The Rise of Anti-history

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Democratic Coalition
@TheDemCoalition
"For Marjorie Taylor Greene and others in the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, anti-history has become a shibboleth. They drop historical references and facts into political debates, but without regard to context, logic, or proportionality."

The Rise of Anti-history
The Trumpist wing of the GOP uses history as a bludgeon, without regard to context, logic, or proportionality.
theatlantic.com
10:47 AM · Jul 10, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/republicans-anti-history-marjorie-taylor-greene/619403/

In June, Marjorie Taylor Greene visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The visit was, by her own account, revelatory. Earlier in the spring, the Georgia member of the U.S. House compared Food City, a grocery chain that identified vaccinated employees on their name tags, to the Nazis, who forced Jews to wear Stars of David. A few days later, she compared Democrats to Nazis.

Now she was contrite. “When you make a mistake, you should own it. I have made a mistake, and it’s really bothered me for a couple of weeks now, so I definitely want to own it,” she said. “The Holocaust—there’s nothing comparable to it.”

The lesson wore off in less than a month. When President Joe Biden announced plans to send public-health workers door-to-door to encourage people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, Greene tweeted: “People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations.”

Another museum visit would probably be futile. For Greene and others in the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, anti-history has become a shibboleth. They drop historical references and facts into political debates, but without regard to context, logic, or proportionality. Their villains include Adolf Hitler, but also Mao Zedong and Joseph McCarthy; the Holocaust was bad, but also, Jewish people control the weather. The pose is more than the simple historical illiteracy that’s endemic among American politicians. In this GOP faction, members are willfully ignorant of history, which they view in purely instrumental terms, as a bludgeon to wield even as they do not bother to understand it.

*snip*

[elleng]

1. Shibboleth:

a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important.

"the majority, under the influence of vague nineteenth-century shibboleths, understood him to be associating himself with the doctrine that every nation has a right to be a sovereign state"

[keithbvadu2]

2. Revisionist history?

[underpants]

3. 👀

Would you PLEASE stop posting all this interesting reading? Dammit!

[gulliver]

4. Hopefully this is teaching us how people actually work.

They take actions that lead them to food, shelter, clothing, property, sex, good times, etc. The words and motivations behind those actions vary wildly and absurdly in terms of reasoning and emotion. If you put cow manure on your fields because you think it pleases the Corn God or because it adds nutrients to the soil, it still gets the job done.

MTG is probably eating better than ever, staying in better digs, surrounded by more positive social attention than ever. What's her motivation for not continuing to shamelessly grift, mislead, and bloviate?

[appalachiablue]

5. K/R