Lively and possibly cantankerous rhetorical criticism, research and musings about: Eric Hoffer, True Believers, Wingnuts, The Tea Party, President Obama, Rhetorical Theory, Fanatical Political movements, symbolic devils, Kenneth Burke, and identification by antithesis. Est. 2010.
Hoffer: ...it is not logic that persuades and recruits but rather it is the promise of brotherhood (identity and safety) that does. It's the brotherhood of identity, not logic, that constitutes the True Believer audience. For them, it is the simplicity of anti-thesis and a firm rhetorical identity (ethos) that attracts and motivates their political rhetoric and actions. That is why common sense and logic and TRUTH (logos) aren't persuasive to Trump's followers: it was never what attracted them in the first place.
"While these results aren’t surprising, there’s a couple of important lessons to be drawn from them. One, traditional coalition-building is collapsing in the Republican Party, which has become victim of its own propaganda machine. Two, this should (but won’t) put to bed any lingering hope that Trump is somehow going to say something too racist and lose his base of support.
To start with the second one, because it is the sexier issue: For months now, there’s been a sense in the pundit class that Trump is going to cross a line one day, saying something that will wake his supporters up to the fact that he’s not ready to win a general election, causing them to give up their love affair with the Orange One and move, however reluctantly, to a Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. This assumption underestimates how enraged these voters are. These are people that often feel that they are losing their identity.This group is animated by the idea that white Christian conservatives are the dominant class by rights, and that any attempt to share power is capitulation. The Bushes and Rubios of the world are seen as squishes, people who think “conservatism” can somehow be separated from this white Christian identity.
As the poll shows, xenophobia is broadly popular in Republican circles, but clearly, it’s a priority issue for Trump supporters. People who are in such a panic state, believing their very identity is under threat by growing racial and ethnic diversity, aren’t going to be interested in people who they see as accepting change as inevitable (even if they promise to slow it down). They want to hear that it can be stopped, even reversed. And Trump is making that promise.
This entire situation is also a nice reminder that the politics of coalition-building, as frustrating and contentious as they can be at times, have benefits over the multi-decade conservative effort to use propaganda to create a singular, lockstep coalition. Democrats work by bringing people with different issues together, settling differences through compromise and often tedious amounts of discussion. For decades now, the right has gone a different route: Using talk radio, conservative publications and Fox News to create a singular conservative identity and persuading people in the coalition to adjust themselves to it.
There’s been a lot of political benefits to this, of course. For instance, it might seem like the churchy anti-abortion community would balk at slashing the social safety net on the grounds that it encourages abortion. But that doesn’t happen. Anti-choicers are conservatives first, and conservatives want to cut welfare and that’s that. To budge on this issue is to court accusations of liberalism, which cannot be countenanced."
In the war against women's constitutional, reproductive, and civil rights, there are fanatical terrorists. This act of gun violence in Colorado today is not an isolated event.
There are some folks literally engaged in a jihad against Planned Parenthood - it is their holy cause. They are willing to kill to promote life. They are willing to kill in the name of their God. They are easily rhetorically stimulated by ugly (i.e., vicious and untrue) public discourse about what Planned Parenthood does. One of many popular media zealots for this cause on Twitter called them "...bloodthirsty butchers."
In their fanatical narrative, Planned Parenthood exists solely to provide abortions. In real life, this is 3% of their services. 97% of their services are NOT abortions. But facts matter little to these rhetorical troublemakers and criminal terrorists who are hell bent on taking away a woman's right to privacy about her personal health decisions which are 100% legal in a Constitutional society. That they are 0% okay for the fanatical Christians doesn't matter - the Constitution trumps the Bible in America. History 101. Founding Fathers intended this. Why is it so hard for these nutjobs to respect that when it comes to American women's rights?
This is a Constitutional country - and always has been - that was the beauty and genious of what the Founding Fathers crafted for the U.S.A. That God-given freedom and liberty is what we stand for. That is what we fight for. That is what determines that women don't have to submit to government interference with their bodies and choices.
I am a Christian and have done everything possible to prevent unplanned pregnancy, and I have been lucky with the odds. But without Planned Parenthood, I would not have been able to prevent reproduction as a young (and highly fertile) woman in love.
See the problem?
Anyone who seriously cares about reducing abortions should also stop crusading against and demonizing birth control and making THAT harder to get or pay for, too.
Planned Parenthood primarily exists for that purpose. Prevention (not Abortion) is their ultimate goal and their primary service. It is that service that the government has tried to support in healthcare law - ironically, Christians who wish to opt out of the birth control policies simultaneously hold positions that the government should stay out of our lives as much as possible.
If someone can't see that HUGE hypocrisy in their narrative, then you are probably dealing with a True Believer. There is no logic or good reason, only a fanatical holy war against an invented, anti-thetical, demonic rhetorical trope: in this case, Planned Parenthood.
This fanaticism - both rhetorical and material - is the ice cold heart of wingnut terrorism.
"Although anti-abortion groups may condemn this type of violence when it happens, the way that they target and demonize providers contributes to a culture where some feel it is justifiable to murder doctors simply because they provide women with the abortion care they need.
“Since 1977, there have been 8 murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, 186 arsons, and thousands of incidents of criminal activities. The last abortion provider was murdered in 2009 when NAF member Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in his church in Wichita, Kansas.”"
"...what inspires the most uncompromisingly lethal actors in the world today is not so much the Qur’an or religious teachings. It’s a thrilling cause that promises glory and esteem. Jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer: fraternal, fast-breaking, glorious, cool – and persuasive."
"ISIS videos appeal to young people — mostly young men — who feel like their lives lack a sense of purpose or direction."
So those disaffected young men become True Believers . . . fanatics . . . and join the brotherhood. It's not really the cause they join, it's the sense of belonging and identity and escape it brings.
" . . . we can say, with confidence, that radicalization isn't just about either proximity to ISIS or poverty. It's about something more: a sense of political grievance on the part of the recruits, sure, but also a life of romantic adventure in a holy war."
ISIS recruiters know exactly what they are doing. They know who to target and how. They are the textbook case of Hoffer's True Believer persuasive strategy.
Same true believer tactics, but different brotherhood and different target audience.
People join to be part of something - a brotherhood, fellowship - not because they necessarily feel passionate about the cause itself.
The lonely - the disaffected - the bored middle class young adult ----> true believers.
Easily persuaded to join a hate group, not necessarily because they HATE, but because they want to be part of a GROUP. and because they need a purpose for their lives.
See Hoffer, True Believers.
From the article:
What happened next tracks closely with the recommendations in a manual written by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that became the Islamic State, titled “A Course in the Art of Recruiting.” A copy was recovered by United States forces in Iraq in 2009.
The pamphlet advises spending as much time as possible with prospective recruits, keeping in regular touch. The recruiter should “listen to his conversation carefully” and “share his joys and sadness” in order to draw closer.
Then the recruiter should focus on instilling the basics of Islam, making sure not to mention jihad.
“Start with the religious rituals and concentrate on them,” says the manual, which was reviewed in the archive of the Conflict Records Research Centerat the National Defense University in Washington.
Hamad instructed Alex to download the “Islamic Hub” app on her iPhone. It sent her a daily “hadith,” or saying by the Prophet Muhammad.
She felt as if she finally had something to do. (emphasis mine)
. . .
By the last week of October, Alex was communicating with more than a dozen people who openly admired the Islamic State. Her life, which had mostly seemed like a blurred series of babysitting shifts and lonely weekends roaming the mall, was now filled with encouragement and tutorials from her online friends.
. . .
After dropping out of college, Alex worked for a year at a day-care center, only to resign after a disagreement with her manager. She quit a call-center training program after three weeks, she said, unable to handle angry calls from customers.
Her online conversations became a touchstone at a time when she was increasingly adrift.
"This network has been particularly active ever since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, and has adopted the rhetoric and vocabulary, and reasoning, of age-old white supremacy."
Exactly. They have been the mouthpiece of the Tea Party from the veyr beginning, too. This is not coincidence.
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