Hard to take stuff but also kind of brilliant and insightful: How social media is galvanizing a predatory rightwing constituency or "mob." This is where that 20% swing in male voters under thirty likely comes from; Bro culture, "manly energies" and animal spirits, sick of liberal pieties (democracy, rule of law), ready to take what they deserve by hustle and force. A big incel bully vibe on the make.
John Ganz, historian, author, blogger, profiling the social media "mob" or what the rest of us have been short-handing for awhile as Bro culture, I think:
"The angry, alienated men and their tribunes aren’t having it. That’s the same “bootstraps” bullshit they’ve heard from the liberals for all these years. They don’t believe in the empty myths of honest toil and upward mobility anymore. The American dream, as far as they are concerned is, dead. In the view of the mob, undeserving women and minorities are hoarding all the treasure and it has to be ripped away from them. Every “normal” possibility open to them is humiliating. Only the massive windfalls of gambling and speculation seem like an honorable alternative."
Including women now, or again, in the "undeserving" is a particularly creepy turn in this latest wave of toxic masculinity. Also, Ganz adds a nice encapsulation of the intersection of the mob and a business/merchant/bourgeoisie outlook, which may be converging on social media right now but actually goes back nearly half a millennia:
"It does not see the surrounding society as the positive condition for its wealth and power, but only as a hostile limitation upon the maintenance and growth of that wealth and power."
Compare to economic historian Mark Blyth's intellectual lineage of austerity economics and rich business attitudes towards the State and government going all the way back to 17th century England and the Enlightenment: "You can't live with it, you can't live without it, and no one wants to pay for it."
England goes through three or more civil wars and a bourgeoisie (merchants) revolution overthrowing the absolute monarchy and establishing a constitutional monarchy in the span of fifty years; 1640 to 1690. The rising merchant classes in England were fed up with tax burdens imposed by extravagant and poorly organized, bankruptcy-prone, monarchies (can't live with it), at the end of the period John Locke argues for making a central function of the rule of law and republican government the protection of private property (can't live without it), and in subsequent decades and centuries of the modern period rich businesses grow increasingly hostile to taxes and any government spending that doesn't hew closely to this goal (they don't want to pay for it).
Again, law enforcement and military are okay gov spending but the rising bourgeoisie of the 17th century and Billionaires and their "libertarian" mob now condemn gov spending for anything other than their priorities as wasteful, "government handouts," "entitlements," "freebies," you know the drill. It's telling of the times, the bourgeoisie revolution in 17th England and the birth of the modern age, that one of the first tasks of William Petty during this period, often cited as a foundational figure in the development of modern economics, was to conduct a geographical survey of Ireland for Cromwell's new government so as to extend tax collections to the lower orders, as a way to relieve the rebellious pressures taxes put on rich merchants.
So Ganz's "mob" is not without precedents but he's trying to identify a specific social movement on social media, the mob, Groypers, taking hold on X/Twitter and in rightwing conservative circles right now, and gaining prominence in the wake of Grump's victory last November. That we've seen this kind of market fundamentalist macho illiberality before doesn't do much to soften its blunt illiberal savagery. If anything, it reinforces how intractable and delusional are the self-interests of libertarian/bourgeoisie men and business elites and their popular followings.
Ganz's conclusion: "Social media creates a universe of angry suckers. But, as we’ve seen, the mob is quick to turn on its would-be masters and bite the hand that feeds. The mob does not believe in gratitude, it believes in deserts."
That's another reason it's hard to imagine the forced deportations and other spectacles of abuse and humanitarian crimes against immigrants, Trans people, and random liberals will be enough for the mob without any significant economic spoils to divvy up. Grump is going to generate some tax revenues from tariffs but that won't help consumers pay for the higher prices on imports. And I could be wrong but I can't see a Crypto or AI bubble satisfying the greed of the mob or maybe only the "mob" but not any significant proportion of the working classes and this could prove to be a big problem for Maga, especially if Grump's belligerent deal making triggers a recession.
Angus Deaton and Anne Case in recent important studies identify "deaths of despair" in the modern American life: declining life spans amongst non-college educated white working class men going back to the '90s, addictions, gambling, bankruptcies, violence. Ganz explores the revanchist cultural and social-psychological and political consequences of this phenomenon in social media; again, what he calls Groyperfication. There are now Neo-Nazis working in the white house, for an instance of the real alarm behind his inquiry. And it's all very scary, as the mob wants it to be.
P.S. I didn't mention the "Universal Experience of Poverty." It refers to the peer pressure aspect of poverty or the perception of relative "poverty," our sense of not keeping up with the neighbors, etc. Kind of like the incel thing isn't just about guys that can't get laid but about guys who think women need to know their place; i.e., subordinate to them. Okay but I don't like the suggestion poverty might be more a psychological malady than really existing impoverished conditions; working for less than living wages, out of reach health care and child care and education costs, food ghettoes, homelessness, drug addiction, etc. Poverty isn't just a zero-sum hangup of the male ego. Although it is that too.
Poverty isn't just petty envy, poverty is a real stresser and kills.
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