Yup. This is what right wingers and Christians do. I’ve often seen people try to claim that right wingers in the USA are different from the rest of the world and I’ve regularly heard the “not all Christians” line too.
But as someone from a country that used to have a system called ‘apartheid’, I can tell you that this is exactly what fucking right wing conservative Christians do when given half the chance (and when they don’t have the chance, they cry about being discriminated against). Plus every single Christian asshole teacher and authority figure I had to deal with in high school and boarding school were exactly the types that would embrace and love authoritarianism.
Personally I am not shocked at all that these people are doing this. What I am shocked about is that so many fucking idiots actually believed these little fascists when they claimed to be pro free speech and freedom in general. And I cannot put into words the disappointment I feel that so much of gen Z fell for this bullshit. The kids are supposed to be where the hope for the future is. But these kids turned into a bunch of fucking little bootlickers that support the kind of people I’ve fought against since I was a kid.
Definitely agreed with this point and I haven’t completely lost hope yet that these kids will wake up and see what’s going on. I’m 10x more willing to forgive and give more chances to gen Z that have grown up being brainwashed by garbage than I am as far as my own peers and older are concerned.
I’m starting to firmly believe that the biggest cause of all of this is enshittification. And I’m not just talking about Facebook but also the music, movies and games industries. In fact I recently made a post ranting about how Sonic the Hedgehog has been reduced from an anti-authoritarian icon to a fluffy teddy bear that’s all about ‘family’ and top 40 pop and McDonald’s references.
The grifters like Joe Rogan that showed up aren’t the cause but rather a symptom of an entertainment industry that stopped producing art and started chasing lines on graphs that go up and down and giving us nothing but safe, middle of the road, lowest common denominator slop. So there was an opening for anything other than that slop. While I grew up with NOFX shouting about how the idiots are taking over, these kids grew up with fucking Jay Z and Kanye and whatever other fucking assholes singing about dancing in the club and walking around like living billboards for Ray Ban and Nike.
IMO, when the revolution comes, the people currently running things in the entertainment industry need to be amongst the first to see rope.