Naw man, I encourage you folks to like, actually look up what the 1st and 2nd Red Scares were about. The reality is that the US right has been associating "communism" with its program to maintain white supremacy the entire time. Black people having rights, women having rights, queer people just existing, Jewish people just existing, Unions beating off Pinkertons to win labor rights - THIS is what these crackers mean by communism. It was ALWAYS Klan shit mate. Always. Trump ain't no different.
The reality is that the right only has ONE conspiracy theory - namely the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And pretty much every time they invent a NEW conspiracy theory, it's just the same old conspiracy theory wrapped up in new words - the anti-Communist scares are just the Protocols with "International Communists" acting as a fig leaf to replace "the Jews" - which is of course, the same thing to a certain type of Nazi conspiracy crank.
@AnarchoNinaWrites In Europe there is a bit more of a variety of winger crank narrative, but it all boils down to being jealous of the Saudi royal family. A really big chunk of the narrative was influenced by Russian "whites" running from the SSSR: the false flag book operations (protocols), spreading fear of occultism while wanking at occultism, being against the French bourgeois revolution etc.
@rubinjoni @AnarchoNinaWrites the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion themselves have their origins in painting-as-Jewish/blaming-on-Jews, French revolutionary politics, iirc.
And, of course, it was crystalized and spread initially from Russia against revolutionary activities there.
cite for checking this would be any history of the Protocols, but the specific one I'm visualizing is Will Eisner's 2001 graphic novel historical overview of the protocols, "The Plot". (Which is. relatively short and extremely readable.)
@rubinjoni @AnarchoNinaWrites (I also think it's worth reading these patterns across cultures rather than assuming they'll need to be rederived separately in different cultural contexts. The amount of history and depth of cultural roots available to draw on plays a role in how many different touch-points are available to connect to, but this sort of conspiricizing also functions as a really portable form of rhetoric, that in a globalized culture can be carried at the front of cultural exchange (as opposed to, needing to root itself in the local culture generationally, first).
e.g. despite Japan only really getting its first full-time professional antisemite in the 1970s (cite to "Jews In The Japanese Mind"), Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway was, to them, an attack targeting the Jews and the Freemasons.)
(Uh. I hope this was coherent paragraphs of thought.)
@gaditb @AnarchoNinaWrites First time I hear about the Aum Jews&Masons angle. I'm curious about Aum ever since their members visited Nikola Tesla museum in Belgrade, but I can't find a lot of resources in English. I don't want to delail this thread, but I'd like to be a part of Fediverse Aum Shinrikyo Special Interest Club, once I find one.
@rubinjoni @AnarchoNinaWrites The main English text about Aum Shinrikyo from what I saw is Robert Lifton (z"l)'s "Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism".
Aside: You Should Definitely Read Robert Lifton.
His work on Thought Reform And "Brainwashing" was used basically immediately, passing around chapter 11 underground in the organization, by people in the Moonies trying to rebuild their agency and figure out what happened to themselves and how to get out.
If you noticed over the past ~decade people begin talking about "milieu control", or the downstream-of-that concept of the "cultic mileu", that's from Robert Lifton. Also even more widespread the concept of a "thought-terminating cliche" was crystalized my him.
("Destroying The World To Save It" goes over his theorizing, so you can get that from there.)
@rubinjoni @AnarchoNinaWrites My knowledge of Aum is basically entirely downstream of (a) that book and (b) independent researcher Sarah Hightower ("nezumi_ningen" in a few places), who posted a lot on Twitter and guested a lot on podcasts (and was cited for her knowledge in various articles/papers on related topics).
I'm not personally a particularly prolific knower/poster of things about Aum Shinrikyo.
I have a personal/communal interest in antisemitism and related topics, for obvious survival-feeling reasons.
@gaditb @AnarchoNinaWrites Is Sarah on the Fediverse somewhere?
@AnarchoNinaWrites Are there anti-masonic wingers in the US, or it's considered a done deal? I see anti-catolicism making a comeback, probably due to a succession of reasonable Popes.
@rubinjoni There are, they're still around - but right now the Catholics are too important to the fascist program to risk agitating them by bringing it up.
