When “yoosta bees” attack

Last year, In These Times discussed liberals who suddenly swing to the far right. Journalist Matt Taibbi, pundit Glenn Greenwald, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (the article notes he did a lot of good environmental work earlier in his career), Naomi Wolf of The Beauty Myth are among the liberals who’ve swung to the right, embracing conspiracy theories or even Trump.

This is not a new thing. After 9/11, a number of liberals did the same. Cartoonist Dan Perkins AKA “Tom Tomorrow” described them as “yoostabees” who used to be Dems, then stopped.

(And since I’m borrowing one of his images, I’ll mention you can see his excellent cartoons on DailyKos or subscribe to his newsletter). I’m not sure if it was Perkins, Alex Pareene or another pundit who pointed out that while it was understandable they’d swung more conservative on things like national defense — the 9/11 attack was a shocker — they didn’t stop there, swinging to conservative on everything. One wit summed it up as “I used to be a liberal but since 9/11 I’m deeply offended by Chappaquiddick!”

And then as now, the trend was to declare it wasn’t you leaving liberalism, it’s that liberalism had left you. Gone too far left. Too radical. Too worried about identity politics. Or because liberalism imposes cancel culture on anyone who disagrees with their terrifying thought policing. Sometimes it’s the argument that Republicans and Democrats are interchangeable — neither will support the Palestinians, both support capitalism, ergo they’re both worthless. At least Trump shook up the system and changed things!

There are also those who “Inspired by transgressing one boundary, they made a movement out of transgressing others.” This is another idea that goes back a while, that if society considers it unacceptable to say the n-word or sneer about gays/transpeople/immigrants, then throwing the forbidden words around makes you an edgy rebel, not a ginormous jackhole. Not all transgressions and acts of rebelllion are equal.

The In These Times article brings up “horseshoe theory,” the idea that if go far enough right or far enough left, you end up in the same place. Except, they point out, that’s not the case here. We see liberals marching over and joining the right, even the very far right. Fascists and white supremacists do not move in the other direction. This may reflect, as journalist David Neiwert once observed, that the far right, for all it’s anti-government talk, gets much softer when Republicans are in power (shitbag Rush Limbaugh’s “government is the enemy” rhetoric vanished under Republican administrations); the far left is much more likely to reject the Democrats as insufficient.

And even within the right, the vortex is steadily to go further right. If you start out seeing yourself as opposed to a liberal hegemony that controls everything (it doesn’t, in case you were wondering), it’s a small step to challenging facts like “Nazis were evil.” and Tucker Carlson declaring that’s “too pat, too obvious” as if he were a TV detective skeptical they’ve busted the right crook. Likewise, a cartoon at the first link suggests that the general consensus the Third Reich (and Nazis in general) was monstrous is a sign we’ve been brainwashed, not that it’s a commonly accepted fact.

Plus some of the right-wing bullshit flowing through America is the work of Russia. Republicans are outraged anyone would suggest this.

Which is not to say a lot of it isn’t homegrown. Either way, it’s still bullshit when flat earther Candace Owens claims all world leaders are gays working for “the Synagogue of Satan.” Or crackpot Trumper Laura Loomer claims the FBI wanted the recent school shooting to happen to hurt Trump. Or the Very Very Old Felon (who thinks he’s still running against Biden) lies that schools are performing gender-transition surgeries on kids.

Or two preachers claiming Obama’s running the Biden White House. Like sliding into anti-semitism, paranoia about the black man who became president is lying at the bottom of the spiral never goes out of fashion. Similarly, rants about how the government is going to lock up Christians or shut down Christian broadcasting or force conservative preachers to officiate gay marriages never go away no matter how many times they’ve been proven lies.

Which is why I hate it that the NYT so often soft-pedals what’s going on, like lying that Trump’s plan for massive immigrant deportation is a plan to free up housing. We need facts, not bullshit on bullshit.