#...so a diverse group of religious leaders has to be kept on call to treat vampiric infestations

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire deterrents. sure there's anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook - Endnote 4: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship - is a little different. This installment was presented live at Solidarity Lowell, and includes a bonus Q&A section. This video expands on the ideas put forth in How to Radicalize a Normie.

If you would like more videos like this to come out, please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

He is intriguing, yet unpredictable. He demands unconditional loyalty. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of what people want to hear but no actual empathy; he treats others as simply bodies or objects. And he’s surrounded by a network of subordinates but the personnel is always changing.

Does it sound like I’m describing The President? Because these are, according to Alexandra Stein, qualities of a cult leader.

Hi. My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, the flagship endeavor of which is currently The Alt-Right Playbook, a series on the political and rhetorical strategies the Alt-Right uses to legitimize itself and gain power. And, if that sounds interesting to you, and you haven’t already, please like share and subscribe.

The most recent episode of The Alt-Right Playbook is about how people get recruited into these largely online reactionary communities like the Alt-Right, a subject which, as it turns out, is real fuckin’ hard to research.

What I want to talk about with you today is how I go about studying a population that is incredibly hostile towards being studied. It involves finding the bits and pieces of the Alt-Right that we do have data on - the pockets of good research, the outsider observations, the stories of lived experience - as well as looking at older movements the Alt-Right grew out of, that have been extensively researched, and spotting the ways the Alt-Right is continuous with them, and trying to extrapolate how those structures might recreate themselves in the social media age.

So it’s… a lot. And, in the process of researching, I found a wealth of interesting perspectives that, by focusing the video on recruitment specifically, I barely dipped a toe in. All that stuff is what I’d like to get into with you today. But I’m trying to thread a needle here: you don’t need to have seen my video, How to Radicalize a Normie, to follow this talk, but, if you have seen it already, I will try not to be redundant. This talk is one part making my case for why I think the conclusions in that video are correct, one part repository for all the stuff I couldn’t get into, and one part how I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right as a result of this research, including some pet theories I wouldn’t feel right claiming as truth without further research, but I do think are on the right track.

This talk is called Isolation, Engulfment, and Pain: How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship. We’re going to cover a lot of ground, from information processing to emotional development, but we’re necessarily also going to cover racism and violence and abuse dynamics. So this is an introduction and a content warning: if some of these subjects are particularly charged for you, no offense will be taken if you at any point leave the room. I have to research this stuff for a living, and it is rough, and sometimes I have to step away. We don’t judge here.

Now. Requisite dash of self-deprecation: don’t give me too much credit for all this. I am proud of the work I do and I think I’m genuinely good at it, but much of this video was compiling the work of others. Besides research I had already done and my own observations, the video had 27 sources: three books, five research papers, six articles, one leaked document, three testimonials, four videos, four pages of statistics, and one Twitter joke. I also spoke to four professional researchers who study right-wing extremism and one former Alt-Righter.

Without all their hard work, I would have nothing to compile.

OK? Let’s begin.

We’re gonna center on those three main texts: Alt-America by David Neiwert, a history of the Alt-Right’s origins; Healing from Hate by Michael Kimmel, about how young men get into (and out of) extremist groups, be they neo-Nazi or jihadist; and Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein, about how people are courted by and kept inside cults and totalitarian regimes.

I began with Kimmel. The premise of Healing from Hate is that extremist groups tend to be between 75 and 90% male, and that you cannot understand radical conservatism without looking at it through the lens of toxic masculinity. Which makes it all the more disappointing that Kimmel has been accused by multiple women of bullying and harassment. I found the book incredibly useful, and we’re still going to talk about it, I just need to caveat here that retweets are not endorsements. Also, if I spoil the book for you then you don’t need to buy it, give your money to someone who isn’t a creep.

Kimmel’s argument is that extremism begins with a pain peculiar to young men. He calls it “aggrieved entitlement.” I call it Durden Syndrome. You know that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden says, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rockstars, but we won’t, we’re slowly learning that fact, and we are very, very pissed off”? Yeah, that. As men, the world promised us something, and the promise wasn’t kept.

Some men skew towards social progressivism when they realize this promise was never made to women, or men of color, or queer or trans or nonbinary people, and recognize the injustice of that. Some men skew towards economic leftism when they realize that every cishet white man being a millionaire rockstar movie god is mathematically impossible. But they skew towards reactionary conservatism when they feel the promise should have been kept. That’s the life they were supposed to have, and someone took it from them.

Hate groups appeal to that sense of emasculation. “You wanna feel like a Real Man? Shave off your hair, dance to hatecore, and let’s beat the crap out of someone.” Kimmel notes that the greatest indicator someone will join a hate group is a broken home: divorce, foster care, parents with addictions, physical or sexual abuse. The greater the distance between the life they were promised and the life they are living, the more enticing Real Masculinity becomes. Their fellow extremists are brothers, the leaders father figures.

The group does give them someone to blame for their lot in life - immigrants, feminists, the Jewish conspiracy - but that’s not why they join. They’re after empowerment. According to Kimmel, “Their embrace of neo-Nazi ideology is a consequence of their recruitment and indoctrination process, not its cause."

But once an Other has been identified as the locus of a hate group’s hate, new recruits are brought along when the group terrorizes that Other. Events like cross burnings and street fights are dangerous and morally fraught, and are often traumatic for a new recruit. And experiencing an emotional or physical trauma can create an intense bond with the people experiencing it with him, even though they’re the ones who brought him to the traumatic event in the first place. The creation of this bond is one of the reasons some hate groups usher new recruits out into the field as early as possible: the sooner they are emotionally invested in the community, the faster they will embrace the community’s politics.

This Othering also estranges recruits from the people they are supposed to hate, which makes it hard to stop hating them.

So there’s this concept that comes up a lot in my research called Contact Hypothesis. Contact Hypothesis argues that, the more contact you have with a different walk of life, the easier it is to tolerate it. It’s like exposure therapy. We talk about how big cities and college campuses tend to be liberal strongholds; the Right likes to claim this is because of professors and politicians poisoning your mind, but it’s really just because they’re diverse. When you share space with a lot of different kinds of people, a degree of liberalism becomes necessary just to get by. And we see that belief systems which rely on a strict orthodoxy get really cagey about members having contact with outsiders. We see this in all the groups we’re discussing today - extremists, cultists, totalitarians - but also religious fundamentalists; Mormons only wanna send their kids to Brigham Young. They are belief systems that can only be reliably maintained so long as no one gets exposed to other people with other beliefs.

So that’s some of what I took from Kimmel. Next I read Stein talking, primarily, about cults.

Stein’s window into all of this is applying the theory of Attachment Styles to what researchers calls totalism, which is any structure that subsumes a person’s entire life the way cults and totalitarian governments do. Attachment is a concept you may be familiar with if have, or have ever dated, a therapist. (I’ve done both.)

So, for a quick primer:

Imagine you’re walking in the park with a three-year-old. And the three-year-old sees a dog, and ask, “Can I pet the dog?” And you say yes, and the kid steps away from your side and reaches out. And the dog gets excited, and jumps up, and the kid gets scared and runs back to you. So you hold the kid and go, “Oh, no no no, don’t worry! They’re not gonna hurt you! They were just happy to see you!” And you take a few moments to calm the kid down, and then you ask, “Do you still want to pet the dog?” And the kid says “yes,” so they step away from you again and reach out. The dog jumps up again, but this time the kid doesn’t run away, and they pet the dog, and you, the kid, and the dog are all happy. Hooray!

This is a fundamental piece of a child’s emotional development. They take a risk, have a negative experience, and retreat to a point of comfort. Then, having received that comfort, feel bolstered enough to take a slightly greater risk. A healthy childhood is steadily venturing further and further from that point of comfort, and taking on greater risks, secure in the knowledge that safety is there when they need it. And, as an adult, they will form many interdependent points of comfort rather than relying on only one or two.

If all goes according to plan, that is Secure Attachment. But: sometimes things go wrong when the kid seeks comfort and doesn’t get enough. This may be because the adult is withholding or the kid doesn’t know how to express their needs or they’re just particularly fearful. But the kid may start seeking comfort more than seems reasonable, and be particularly averse to risk, and over-focus on the people who give them comfort, because they’re operating at a deficit. We call that Anxious Attachment. Alternately, the kid may give up on receiving comfort altogether, even though they still need it, and just go it alone, developing a distrust of other people and a fear of being vulnerable. We call that Avoidant Attachment.

Now, these styles are all formed in early childhood, but Stein focuses on a fourth kind of Attachment, one that can be formed at any age regardless of the Attachment Style you came in with. It’s what happens when the negative experience and the comfort come from the same place. We see it in children and adults who are mistreated by the people they trust. It’s called Disorganized Attachment.

According to Stein, cults foster Disorganized Attachment by being intensely unpredictable. In a cult, you may be praised for your commitment on Monday and have your commitment questioned on Tuesday, with no change in behavior. You may be assigned a romantic partner, who may, at any point, be taken away, assigned to someone else. Your children may be taken from you to be raised by a different family. You may be told the cult leader wants to sleep with you, which may make you incredibly happy or be terrifying, but you won’t be given a choice. And the rules you are expected to follow will be rewritten without warning.

This creates a kind of emotional chaos, where you can’t predict when you will be given good feelings and when you will be given bad ones. But you’re so enmeshed in the community you have noplace else to go for good feelings; hurting you just draws you in deeper, because they are also where you seek comfort. And your pain is always your fault: you wouldn’t feel so shitty if you were more committed. Trying to make sense of this causes so much confusion and anguish that you eventually just stop thinking for yourself. These are the rules now? OK. He’s not my brother anymore? OK. This is my life now? OK.

Hardly anyone would seek out such a dynamic, which is why cults present as religions, political activists, and therapy groups; things people in questioning phases of their lives are liable to seek out, and then they fall down the rabbit hole before they know what’s happening. The cult slowly consumes more and more of a recruit’s life, and tightly controls access to relationships outside the cult, because the biggest threat to a Disorganized Attachment relationship is having separate, Securely Attached points of comfort.

And at this point I said, “Hold up. You’re telling me cults recruit by offering people community and purpose in times of need, become the focal point of their entire lives, estrange them from all outside perspectives, and then cause emotional distress that paradoxically makes them more committed because they have nowhere else to go for support?”

Isn’t that exactly how Kimmel described joining a hate group?

Now, these are commonalities, not a one-to-one comparison. A cult is far more organized and rigidly controlled than a hate group. But Stein points out that this dynamic of isolation, engulfment, and pain is the same dynamic as an abusive relationship. The difference is just scale. A cult is functionally a single person having a very complex domestic abuse situation with a whole lot of people, #badpolyamory.

So if we posit a spectrum with domestic abuse on one end and cults and totalitarianism on the other, I started wondering, could we put extremist groups, like ISIS and Aryan Nations, around… here?

And, if so, where would we put the Alt-Right?

Now, I have to tread carefully here. There are reasons this talk is called “How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship” and not “How the Alt-Right is Like a Cult,” because the moment you say the second thing, a lot of people stop listening to you. Our conception of cults and totalitarianism is way more controlled and structured than a pack of loud, racist assholes on the internet. But we’re not talking about organizational structure, we’re talking about a relationship, an emotional dynamic Stein calls “anxious dependency,” which fosters an irrational loyalty to people who are bad for you and gets you to adopt an ideology you would have previously rejected. (I would also love to go on a rant puncturing the idea that cultists and fascists are organized, pointing out this notion is propaganda and their systems are notoriously corrupt and mismanaged, but we don’t have time; ask me about it in the Q&A if you want me to go off.)

So I started looking through what I knew, and what I could find, about the Alt-Right to see if I could spot this same pattern of isolation, engulfment, and pain online funneling people towards the Alt-Right. And I did not come up short.

Isolation? Well, the Alt-Right traffics in all the same dehumanizing narratives about their enemies as Kimmel’s hate groups - like, the worst things you can imagine a human being saying about a group of people are said every day in these forums. They often berate and harass each other for any perceived sympathy towards The Other Side. They also regularly harass people from The Other Side off of platforms, and falsely report their tweets, posts, and videos as terrorism to get them taken down. (This has happened to me, incidentally.) I found figureheads adored by the Alt-Right who expressly tell people to cut ties with liberal family members.

We talked before about Contact Hypothesis? There’s also this idea called Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. A parasocial relationship is a strong emotional connection that only goes one way, like if you really love my videos and have started thinking of me almost as a friend even though I don’t know you exist? Yeah. Parasocial relationship. They’ve been in The Discourse lately, largely thanks to my friend Shannon Strucci making a really great video about them (check it out, I make a cameo, but… clear your schedule). Parasocial Contact Hypothesis is this phenomenon where, if people form parasocial feelings for public figures or even fictional characters, and those people happen to be Black, white audience members become less racist similar to how they would if they had Black friends. Your logical brain knows that these are strangers, but your lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between empathy for a queer friend and empathy for a queer character in a video game. So of course the Alt-Right makes a big stink about queer characters in video games, and leads boycotts against “forced diversity,” because diverse media is bad for recruitment.

Engulfment? Well, I learned way too much about how the Alt-Right will overtake your entire internet life. There was a paper made the rounds last year by Rebecca Lewis charting the interconnectedness of conservative YouTube. (Reactionaries really hated this paper because it said things they didn’t like.) Lewis argues that, once you enter what she calls the Alternative Influence Network, it tends to keep you inside it. Start with some YouTuber conservatives like but who’s branded as a moderate, or even a “classic liberal.” Take someone like Dave Rubin; call Dave Rubin Alt-Right, people yell at you, I speak from experience. Well, Dave Rubin’s had Jordan Peterson on his show, so, if you watch Rubin, Peterson ends up in your recommendations. Peterson has been on the Joe Rogan show, so, you watch Peterson, Rogan ends up in your recommendations. And Rogan has interviewed Gavin McInnes, so you watch Rogan and McInnes ends up in your recommendations.

Gavin McInnes is the head of the Proud Boys, a self-described “western chauvinist” organization that’s mostly known for beating up liberals and leftists. They have ties to neo-fascist groups like Identity Evropa and neo-fascist militias like the Oath Keepers, they run security for white nationalists, and their lawyer just went on record that he identifies as a fascist. And, if you’re one of these kids who has YouTube in the background with autoplay on, and you’re watching Dave Rubin? You might be as few as 3 videos away from watching Gavin McInnes.

There’s a lot of talk these days about algorithms funneling people towards the Right, and that’s not wrong, but it’s an oversimplification. The real problem is that the Right knows how to hijack an algorithm.

I also learned about the Curation/Search Radicalization Spiral from a piece by Mike Caulfield. Caulfiend uses the horrific example of Dylann Roof. You remember him? He shot up a church in a Black neighborhood a few years ago. Roof says he was radicalized when he googled “Black on white crime” and saw the results. Now, if you search the phrase “crime statistics by demographic,” you will find fairly nonpartisan results that show most crimes are committed against members of the perpetrator’s own race, and Black people commit crimes against white people at about the same rate as any other two demographics. But that specific phrase, “Black on white crime,” is used almost exclusively by white racists, and so Roof’s first hit wasn’t a database of crime statistics, it was the Council of Conservative Citizens. Now, the CCC is an outgrowth of the White Citizens Councils of the 50’s and 60’s which rebranded in ‘85. They publish bogus statistics that paint Black people as uniquely violent. And they introduce a number of other politically-loaded phrases - like, say, “Muslim fertility rates” - that nonpartisan sites don’t use, and so, if Roof googles them as well, he gets similarly weighted results.

I have tons more examples of this stuff. I literally don’t have time to show it all. Like, have you heard of Google bombing? That’s a thing I didn’t know existed. The point is, the same way search engines tailor your results to what they think you want, once you scratch the surface of the Alt-Right they are highly adept at making it so, whenever you go online, their version of reality is all you know and all you see.

Finally, pain. This was the difficult one. Can you create a Disorganized Attachment relationship over the internet with a largely faceless and decentralized movement? I pitched the idea to one the researchers I spoke to, and he said, “That sounds very plausible, and nearly impossible to research.” See, cults and hate groups? They don’t wanna talk to researchers anymore than the Alt-Right wants to talk to me. Stein and Kimmel get their data by speaking to formers, people who’ve exited these movements and are all too happy to share how horrible they were. But the Alt-Right is still very young, and there just aren’t that many formers yet.

I found some testimonials, and they mostly back up my hypothesis, but there’s not enough that I could call them statistically significant. So I had to look where the data was.

My fellow YouTuber ContraPoints made a video last year - in my opinion, her best one - about incels (that’s “involuntary celibate,” men who can’t get laid). Incel forums tend to be deeply misogynistic and antifeminist, and have a high overlap with the Alt-Right. If you remember Elliot Rodger, he was an incel. Contra’s observation was that these forums were incredibly fatalistic: you are too ugly and women too shallow for you to ever have sex, so you should give up. She described a certain catharsis, like picking a really painful scab, in hearing other people voice your worst fears. But there was no uplift; these communities seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for optimism. She likened it so some deeply unhealthy trans forums she used to visit, where people wallowed in their own dysphoria.

And I remembered the forums I researched five years ago in preparation for my video on GamerGate. (If you don’t know what GamerGate was, I will not rob you of your precious innocence. But, in a lot of ways, GamerGate was the trial run for what the Alt-Right has become.) These forums were full of angry guys surrounding themselves with people saying, “You’re right to be angry.” And, yeah, if everywhere else you go treats your anger as invalid, that scratches an itch. But I never saw any of them calm down. They came in angry and they came out angrier. And most didn’t have anywhere else to vent, so they all came back.

I found a paper on Alt-Right forums that described a similar type of nihilism, and another on 8chan. What humor was on these sites was always shocking, furiously punching down, and deeply self-referential, but it didn’t seem like anyone was expected to laugh anymore, just, you know, catch the reference. I found one testimonial saying that having healthy relationships in these spaces is functionally impossible, and the one former I talked to said, yeah, when the Alt-Right isn’t winning everyone’s miserable.

So I think it might fit. The place they go for relief also makes them unhappy, so they come back to get relief again, and it just repeats. Same reason people stay with abusers. I wanna look into this further, so, I’ll just say this part to the camera: if there are any researchers watching who wanna study this, get at me.

Finally, I read Alt-America by David Neiwert, a supremely useful book that I highly recommend if you wanna know how the Alt-Right is the natural outgrowth of the militia and Patriot movements of the 90’s and early 2000’s, not to mention the Tea Party. Neiwert also does an excellent job illustrating how conspiracism serves to fill in the gap between the complexity of the modern world and the simplistic, might-makes-right worldview of fascism.

Neiwert also provides an interesting piece of the puzzle, suggesting what people are actually looking for when they get recruited. He references work done by John Bargh and Katelyn McKenna on Identity Demarginalization. Bargh and McKenna looked at the internet habits of people whose identities are both devalued in our society and invisible. By invisible, what I mean is, ok, if you’re a person of color, our society devalues your identity, but you can look around a room and, within a certain margin of error, see who else is POC, and form community with them if you wish. But, if you’re queer, you can’t see who else in a room is queer unless one of you runs up a flag. And revealing yourself always means taking on a certain amount of risk that you’ve misread the signals, that the person you reveal yourself to is not only not queer, but a homophobe.

According to Bargh and McKenna, people in this situation are much more likely to seek online spaces that self-select for that identity. A fan forum for RuPaul’s Drag Race is maybe a safer place to come out and find community. And people tend to get very emotionally tied to these online spaces where they can be themselves.

Neiwert points out that the same phenomenon happens among privileged people who have identities that are devalued even as they’re not actually oppressed. Say, nerds, or conservatives in liberal towns, or men who don’t fit traditional notions of masculinity. They are also likely to deeply invest themselves in online spaces made for them. And if the Far Right can build such a community, or get a foothold in one that already exists, it is very easy to channel that sense of marginalization into Durden Syndrome. I connected this with Rebecca Lewis’ observation that the Alternative Influence Network tends to present itself as nerd-focused life advice first and politics second, and the long history of reactionaries recruiting from fandoms.

So I can see all the pieces of the abuse dynamic being recreated here: offer you something you need, estrange you from other perspectives and healthy relationships, overtake your life, and provoke emotional distress that makes you seek comfort only your abuser is offering. And I found a lot more parallels than what I’m sharing right now, I only have half an hour! But the thing that’s missing that’s usually central to such a system is, an abusive relationship orbits around the abuser, a cult around the cult leader, a totalitarian government around a dictator. They are built to serve the whims of an individual. But I look at the ad hoc nature of the Alt-Right and I have to ask: who is the architect?

I can see a lot of people profiting off of this structure; our current President rode it to great success, but he didn’t build it. It predates him. It’s more like Kimmel’s hate groups, which don’t promote an individual so much as a class of individuals, but, even then, their structure is much more deliberate, designed, where the Alt-Right seems almost improvised.

Well… one observation I took from Stein is that cult recruiters often rely on two different kinds of propaganda: the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche. The diatribe is when someone talks at length, sounds smart, and seems to know what they’re talking about but isn’t actually making sense, and the thought-terminating cliche comes from Robert Jay Lifton’s studies into brainwashing. So, I went vegetarian in middle school, and, when I would tell other kids I was vegetarian, some would get kind of defensive and say things like, “humans aren’t meant to be vegetarian, it’s the food chain.” Now, saying “it’s the food chain” isn’t meant to be a good argument, it’s meant to communicate “I have said something so axiomatically true that the argument need not continue.” That’s a thought-terminating cliche; something that may not be true, but feels true and gives you permission to think about something else.

Both these techniques rely on what’s called Peripheral-Route Processing. So, I’m up here talking about politics, and, Solidarity Lowell, you are a group of politically-engaged people, so you probably have enough context to know whether I’m talking out of my ass. That’s Direct-Route Processing, where you judge the contents of my argument. But if I were up here talking about string theory, you might not know whether I was talking out of my ass because there’s only so many people on Earth who understand string theory. So then you might look at secondary characteristics of my argument: the fact that I’ve been invited to speak on string theory implies I know what I’m talking about; maybe I put up a lot of equations and drop the names of mathematicians and say they agree with me; maybe I just sound really authoritative. All that’s Peripheral-Route Processing: judging the quality of my argument by how it’s delivered.

Every act of communication involves both, but if you’re trying to sell people on something that’s fundamentally irrational, you’re going to rely heavily on Peripheral-Route tactics, which is what the winding diatribe and the thought-terminating cliche are.

I noted that these two methods mapped pretty cleanly onto the rhetorical stylings of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. But here’s the question: cults use these techniques to recruit people. But can I say with any confidence that Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro are trying to recruit people into the Alt-Right?

The thing is, “Alt-Right” isn’t a term like “klansman.” It’s more akin to a term like “modernism.” It’s a label applied to a trend. In the same way we debate the line between modernism and postmodernism, we debate the line between Right and Alt-Right. People don’t sign up to be in the Alt-Right, you are Alt-Right if you say you’re Alt-Right. But the nature of the Alt-Right is that 90% of them would never admit to it.

So are Peterson and Shapiro intentionally recruiting for the Alt-Right? Are they grifters merely profiting off of the Alt-Right? Are they even aware they’re recruiting for the Alt-Right? Part of my work has been accepting that you can’t know for sure. It would be naive to say they’re unaware; when they give speeches they get Nazis in their Q&A sections, and they know that. But how aware are they? I suspect Shapiro moreso than Peterson, but that’s just my gut talking and I can’t prove it. Like 90% of the Alt-Right, it’s debatable.

I don’t know if they’re trying to be part of this system, I just know they’re not trying not to be.

A final academic term before we say goodnight that’s been making the rounds among lefty YouTubers is “Stochastic Terrorism.” There’s a really great video about this by the channel NonCompete called The PewDiePipeline. Stochastic Terrorism is the myriad ways you can increase the likelihood that someone will commit violence without actually telling them to. You simply create an environment in which lone wolf violence becomes more acceptable and appealing. It mirrors the structure of terrorism without the control or culpability.

And I hear about this, and I look at this recruitment structure I see approximated in the Alt-Right, and I remember something I learned much earlier in my research, from Bob Altemeyer in his book The Authoritarians. Altemeyer has been studying authoritarianism for decades, he has a wealth of data, and one thing he observes is that authoritarianism is the few exerting power over the many, which means there are two types of authoritarians: the ones who lead and the ones who follow. Turns out those are completely different personality profiles. Followers don’t want to be in charge, they want someone to tell them what to do, to say “you’re the good guys,” and put them in charge of punishing the bad guys. They don’t even care who the bad guys are; part of the appeal is that someone else makes that judgment for them.

So if you can encourage a degree of authoritarian sentiment in people, get them wanting nothing more than to be ensconced in a totalist system that will take their agency away from them, putting them in the orbit of an authoritarian leader, but no leader presents themself… can you just kind of… appoint one?

Like, if you don’t have a leader, can you just find yourself an authoritarian and treat him like one? And, if he doesn’t give you enough directives, can you just make some up? And, if you don’t have recruiters, can you find a conservative who speaks in thought-terminating cliches just because he thinks they win arguments; find a conservative who speaks in meaningless diatribes because he thinks he’s making sense; and then maneuver those speeches and videos in front of people you want to recruit? If you’re sick of waiting for Moses to come down the mountain with the Word of God, can you just build your own god from whatever’s handy?

Every piece of this structure, you can find people, algorithms, and arguments that, put in sequence, can generate Disorganized Attachment whether they’re trying to or not, which makes every part plausibly deniable. Debatable. You just need to make it profitable enough for the ones involved that they don’t fix it. This is a system created collaboratively, on the fly, with the help of a lot of people from hate movements past, mostly by throwing a ton of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. The Alt-Right is a rapidly-mutating virus and the web is the perfect incubator; it very quickly finds a structure that works, and it’s a structure we’ve seen before, just a little weirder this time.

I’ve started calling this Stochastic Totalism.

Now, again, I’m not a professional researcher; I do my homework but I don’t have the background. I have an art degree. This isn’t something I can prove so much as a way I’ve come to look at the Alt-Right that makes sense to me and helps me understand them. And I got a lot of comments on my last video from people who used to be Alt-Right that echoed my assumptions. But don’t take it as gospel.

Mostly I wanted to share this because, if it can help you make sense of what we’re dealing with, I think it’s worth putting out there.

Thank you.

[firstumcschenectady]

"Mutuality" based on James 2:1-10, 14-17

People often think I am a “bleeding heart liberal,” a “tree-hugging hippie,” or – to get to the point – an “everything goes progressive.” I do not deny the bleeding heart nor the tree-hugging, but actually I don't think “everything goes.” James speaks the language of my faith, and in doing so makes clear why I find it so challenging to live out my faith the way I want to.

Both in Biblical times, and today, the culture is permeated with the premise that deference should be given to wealthy and powerful people. The work of Christians to treat everyone as beloveds of God is profoundly countercultural. James even suggests preferential treatment for the poor, although I can't tell if this is because it is necessary to counteract the brokenness of the world, because most of the early Christians were poor, or because people living in poverty really do have a better grasp on faith. Maybe all of them.

To make his point, James sets up a believable story about two people gathering with the community of believers. One is a rich man, a senator or nobleman based on his ring, likely running for office. This rich man has some powerful quid pro quos to offer the fragile and vulnerable faith community. He could be a useful protector for them.

At the same time, another man enters the community of believers. He is poor, his clothes are old, ratty, and dirty.

The faith community responds with the world's standards, James says. They give the rich and powerful man the best seat in the house while telling the poor man that he can either sit in a place of dishonor or stand out of the way.

James is a wisdom teacher. He speaks clearly through the ages. I can easily believe this was an actual experience in plenty of early Christian gatherings, and I know for certain it still is today. The world's standards infiltrate the church. While Galatians 3:28 says "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." That is a RADICAL claim of equity within the Church. All of the distinctions of humanity are erased by being followers of Christ. All are one. All are equal. All are equally important.

But that is easier said that done. The unconscious bias

gets carried into the church, even when people don't want it to. And they do great damage. James says, “Siblings, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our Lord Jesus Christ?” I always worry that when we say or hear “Lord Jesus Christ” we hear it with the hierarchy of the English Nobility, a system rife with patriarchy, sexism, and economic exploitation. Which, pretty clearly, isn't what James is saying here. For the early Christians, calling Jesus “Lord” was the utmost subversion, because it claimed that if Jesus was Lord, Caesar was not.1

By ALL of the worldly standards, Caesar WAS Lord. He was Emperor of the largest empire known to that part of the world, he was wealthy beyond imagination, he had the power of the best armies behind him, he had systems of nobility and administration under him, he could execute as he pleased, change laws when he wished, and of course his FACE was on all the money. He had titles galore, including “Lord and God,” and those were the OFFICIAL declarations of the empire, to claim otherwise was to risk death.

In the face of that reality, the early Jesus followers chose another way. A “narrower” way, a more dangerous way, a way that subverted the understanding of power, and choose nonviolence over the power of violence. They claimed Jesus, a peasant from the backwater Galilee, a rabble rouser of the small but ancient Jewish faith, a man executed by the violent power of the Empire as a the leader of a violent rebellion (even when it wasn't true)... they claimed JESUS as Lord.

And when JESUS is Lord like THAT, to favoritism to those who hold power and sway in the Roman Empire could reasonably make James question if they actually believe in Jesus or not. Are they following the narrow way, or are they slowing just making the way wider? Are they about the radical equality of all people in the eyes of God, or about making it easier to be a follower of Jesus? Are they overturning assumptions about who matters, or are they just replicating the ways of the world.

And, of course, the crux of this series of questions: are we?

I can see some evidence that we are committed to inverting the world's values:

Our Community Breakfast is an abundance of good food, offered with grace and respect, that anyone would be pleased to eat. We are not only interested in feeding God's beloveds, we are interested in feeding people AS God's beloveds.

Both the long-running Sustain Ministry Program and Community Breakfast have welcomed and kept volunteers who are also recipients of the ministry's gifts. This suggest to me that we have been interested in re-distributing God's gifts of abundance RATHER THAN just in giving gifts to ease guilt or unconsciously hold power over others.

Our stewardship pledge sheets ask about all of the membership vows: prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness in order to remind us all that no one way of giving is more important than another, and that all of us are stronger in the ability to give in one way than another.

The church has long advocated for living wages, and puts its money where its mouth is, paying its own employees as it believes the world should.

Before the pandemic, some church groups offered luncheons with (nonobligatory) free will offerings, making genuine space for everyone to be fed and together regardless of income.

Many of the trips we take as a church – hiking, baseball games, canoeing and kayaking trips – are free or affordable to people across a wide income spectrum.

Our community is profoundly diverse, especially in socioeconomic status and income. Beloved members are rich, beloved members are poor, beloved members are in between.

And yet truth be told, I see evidence of the values of the world creeping in too though:

Before the pandemic, often parts of the church celebrated or connected by going out to lunch or dinner, or offering support by sending a communal gift, which assumes that everyone has the discretionary money to participate.

I sometimes hear people living in poverty referred to as “them,” such as in the context, “how can we help them?” which forgets that people living in poverty are part of us. The questions might be, “How can we ease the pain of poverty?” and “How can we transform society to end poverty?”

There is a great value on education in this community, one that isn't always held in enough tension with the reality that in the US access to education has more to do with pre-existant privilege than intelligence.

Our primary worship style speaks to people's heads at least as much as their hearts or souls, which historically fits the values of the upper class.

Among some of our members, there is still a sense of discomfort with the struggles of people in poverty. While discomfort is itself neutral, lack of facing it has resulted in people who live in poverty perceiving that they're welcome to eat at our Breakfast, but not join us for Worship. The perception of a two tiered system, I fear, is not entirely incorrect.

Given these two lists, I think James still has plenty to teach us, even if we've been trying to learn along the way.

In order to build God's Kindom at FUMC, it may mean we have to look deeply at our discomfort. Although discomfort is natural, a willingness to change it is sometimes harder.

To live into the values of Jesus and James requires soaking up God's grace, and a constant awareness of the ways that the world tries to separate people into worthy and unworthy categories. To be a church that lives out the “Lordship of Jesus Christ” requires us to notice class, notice classism, and actively work to change it – in ourselves and in our community. It means that those of us who do not live in poverty need to listen to people who do live in poverty, and learn from them. Our actions to disrupt the status quo and move the world toward the kindom must be based in mutuality. We can't serve in the name of Christ if we see those we serve as “others” rather than as a part of “us.” And we can't claim anyone as part of “us” unless they claim “us” too.

I hope and pray that God will help us take the lessons James offers to heart. Amen

1 Marcus Borg, Jesus: The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (HarperCollins) 2015, p. 279.

September 12, 2021

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

[splendidastoria]

How Can I Help?

I’ve  been thinking alot about a certain famous Queens resident lately. You might have heard of him. His name is Spider-Man. You see, back in the 1990s Spider-Man had his own cartoon, and on the last episode they introduced all these different Spider-Men from across the multiverse. They were all working together to fight the bad guy, but one of the Spider-dudes didn’t have any powers. He was from our universe and an actor, ironically enough. While everyone else was getting his spidey-battle on, he just kept asking “How can I help?”

I feel an awful lot like that powerless Spidey right now, so I put together a list of things I can do, and I thought I would share:

My version of the Jackson Heights Spider-Man Mural from Queens, the most diverse borough in one of the most diverse cities in the world. It truly is the future. Look, even Spider-Man thinks this and you can trust him.

I can contact my local representatives - the current political policy seems to be “Overwhelm the people and they’ll forget about most of this stuff in 24 hours.” But if I truly care about something, I have to make it known, and I have to make it known to the people who represent me. Some of them I voted for, some of them I didn’t. But if they’re smart they’ll care about what I think, because I AM a voter. Some may argue that I am wasting my time, that politicians only care about donors and special interests, but the truth is they still need my vote, and the votes of others like me, to keep their jobs. They can throw all the money in the world at their campaign, but if they can’t win me and others over to their side, they will lose. It’s still one person, one vote. My vote counts. Speaking of which...

I can vote - not just once every four years. Look at this website: 

http://elections.mytimetovote.com/dates/default.html

ELECTIONS HAPPEN ALL THE TIME!!!  And it’s my duty to stay informed about them, especially primaries, which are crucial to weeding out ineffectual representatives. If my current Senator is not voting in a way I would like, or I’m not seeing the results I desire due to his general lack of negotiating skills, I can give him the boot, and vote for someone more inline with my goals. This goes for federal, state AND local.

I can get involved locally - The stuff that affects me most happens right outside my door, and the people who make those decisions live down the street. I can show up at their school board meetings, their rallies, their town hall forums. And if I’m really feeling sassy, I can run for office myself. What we need right now is thoughtful, compassionate, well-informed leaders, and I can be that. In the meantime...

I can donate my time and my money  - I can make calls. I can make posters. I can get out in my local park and rake some leaves. I can get involved with organizations, like religious groups and community associations,  that assemble volunteers to help countless causes in my neighborhood. I can organize my own volunteers. And I can donate my money as well, especially to programs and organizations that have seen public funds disappear due to new and upcoming budget cuts.

I can speak for myself - When I see or hear someone say “This is what Christians/Liberals/New Yorkers/women/men think” I can say or write - in a calm, clear, gracious and well-informed voice - “but I AM that, and it is NOT what I think.” I can speak for myself, and kindly, but firmly, let others know they must not put words in my mouth.

I can take an UPstander class  - so that I might safely and effectively speak for others when I see they are being harmed or treated with disrespect. I can learn how to de-escalate dangerous and disrespectful situations, and become a refuge for my neighbors.

I can create art even as I support it - I can use my talents to write stories, draw pictures, compose songs. I can sing, I can dance, I can act out the stories of others. I can create while others destroy. And I can continue to visit museums, both to take in the splendor, but also to education myself on how to be an artist in difficult times. The world has never been a peaceful place, and yet artists continue to find the will and the inspiration to do their work. In addition, I can continue to support the work of other artists, in all mediums, by campaigning for continued funding and sign this petition supporting the CPB, NEA and NEH: http://artsactionfund.org/page/s/trump-arts-petition while spreading the word about other events surrounding this issue including Americans for the Arts' National Arts Advocacy Day, March 20-21 in Washington, D.C

I can read - all that I can. From comic books to The New York Times. From best-sellers to historical documents. I can educate myself so I can be a better, well-informed voter and citizen. I can do my own research to verify other’s claims. I can read for pleasure as well, and enjoy my life, which, when all's said and done, is pretty great.

I can do things that I love with the people I love - because what else are we fighting for? And I’ll remember that there are people out there not able to do that as easily, and try to do what I can to right that wrong.

I can participate in my niece’s kindness week - because she is awesome and at the age of  9 already understands that being kind first is often a brave act that can change the world.

And, if nothing else, I can rebel - because it is my right to speak out. It is my right to rally, and gather with my friends and neighbors. It is my right to stomp my feet and make a fuss. And I pray that I have the courage to raise my voice in the spirit of  the Frederick Douglas and bring “...the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake” in order to rouse “the conscience of the nation,” and give hope that tomorrow will be kinder. Because the world is actually a beautiful, wonderful, love-filled place, and I would sooner have someone tell me I am TOO LOUD then lock it all up in a box for a select few. I believe in our ability to unite, no matter what our differences, to make the world a better place for ourselves and those who will inherit it from us. And I believe in these words, signed on July 4th, 1776  by 56 flawed but brave individuals, who had little in common but this shared conviction:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

These are just a few of the things I can do to help right now, and I’m sure I’ll think of more in the days ahead. But it should be noted, for those who might be wondering, that Powerless Spidey, in his own unique way, ended up saving the day. While all the other super-powered weirdos were running around, he used the skills he had at his disposal. He was just some dude from Queens - out of his element in uncharted territory - yet he found a way to do his part. And even though it comes from a 90s cartoon series, I think that’s as good of a lesson right now as any.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the christian cross and the pagan pentagram are equally effective. the eye of horus has a surprisingly strong bite given that it should be expired by now. the symbol of mjölnir invokes a migraine AND ear ringing that lasts for days. the star of david cremates the scientist instantly on the spot; her ashes have to be shoved in a jar and sprinkled w/ blood so she can reshape overnight. (the last discovery is going to make yom kippur at grandma's house VERY awkward this year)

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire deterrents. sure there’s anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[labelleizzy]

I love you, Gaud. And dear ghods the notes!

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire deterrents. sure there’s anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[dappyhappy]

#also i love describing Justin Orvel Schmidt as 'that guy' as if he's not a well respected entomologist and author#bc he is. but he also happens to be that venomous bug bite guy#well. one of them. it is a growing field#another good vampire post#the christian cross and the pagan pentagram are equally effective#the eye of horus has a surprisingly strong bite given that it should be expired by now#the symbol of mjölnir invokes a migraine AND ear ringing that lasts for days#the star of david cremates the scientist instantly on the spot#her ashes have to be shoved in a jar and sprinkled w/ blood so she can reshape overnight#a discovery which is going to make yom kippur at her grandma's house VERY awkward this year#come to think of it menorahs are also objects you light on fire so it gets double damage points probably#...on a scale of humorous blasphemy (good) to culturally insensitive (bad) where would the concept of a Vampire Hunting Rabbi fall?#i mean all these catholic priests are already clogging the market why not add some religious diversity#....Vampire Hunting Squad composed of a priest a rabbi an imam a bhikkhu and a pujari#it's a Ghostbusters type situation where the whole squad gets called in whenever a vampire's religious affiliation is unknown#a vampire has the right to be/can only be vanquished by a clergy member of their specific religion...#...so a diverse group of religious leaders has to be kept on call to treat vampiric infestations#they run a side business is demonic de-possession bc you never know which ancient language of scripture a demon can actually speak#no point yelling at someone to get the fuck out in latin if they can't fucking understand latin

How dare you try and hide all this in the tags. This is perfect and I want to see a supernatural comedy as a comrade series to WWDITS with this concept. 

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire detergents. sure there's anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[at-the-sign-of-the-fox-n-phoenix]

#also i love describing Justin Orvel Schmidt as 'that guy' as if he's not a well respected entomologist and author#bc he is. but he also happens to be that venomous bug bite guy#well. one of them. it is a growing field#another good vampire post#the christian cross and the pagan pentagram are equally effective#the eye of horus has a surprisingly strong bite given that it should be expired by now#the symbol of mjölnir invokes a migraine AND ear ringing that lasts for days#the star of david cremates the scientist instantly on the spot#her ashes have to be shoved in a jar and sprinkled w/ blood so she can reshape overnight#a discovery which is going to make yom kippur at her grandma's house VERY awkward this year#come to think of it menorahs are also objects you light on fire so it gets double damage points probably#...on a scale of humorous blasphemy (good) to culturally insensitive (bad) where would the concept of a Vampire Hunting Rabbi fall?#i mean all these catholic priests are already clogging the market why not add some religious diversity#....Vampire Hunting Squad composed of a priest a rabbi an imam a bhikkhu and a pujari#it's a Ghostbusters type situation where the whole squad gets called in whenever a vampire's religious affiliation is unknown#a vampire has the right to be/can only be vanquished by a clergy member of their specific religion...#...so a diverse group of religious leaders has to be kept on call to treat vampiric infestations#they run a side business is demonic de-possession bc you never know which ancient language of scripture a demon can actually speak#no point yelling at someone to get the fuck out in latin if they can't fucking understand latin Seriously, the tags are 3/4 of the post.  :)

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire detergents. sure there's anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[oojamaflip-whatchamacallit]

#come to think of it menorahs are also objects you light on fire so it gets double damage points probably#plus bludgeoning damage? more powerful and effective all around as a vampire deterrent#...on a scale of humorous blasphemy (good) to culturally insensitive (bad) where would the concept of a Vampire Hunting Rabbi fall?#i mean all these catholic priests are already clogging the market why not add some religious diversity#....Vampire Hunting Squad composed of a priest a rabbi an imam a bhikkhu and a pandit#it's a Ghostbusters type situation where the whole squad gets called in whenever a vampire's religious affiliation is unknown#a vampire has the right to be/can only be vanquished by a clergy member of their specific religion...#...so a diverse group of religious leaders has to be kept on call to treat vampiric infestations#they run a side business in demonic de-possession bc you never know which ancient language of scripture a demon can actually speak#no point yelling at someone to get the fuck out in latin if they can't fucking understand latin

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire deterrents. sure there’s anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs

[lindwyrmrelinquished]

#also i love describing Justin Orvel Schmidt as 'that guy' as if he's not a well respected entomologist and author#bc he is. but he also happens to be that venomous bug bite guy#well. one of them. it is a growing field#another good vampire post#the christian cross and the pagan pentagram are equally effective#the eye of horus has a surprisingly strong bite given that it should be expired by now#the symbol of mjölnir invokes a migraine AND ear ringing that lasts for days#the star of david cremates the scientist instantly on the spot#her ashes have to be shoved in a jar and sprinkled w/ blood so she can reshape overnight#a discovery which is going to make yom kippur at her grandma's house VERY awkward this year#come to think of it menorahs are also objects you light on fire so it gets double damage points probably#...on a scale of humorous blasphemy (good) to culturally insensitive (bad) where would the concept of a Vampire Hunting Rabbi fall?#i mean all these catholic priests are already clogging the market why not add some religious diversity#....Vampire Hunting Squad composed of a priest a rabbi an imam a bhikkhu and a pujari#it's a Ghostbusters type situation where the whole squad gets called in whenever a vampire's religious affiliation is unknown#a vampire has the right to be/can only be vanquished by a clergy member of their specific religion...#...so a diverse group of religious leaders has to be kept on call to treat vampiric infestations#they run a side business is demonic de-possession bc you never know which ancient language of scripture a demon can actually speak#no point yelling at someone to get the fuck out in latin if they can't fucking understand latin

you know that guy who gets bit by venomous insects on purpose and rates the pain on a numerical scale?

ok so a scientist who gets bitten by a vampire specifically so she can use herself as a test subject to rate cross-cultural religious objects on their effectiveness as anti-vampire detergents. sure there's anecdotal evidence that crosses probably work, but here is hard scientific data that vampires can also be threatened with menorahs