this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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'But bigots of the past were playing 4D chess!' is a brave opinion to offer.
Nobody invented antisemitism as a clever scheme. It's always been ad-hoc justifications and libelous story-telling, to bolster the kneejerk conclusions of ingroup supremacists. Rational argument has to be taught - tribalist pretense is instinctive to all people. Grifters emerge to take advantage of them, and spread the bullshit, but that dirt was always in your brain.
You think “basic interpersonal skills” or manipulation is “4d chess?” That’s kinda sad.
Antisemitism has been around since long before Sartre wrote a book about them in the 40s. He wasn’t talking about the invention of antisemitism, he was talking about the tactics of undermining logic that are still very present even in the dipshit rightwing now. For fucks sake there was a post on 4chan back in like 2017 talking about it openly—they called it how to piss of libs or some shit, but it’s still the same even if the words have adapted. We think of the right wing as mostly incompetent. But that’s not always the way they were seen. Shit even in my lifetime I remember the era of the neocons, they were scary motherfuckers inside and out. Fox News and the right wing has gone on a 40 year long anti education rout, and we do see that in their followers. But the sort of “joker” persona of the fascist movement isn’t new.
I think it's self-evidently silly to blame ancient patterns of bigotry on specific assholes who secretly know they're wrong.
This card-shuffling behavior, in service to strict hierarchy, has produced organized violence since at least Sulla's civil war in the Roman republic.
To be clear: this is all that conservatives have ever been. They didn't suddenly get stupid. They've always been making shit up. Some of them do the same thing you're doing - they go 'ah ha, this must be a clever move we all pull, despite being total bullshit.' Nope. The vast majority of them honestly think making shit up is all there is.
The distinction is crucial because we can still teach them that words mean things. Rational argument is a learned behavior.