The comedian and podcaster used his huge platform to spread more COVID disinformation, talk up Alex Jones and Elon Musk, and reveal an odd obsession with gay sex.
I would bet that just like with “woke”, the right is going to take “weird” and use it. It’s what they do. They are the masters of projection, and love name calling. They’re shameless, too, so if you call them something, they just take it and turn it around. I am positive if this “weird” name calling campaign catches on, it will just become another right wing buzzword.
They’ll have a harder time appropriating “weird” and making it work as a self-label for their normative, dominance-oriented ideology. They’re quite happy with being seen as fearsome hordes, barbarians at the gates, deplorables even, but they need to be seen to be representing the silent majority, and pushing back against a diversity imposed from above by (((those people))). “weird” punctures that and appropriating it whilst maintaining the rhetoric about purifying American society and purging it of liberal degeneracy would be one hell of a jiu-jitsu move.
“Yes I’m weird, and I should be. Jesus didn’t tell us to be of the world, he only told us to be in the world. We don’t conform to that world, and we never will. Don’t hide your light under that bushel, but stand against the darkness that threatens to creep in. Stand against the devil and his minions. Stand against transexuals, leftists, and the woke mob. Stand against the abortionists, the evolutionists, and the false god of science. And when you do, every brother and sister here will stand with you. And all God’s people say-” [crowd] ‘Amen!’.
A preview of things to come. Please excuse me while I go rinse my brain out.
They’d first need to make “weird” an exclusionary term referring only to their particular weirdness, and nobody else. Foreign cultures, obscure hobbies, unusual sexual kinks, religious cults, psychedelic countercurrents and so on don’t get to be “weird” unless they’re part of the conservative counterrevolution. Which would require effectively stripping the word of its meaning. And then, a short time later, somebody would point out that they’re no closer to the great American norm they profess to defend than all these this that used to be called weird.
Also, “in the world but not of the world” may work for initiates into the cult, but is no good for convincing swing voters that one represents the Silent Majority. Fundamentalists need to couch their dogma (no pun intended) in rationalisations that sound like something a normal person who’s not a cultist might believe.
I would bet that just like with “woke”, the right is going to take “weird” and use it. It’s what they do. They are the masters of projection, and love name calling. They’re shameless, too, so if you call them something, they just take it and turn it around. I am positive if this “weird” name calling campaign catches on, it will just become another right wing buzzword.
They’ll have a harder time appropriating “weird” and making it work as a self-label for their normative, dominance-oriented ideology. They’re quite happy with being seen as fearsome hordes, barbarians at the gates, deplorables even, but they need to be seen to be representing the silent majority, and pushing back against a diversity imposed from above by (((those people))). “weird” punctures that and appropriating it whilst maintaining the rhetoric about purifying American society and purging it of liberal degeneracy would be one hell of a jiu-jitsu move.
“Yes I’m weird, and I should be. Jesus didn’t tell us to be of the world, he only told us to be in the world. We don’t conform to that world, and we never will. Don’t hide your light under that bushel, but stand against the darkness that threatens to creep in. Stand against the devil and his minions. Stand against transexuals, leftists, and the woke mob. Stand against the abortionists, the evolutionists, and the false god of science. And when you do, every brother and sister here will stand with you. And all God’s people say-” [crowd] ‘Amen!’.
A preview of things to come. Please excuse me while I go rinse my brain out.
They’d first need to make “weird” an exclusionary term referring only to their particular weirdness, and nobody else. Foreign cultures, obscure hobbies, unusual sexual kinks, religious cults, psychedelic countercurrents and so on don’t get to be “weird” unless they’re part of the conservative counterrevolution. Which would require effectively stripping the word of its meaning. And then, a short time later, somebody would point out that they’re no closer to the great American norm they profess to defend than all these this that used to be called weird.
Also, “in the world but not of the world” may work for initiates into the cult, but is no good for convincing swing voters that one represents the Silent Majority. Fundamentalists need to couch their dogma (no pun intended) in rationalisations that sound like something a normal person who’s not a cultist might believe.