AnarchoNinaAnalyzes on Nostr: As I've written on numerous occasions, fascist movements in our society represent and ...

As I've written on numerous occasions, fascist movements in our society represent and prosecute a fundamentally revanchist position in the larger body politic. What that means in this context, is that they are constantly seeking to "claw back" social progress and re-litigate previously settled issues surrounding social progress; to turn back the clock to a before time where reactionary thought on a given issue was given widespread credence, even though these battles have already been fought and especially because the fascists lost those battles.

So what does that look like in context? How about a crypto-fascist podcaster, and a discredited fascist propagandist repurposing some of the same pseudoscience (read: not science) arguments they developed to spread Covid-denialism, to *checks notes* re-litigate the AIDS crisis debate in American society, from the 1980's.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg543y/joe-rogan-and-bret-weinstein-promote-aids-denialism-to-an-audience-of-millions

The podcaster in question is Joe Rogan, the propagandist in question is noted sh*tbag Bret Weinstein, and literally everything about this is ugly. The discussion centers around a (winger reactionary) book written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr (yeah, that piece of horse pucky) and attacks "party drugs," LGBTQ people and identities, the very real and very established science around HIV, drugs used to fight the AIDS crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the proven fact that COVID is real; with brief stops along the way to promote conspiracy theories about the Jan 6th 2021 Trump coup attempt, and a shadowy secret "cabal" controlling the United States - which is more or less a half step away from traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Naturally, anyone who survived the very public attempts to demonize folks suffering from HIV and use it as a wedge to attack LGBTQ lifestyles in the 80's, will recognize many of these talking points and arguments, but that is indeed more or less the point; they are actively seeing to relitigate those fights and reverse social progress in broader society, such as it is. It must also be mentioned that this podcast, which has millions of subscribers, was broadcast on Spotify, who recently paid Joe Rogan $250M for the privilege of sharing fascist bullshit like this and clearly does not give one single f*ck about who gets hurt in the process.

While it's certainly important to call out Rogan and Weinstein for what they're doing here, it is also unquestionably more important to understand what this all means in terms of the fascist project. With the extreme right increasingly becoming ascendant in America, it is clear that they intend to revive and re-weaponize every pre-existing conspiracy theory, and long debunked prejudicial arguments, to prosecute their war on marginalized people, the poor, and pretty much everyone who isn't a fascist - and American corporations are happy to allow them to do so, so long as it rakes in those clicks and listens for advertisers.

Needless to say, NONE of these arguments have any basis in fact, or science, but that's largely irrelevant to fascist conspiracy merchants - what they're trying to do is provide large swathes of the population with plausible deniability, and a form of permission, to begin isolating and eventually removing "the other" (read: non-fascists) from public life, perhaps even to justify killing them. And sadly, it appears to be working.

PS: please note that Vice is closing down its written journalism department and its archives may well be lost forever, so if you want to read this one, you should get to it now.

#Fascism #JoeRogan #bretweinstein #Propaganda