We Hunted The Mammoth
One of the most perceptive analyses of Trump and his followers was written more than two decades ago. I’m talking, of course, of Umberto Eco’s oft-discussed essay on what he calls Ur Fascism or Eternal Fascism, his attempt to set forth the central features that define Fascism. I reread it today for the umpteenth time, and was struck again by its eerie prescience.
So I took a look at the Donald Trump Pepe blog today, for the first time in a long time, and the memes on display there seem to be getting darker and cruder and more violent as election day draws closer.
Most of us like to think of ourselves as originals. But when it comes to communicating with other human beings, we’re not quite as original as we think.
When we talk, and write, we not only use words; we use a wide assortment of stock phrases that we’ve picked up along the way. Some of these phrases are basic building blocks of language, more or less essential to communication; others are, as the expression goes, worn-out clichés. Some of these clichés are so burned into our brains that we almost can’t help using them — though we sometimes apologize for it afterwards (or even before).
So our old friend Roosh V, the rapey pickup guru and philosopher of “neomasculinity,” has some … interesting thoughts on the election. Here are some recent highlights from his Twitter feed.
During a speech yesterday, the newly “unshackled” Donald Trump denounced the women who have accused him of sexual harassment and assault as “horrible people” and “horrible, horrible liars.”
But he also devoted a good deal of time to another group that he claims he’s fighting against, a conspiratorial cabal he variously labeled “the establishment,” “those who control the levers of power in Washington,” “the global special interests,” and “people that don’t have your good in mind.”
With more and more women stepping forward with stories of being sexually harassed and/or assaulted by Donald Trump, Buzzfeed has set up an email address (and a Google Doc form) to make it easy for anyone with a “Trump story” of their own to contact Buzzfeed’s reporters.
After that Access Hollywood tape of Trump bragging that his fame allowed him to get away with sexually assault women on a whim, his supporters and surrogates seized on what they saw as the ultimate rebuttal to Trump’s critics. Borrowing the argument from a meme that had already been circulating on the Internet for some time, they declared that they were “much more bothered by what Hillary has done than by what Trump has said.”
The debate is here! (Well, as I write this, almost here.) And I am practically jumping out of my own skin. How about you all? Discuss.
Embattled presidential candidate/sexual predator Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal this morning that there is “zero chance” that he’ll be dropping out of the race, because “the support I’m getting is unbelievable.”
Some of the most unbelievable support is coming from a longtime fan of his known on the Internet as Heartiste — an extravagantly hateful pickup artist very familiar to readers of this blog.
As longtime observers of the manosphere know all too well, it’s not always easy to draw a clear line between “pickup artistry” and “raping drunk women.”
That line seems to have been completely nonexistent when it came to the trio of pickup artists profiled in a long and horrifying Daily Beast piece by Brandy Zadrozny, with the self-explanatory title “Pickup Artists Preyed on Drunk Women, Brought Them Home, and Raped Them.”