3mo ago

This member of the Klan wants you to join so you can be as smart as he is.

You're viewing a single thread.

48 comments

Last weekend a friend told me that they're involved in an activist group that focuses on political education for people with learning disabilities and severe mental health issues. The activists' reasoning is that this group of people is very susceptible to fascist narratives, and prone to social isolation when they start adopting or simply repeating fascist world views.
Fascists of course have no trouble claiming that support as validation for their politics, and votes are votes, after all. One could even argue that fascist propaganda inherently targets people with reduced intellectual capabilities.
This post made me think of that.
- That's not just an argument, that's fact. Fascists and Republicans (yeah yeah, "same picture") both actively campaign to the unintelligent and/or uneducated. Fear is a primal emotion and they love to stoke it
  
  After he won the Nevada Republican caucuses in 2016, the current President crowed his victory. “We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) reflected on this comment as he asked Republicans to join Democrats in preserving the Department of Education.
  https://chicagocrusader.com/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated/
  
  No doubt that they do. I'm just not sure if it's productive to say that this is an inherent characteristic to fascist propaganda, or if that's trivializing the issue, since many intelligent and educated people are also drawn to it. Minor point of distinction though, I grant you that.
  
  Absolutely it’s productive, and important. Also maybe I have the barest semblance of standards but it’s essentially a requirement to be at least a little fucking stupid in order to support right-wing policies.
  Also, if you go off about how having a university degree and/or having specialized knowledge in one or a couple things is equal to general intelligence and the kind which enables solid critical thinking skills then I have bad news about which side you may likely fall on. I know many people good at their little tasks who are ultimately not people I fully trust to make good decisions on their own.
  
  We're talking about intelligence here, a concept that comes with a lot of baggage, so I agree that it's good to be precise. Critical thinking skills and good decision-making is definitely part of what I meant when I posted my comment.
  In my opinion, your use of the term is in danger of
  essentializing intelligence: "This fascist may have a good education and specialized skills, but they are not in and of themselves intelligent." I think it's better to think of intelligence as a contingent and situational social effect rather than as an inherent property of a person.
  becoming a tautology: "Intelligent people could never support this, therefore I know that all fascists are stupid." This type of argument just dosn't hold.
  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that fascism appeals to the uneducated and unintelligent, but it would be a mistake to reduce it to a function of intellect, or an "ideology of the stupid". There's plenty of dangerous, sincere fascists who are quite intelligent in all useful meanings of the word.
  
  Also maybe I have the barest semblance of standards but it’s essentially a requirement to be at least a little fucking stupid in order to support right-wing policies.
  Hypothetically, I think it's possible for a person to support right-wing policies (in a nutshell: policies that enforce social hierarchies) without being even a little fucking stupid, if (a) they actually are at the top of said hierarchy (in actual reality, not their own delusion), and (b) they're an absolute psychopath.
  
  Yea I meant to add that on at the end and just didn’t.
  
  they also try very hard to make sure people remain and become uneducated, hence why schools suck even worse in places that have been right wing for a long time
- Have you ever argued with a tired, hangry toddler? There's no getting through to them, it's all impulse and feeling, lashing out at everyone even if you're trying to help them. I don't know why that just came to my mind...
- There's a study that says conservatives are less intelligent over all, I'll try to find it.
  
  Was it this?

48 comments