Conservatives don’t believe things, they believe people. Their entire worldview is defined by interpersonal loyalty. In their minds, if rightful authority moved a Falling Rocks sign, the rocks would fall somewhere else.
Trying to hold any these idiot bigots to the logic of their claims accomplishes absolutely nothing. They could be reasonable - but that visibly is not the brain activity they are engaged in.
I think they don’t believe anything, they just regurgitate the last thing they read in the tabloids, and they do it not through loyalty to the tabloids but purely through conformity to their friends who are also regurgitating the last thing they read in the tabloids. It’s the same mentality as football team supporters, they have no meaningful personal stake in “their” team but it provides a social role, and it’s harmless when it’s just football, let them have their fun, but it’s dangerous when it comes to the well-being of all the people in the country.
Exactly - it’s reality as a team sport. Innate human tribalism as a theory-of-everything.
I thought it was more nuanced until 2020 saw them stick to the script in-between hacking coughs with bits of lung.
The whole concept that allowing the free expression of objectionable ideas will allow them to be dissected and disproven in the cold light of public debate, has itself been disproven over and over for at least the past decade.
We live in a different era, where partisanship and propaganda are so powerful that there is no longer an authoritative voice that the general public trusts. The government is distrusted, the both-sides-BBC is distrusted, the broadsheets that turned into clickbait farms are distrusted.
We have to stop giving oxygen to fascists in the hope that people will just see how wrong they are. I don’t care what people attending this march really believe. What I care about is that people preaching hate should not have a platform, anywhere, under any circumstances.
