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Jared Yates Sexton: "...powerful white supremacists use conspiracy theories to provoke violence"
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1269278735133532160.html
Jared Yates Sexton
18 minutes ago, 15 tweets, 5 min read
We REALLY need to talk about how powerful white supremacists use conspiracy theories to destroy movements and provoke violence and crush dissent.
This history isn't taught and I didn't know until I started doing research on my book American Rule.
1/
First things first: the underlying theme here is that for the entirety of American history the powerful and white supremacists have used conspiracy theories to undermine any actual protest, claiming it's an evil conspiracy instead of an actual, legitimate complaint.
2/
We could go back to the very Founding, but let's start with John Brown, an abolitionist who actually did intent to start a revolution by helping slaves rise against their masters.
His attack on southern slavery set off a paranoid period that enabled the Civil War.
3/
The Confederacy was a dystopia enabled by paranoid conspiracy theories that the North was engaged in massive conspiracies to undermine slavery. These weren't true, but succession was predicated on that fever dream fear.
That fascist country was founded on paranoia.
4/
The Confederacy saw itself as the bulwark against evil conspiracies against white supremacy. They believed they were God's chosen nation and God's champion of his planned white supremacist order.
Again, the CSA was a racist, Christian nation in action and theory.
5/
Following the Confederacy's fall, white supremacists claimed that African America success was part of a white conspiracy to undermine the South instead of personal and communal excellence.
The paranoia that enabled the CSA continued well after their defeat.
6/
The first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was dedicated to terrorizing blacks, but also to seeking out white conspirators "manipulating" them.
It was an invisible army against an invisible, nonexistent threat, and saw freed slaves as objects of widespread manipulation.
7/
I want this to sink in. White supremacists do not believe African Americans are capable of agency. They saw slavery as a benevolent service, an act of affection, because they knew better than the slaves.
They truly believe African Americans are being used and manipulated.
8/
Skip forward to 1917 and the Russian Revolution. That uprising scared the hell out of Americans and made them vulnerable to conspiracy theories that communists were going to reach into America and manipulate minorities and the poor to foment their own revolutions.
9/
This led to the Red Summer of 1919, where riots broke out because white were terrified that African Americans were being manipulated by communists to stir revolts.
This was a period of disgusting violence and discrimination. Papers like the New York Times trafficked in it.
10/
For context, from 1882 to 1950 some five thousand African Americans were lynched or tortured to death in America, many of them as a message that uprisings or revolutions would not be tolerated and to curb what white supremacists saw as outside manipulation.
11/
The Red Summer was madness and has been more or less erased from the history books and curricula, but showed how white supremacists traffic in conspiracy theories to undermine legitimate civil rights protest and unrest.
12/
Of course, there's a long history in America of these practices, and no individual embodies that history than Joseph McCarthy, who used conspiracy theories to harass, intimidate, and purse minorities from government, including African Americans, women, and LGBTQ Americans.
13/
McCarthy is one of the most known conspiracy theorist white supremacists, but there were plenty of them and organizations like the John Burch Society that claimed communists were behind the Civil Rights Movement and every African American movement.
14/
I would be remiss, of course, if I didn't mention very quickly that one of the founders of the John Burch society, which pushed conspiracy theories and weaponized paranoia, was the father of the Koch Brothers, who created the Tea Party Movement and continued the work.
15/
Jared Yates Sexton
18 minutes ago, 15 tweets, 5 min read
We REALLY need to talk about how powerful white supremacists use conspiracy theories to destroy movements and provoke violence and crush dissent.
This history isn't taught and I didn't know until I started doing research on my book American Rule.
American Rule by Jared Yates Sexton: 9781524745714 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/american-rule-by-jared-yates-sexton/
1/
First things first: the underlying theme here is that for the entirety of American history the powerful and white supremacists have used conspiracy theories to undermine any actual protest, claiming it's an evil conspiracy instead of an actual, legitimate complaint.
2/
We could go back to the very Founding, but let's start with John Brown, an abolitionist who actually did intent to start a revolution by helping slaves rise against their masters.
His attack on southern slavery set off a paranoid period that enabled the Civil War.
3/
The Confederacy was a dystopia enabled by paranoid conspiracy theories that the North was engaged in massive conspiracies to undermine slavery. These weren't true, but succession was predicated on that fever dream fear.
That fascist country was founded on paranoia.
4/
The Confederacy saw itself as the bulwark against evil conspiracies against white supremacy. They believed they were God's chosen nation and God's champion of his planned white supremacist order.
Again, the CSA was a racist, Christian nation in action and theory.
5/
Following the Confederacy's fall, white supremacists claimed that African America success was part of a white conspiracy to undermine the South instead of personal and communal excellence.
The paranoia that enabled the CSA continued well after their defeat.
6/
The first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan was dedicated to terrorizing blacks, but also to seeking out white conspirators "manipulating" them.
It was an invisible army against an invisible, nonexistent threat, and saw freed slaves as objects of widespread manipulation.
7/
I want this to sink in. White supremacists do not believe African Americans are capable of agency. They saw slavery as a benevolent service, an act of affection, because they knew better than the slaves.
They truly believe African Americans are being used and manipulated.
8/
Skip forward to 1917 and the Russian Revolution. That uprising scared the hell out of Americans and made them vulnerable to conspiracy theories that communists were going to reach into America and manipulate minorities and the poor to foment their own revolutions.
9/
This led to the Red Summer of 1919, where riots broke out because white were terrified that African Americans were being manipulated by communists to stir revolts.
This was a period of disgusting violence and discrimination. Papers like the New York Times trafficked in it.
10/
For context, from 1882 to 1950 some five thousand African Americans were lynched or tortured to death in America, many of them as a message that uprisings or revolutions would not be tolerated and to curb what white supremacists saw as outside manipulation.
11/
The Red Summer was madness and has been more or less erased from the history books and curricula, but showed how white supremacists traffic in conspiracy theories to undermine legitimate civil rights protest and unrest.
12/
Of course, there's a long history in America of these practices, and no individual embodies that history than Joseph McCarthy, who used conspiracy theories to harass, intimidate, and purse minorities from government, including African Americans, women, and LGBTQ Americans.
13/
McCarthy is one of the most known conspiracy theorist white supremacists, but there were plenty of them and organizations like the John Burch Society that claimed communists were behind the Civil Rights Movement and every African American movement.
14/
I would be remiss, of course, if I didn't mention very quickly that one of the founders of the John Burch society, which pushed conspiracy theories and weaponized paranoia, was the father of the Koch Brothers, who created the Tea Party Movement and continued the work.
15/
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