MARKET-SEGMENTED DEMONIZATION

Many observers have noted that the right's current habit of referring to critics of its anti-LGBT legislation as "groomers" is an attempt to modify and mainstream the QAnon theory that the world is run by a cabal of liberal pedophiles, which until now has been seen as a crackpottery even by many committed liberal-bashers. Yesterday Jonathan Chait explained precisely how the mainstreaming is meant to work, using the example of Florida governor Ron DeSantis's "Don't Say Gay" bill, whoe critics were accused of being "groomers" by the governor's press secretary, and subsequently by nearly everyone else on the right:

Whether DeSantis and his supporters believe any of this is beside the point. Conspiracy theories often operate on multiple levels. In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy famously accused Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and ultimately Dwight Eisenhower of allowing a network of Communist spies to operate inside their administration. Right-wingers like Robert Welch, who were even more deranged than McCarthy, claimed these presidents were all dedicated members of a Communist conspiracy operating hand in glove with Moscow. Meanwhile, right-wingers who were less extreme than McCarthy, like Richard Nixon, could claim these presidents merely did too little to contain Communist expansion.

Nixon didn’t need to go as far as McCarthy, and McCarthy didn’t need to go as far as Welch, in order to profitably inject their charges into the public mind. Even when liberals succeeded in fending off the charge of their being secret allies of Joseph Stalin, it made it harder to rebut the notion they were soft on Communism.

Likewise, the pedophilia conspiracy theory can simultaneously charge Democrats with being pedophiles themselves and with being merely the unwitting allies of pedophilia, shifting from one accusation to the other.

Once you understand this tactic, you see it everywhere. Remember Adam Serwer's 2011 taxonomy of birtherism?

Birtherism: The fictional belief that the president was not born in the United States....

Post-birtherism: Any rhetorical construction that acknowledges the president claims he was born in the United States, but leaves open the possibility that he's lying about it....

Ironic Post-birtherism: Making humorous or ironic references to the idea that the president was not born in the United States as an attempt to signal solidarity with or otherwise placate those who genuinely believe the president was not born in the United States....

Pseudo-birtherism: An umbrella term that encompasses all the various modes of belief that involve embracing fictional elements of the president's background, from the belief that he is a secret Muslim to the idea that he was raised in Kenya. Includes highbrow forms of birtherism like the "Kenyan anti-colonialism" thesis and theories that his name was legally changed to "Barry Soetero," as well as the idea that Obama's "real father" was one of the handful of random black celebrities you can name off the top of your head....

After publishing this, Serwer added a few additional categories, including this one:

Birther Curious: The belief that, despite widespread availability of the president's birth certificate, that there are "lingering questions" that could be answered by him releasing the "long-form" version.... The birther-curious may acknowledge as a rhetorical concession that they "believe" the president was born in the U.S., but nevertheless argue that it's the president's fault that garden-variety birthers continue to exist.

Right-wing rhetoric on the 2020 election works this way, too. Nutjobs will talk about fraudulent bamboo-paper ballots from China or trunks full of fake ballots being slipped into a vote counting site. More "respectable" Republicans will claim that, yes, Democrats stole the election, but they did it by changing the rules of voting (which obviously happened, but only in order to make voting safe during a deadly pandemic). Or they'll say Big Tech rigged the election for Democrats by funding election infrastructure, or by suppressing the story of Hunter Biden's laptop. So you can be a believer in the Big Lie without believing all the absurd things Ginni Thomas and Mike Lindell believe.

Democrats can't seem to do any effective messaging, while Republicans have so much skill that they message in multiple ways simultaneously. When they domesticate a lie (birtherism, 2020 election theft) or a McCarthyite slander (Democrats are communists, Democrats enable pedophilia), it's truly dangerous.