unless you go looking for them" ...
They drift across my dash on a daily basis whether I want them to or not. When I venture onto Facebook or Twitter, they are literally shoved down my throat by "the algorithm".
