The rhetoric of fascism

Here’s a fascinating discussion by Jennifer Mercieca, a TAMU professor who studies the structure and use of political rhetoric, on how Tucker Carlson’s nightly fascist sausage factory churns out the product.

Carlson is now telling his audience that the patriots who invaded the Capitol on 1/6 were actually being manipulated by FBI agents, who seduced them via covert agents into undertaking the attack, in order to provide a pretext for the Biden administration’s authoritarian crushing of all dissent. The “basis” for these claims are a bunch of insane conspiracy theories about how unnamed sources in government charging documents against the 1/6 rioters are all FBI agents, because of course they are.

Mercieca explains why the Fox audience believes this nonsense, and how conspiracism of this type cannot be dislodged by any amount of evidence to the contrary. Of course Carlson is getting a lot of help from other minions of America’s fascist movement, such as Glenn Greenwald and other “leftists.” (I have never seen the slightest bit of evidence that Greenwald was ever a leftist, but apparently hating George W. Bush automatically made you a leftist in 2006 or something).

Anyway, read the thread.