Re: <nettime> Fw: Has the right gone full Alt

Thanks Brian. That quote (and my approach to a lot of my work on digital hate / radical right, etc) is about trying to grasp the logic of a movement or idea. By logic, I mean what makes it compelling to individuals, why it "makes sense" to them, and in turn makes sense of the world around them. Most often this logic has very little to do with the kind of rational deduction associated with the term.

Indeed, while QAnon often refers to reason, common sense, and the Enlightenment, this is a very invested mode of truth-seeking - and gets further spliced together with powerful religious and eschatological narratives, as the article aimed to show. This is about identity and belonging, about us versus them and works at a deep emotional and psychological level. As others on the list mentioned, this means that "debunking" and the cottage industry of "fact-checking" has almost no impact on the pull something like QAnon has.

From a research perspective, I've become more interested in the last few years in deferring criticality and focusing first on sympathy, using "methodological empathy" to understand what these ideas offer. QAnon offers its followers a sense of being in the right, with good and against evil, of being savvy rather than a sheep, morally and cognitively superior - but more understandably also seems to hold out a kind of anchor in a complex world, a rock holding firm against spiritual and moral decline.

best,

Luke

On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 at 19:06, Brian Holmes <[email protected]> wrote:

The text was good Luke, thanks.
You say: "the first step is to understand how statements like this make sense at
psychological, social, and cultural levels—how these powerful mythologies come to be
internalized, endorsed, and propagated."
You ought to tell the list a little more about this - and where you think this particular mythology is going next.

best, BH

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 10:27 PM Luke Munn <[email protected]> wrote:
Kia ora Nettimers,

Been writing on QAnon recently, which highlighted several of the themes discussed here, so have attached the PDF for those interested. It's an academic article, with the genre conventions that brings with it, but hopefully pretty readable and accessible.

best,
Luke

Have Faith and Question Everything: Exploring One Year of QAnon Posts

QAnon is an influential conspiracy theory that centers on a nefarious “deep state” network. At the core of the movement is Q, an unknown individual claiming to have classified access. This article examines one year of Q’s posts. These posts are read by followers, who follow the “crumbs”, find new information, and bake them into conspiratorial narratives. Faith is one key theme, scripture and spiritual language gesturing to an apocalyptic battle between the children of light and the children of darkness. Skepticism is another key theme, a stress on the enlightened individual who employs free-thought to uncover the truth. These twin themes champion the questioning individual who constructs counter-narratives while supporting a tight-knit community that employs powerful religious narratives. This unique blend contributes one explanation for QAnon’s ability to mobilize an increasingly large and diverse following.

On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 at 17:02, Frédéric Neyrat <[email protected]> wrote:
thanks!

the conclusion differs from SK's one:

"JEFF SHARLET I don't think they can. I almost think they shouldn't try. This is one of those things, the harder you push against it, the stronger it's going to become. I think we need to just keep on speaking clearly, transparently, plainly, showing the sources of data, laying it out and not trying to argue with a conspiracy. You can't win that argument. There's no point in which the believers are going to say, oh, now I see.
BOB GARFIELD I think we should try and do the real work of democracy and build something beautiful democracy we haven't yet had maybe and let them join if they want. But we don't counter evangelism with our own evangelism.
So, if one imagines a counter-evangelism though (and not just "data" and "transparency" vs darkness), the problem is that a religion cannot just be conjured up ex nihilo (can it be?). Maybe we need to return to something Kant thought: reason (not understanding/data etc) as having the capacity to create its own horizon, its own aims. A horizon of beauty and justice and truth.
Truth is not a datum, it's its destruction (old Lacano-Badian-Hegelian distinction between knowledge/object and truth/subject). I would say: how can we create situations in which truth, as a subjective experience, might occur?
Brian says: the Messiah. Precisely what cannot be anticipated, imagined, embodied before the fact. Anti-religious in a way - or it's like faith against belief; Qanon is full of belief but deprived of faith, that is to say the confidence in an absence, the confidence based on this-Other-who-does-not-exist. DT & co are the obscenity of that which refuses the absence, the obscenity of a rejection/denial of the lack - never concede, never concede that there is a lack, never concede the genocide of natives, never concede finitude, etc.). A Messianic experience is an experience of truth. But it cannot lead to a church.
What would be a Messianic experience for the mass? No idea. A Messianic New Deal? Or a revolution. But which one?
FN

_________________________________
________________

On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 7:46 PM Ryan Griffis <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi all,

Coincidentally, I just recently heard an interview with Vanity Fair writer, Jeff Sharlot, about the very topic of Gnosticism, relative to these concerns. I found it fairly convincing…

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/ancient-heresy-helps-us-understand-qanon-on-the-media

Take care everyone,
Ryan

> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2020 23:23:08 +0000
> From: "Kurtz, Steven" <[email protected]>
> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: <nettime> Fw: Has the right gone full Alt_?
> Message-ID: <[email protected]" target="_blank">[email protected]>
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>
> Hey Brian, welcome to the wilderness my friend. I have been yelling about this for many years, but basically talking to myself. All the knowledge in the world about surveillance capitalism, postfordism, and neoliberalism doesn?t help much (a little with concepts of alienation and its other treks into psychology) when the question is best answered by the history of religion and comparative religion. My education was certainly deficient in these topics, although I have been trying to remedy this situation. Even while I witnessed the rise of the religious right at closing decades of the last century, I never thought it to be more than a political problem. Now it?s clear that the ?political problem? is much more than that as we witness religious illiberalism taking over nations all over the globe, and unfortunately, the left doesn?t have the categories to understand this at the grass roots level, let alone act against it in any reasonable manner. We do well at understanding this phenomen
> on in terms of power constellations at the top of the hierarchy (our traditional comfort zone), but as to the rest of it the critique seems to consist of ?Why are people acting crazy??
>
> I am the first to admit I have no systematic analysis of this ?crazy,? but I do have a few scattered thoughts that I am trying to order. First, we have seen this crazy before, and have seen it for centuries. I believe what we are witnessing (particularly in the US) is a Gnostic revival. It?s just not in a form we are used to, or we wouldn?t see it as crazy at all, but just as another religious faith. The devoted are out fighting the demiurge?the experts, the deep state, scientists, and others rulers of the false real in an effort to get beyond the flawed knowledge of authority to that of deep esoteric knowledge derived from personal transcendental experience and shared in fellowship among those who know (those who have been red-pilled).
>
> Many outlets for this way of being are readily available. It?s best if it?s able to survive virtually as social media platforms will help with expanding the fellowship over vast territories and with its separation from the forces of the demiurge. Gnostic groups do not require a messiah, although it?s fine if there is one. The cult of Trump is evidence of that. But they can also be decentralized groups such as in the yoga and wellness community* where an aristocracy of influencers lead the flock, or a distributed network like Qanon, which is fundamentally leaderless. All of these groups, and we must include the Evangelicals, LDS, and conservative Catholics, are concerned most with the elimination of ignorance even more than the elimination of sin. In fact, in this century sin has become much more tolerable than ignorance. (I should note that this list of groups is very intersectional and probably should also include the virtual social justice warriors cancelling people who don?t und
> erstand the difference between sexual orientation and sexual preference. Just not woke?the left?s equivalent of the red pill.) The reason knowledge is so important is that it can function as a virtual glue to build community and a way for many members to say I may not be educated like the members of the demiurge, but I am more intelligent and better informed, but most importantly, the goal is transformation?to be a part of a constellation that gives you the power to transcend the limits of a false given. Take the red pill and emerge anew. I don?t want to play down the former two reasons for becoming a part of the Gnostic front. They are significant. For Evangelicals and other conservative Christians the breaking of the spiritual consensus in the West in the 60s was traumatic, and the erosion of a national spiritual life has continued ever since. From their perspective, Gnostic revelation could bring back the consensus. The fact that yoga and wellness can commune with evangelicals t
> hrough Qanon or anti-vax seems to be an indication of this possibility from a Gnostic point of view. For the greater Trump cult, being viewed as ignorant rubes by their educational superiors (now more than ever as Trump continues to loot and grift this class) has been a source of aggravation. Gnosticism proves their greater intelligence and their superior knowledge that in turn acts as a real power lift to their pride and well-being. The elite of the Republican Party understand this desire and are taking advantage of it. In part, this is why the Republican Party is becoming the working class party in the US.
>
> We do need a new ecological aesthetic (CAE just did a book on that), and we do need a new political theology. I can?t help but think of the anti-vax motto??You have data, but we have stories.? But none of that does any good if it is not accompanied by a massive intervention campaigns into the Gnostic networks of alternative reality. This is such a significant site in the lives of millions, and we ignore it at our own peril.
>
> *I want to make clear that with the exceptions of Qanon and anti-vax I am not indicting every person who participates in these various groups?only a variable subsection is a part of the Gnostic front. Membership tends to happen in spiritually-oriented groups since they are most of the way there already.
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