Recommended Reading: Culture War and Lone Wolves
Recommended Reading: Culture War and Lone Wolves
This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack: Joshua Hill, Laura Jeffries, Justin Ling, Kelly Weill, Don Moynihan, and Noah Berlatsky
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This Week's Recommended Reading on Substack:
writes that “effective at winning – effective politics, that is, which doesn’t necessarily have much connection to effective governance or effective planning for the future of this world. Again, it likely doesn't matter for the election, which will probably be determined based on vibes, both the terrible ones emanating from the Trump-Vance ticket and the relative normalcy coming from Harris-Walz. But it does matter for our future. A world where the U.S. continues to invest heavily in a military that maintains imperialism, where we fund genocide, where we scapegoat migrants and only make minor progressive economic tweaks isn’t a sustainable world.”
writes that “at the time of their own crimes, these men were also described by many in law enforcement, the media, and the public as ‘lone wolves’ because they were not card-carrying members of white supremacist or nationalist organizations. The insufficiency of the term is remarkable considering that frequent copying of manifestos, decades-long fandom surrounding race-war fantasy books like The Turner Diaries and Siege, and shared vocabulary drawn from extremist theories such as the Great Replacement have more than demonstrated that the circulation of influential texts happens without in-person or even online group membership.”
writes that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s “strange odyssey to the heart of American paranoia has built an incredible meta-theory which tells his supporters that they have fallen victim to medical experimentation and biological warfare. The only reason they haven’t noticed is because they have been attacked with relentless brainwashing and propaganda from all sides. The government has not resisted because it has been co-opted, the victim of a regime change that happened long ago. It is impossible to tell who is, and is not, part of this tentacular beast: It could be your mailwoman, your neighbor, the man standing on the corner.”
writes that “Florida remains MFL’s greatest success story—and possibly its own worst advertising. Most Americans oppose efforts to restrict books in public schools, new polling from the Knight Foundation this month finds. Most Americans also believe school officials are qualified to select appropriate books. MFL has linked itself to symbols of a politically divisive era—to empty libraries and raucous school board meetings—with which Americans are increasingly fatigued. That’s not to say MFL is going away. The group is well funded, politically connected, and has established one of the right’s best new ground games, with chapters targeting individual counties.”
writes “if Heritage is getting all of the attention with Project 2025, the CPI-aligned network is doing what Trump actually wants: developing detailed plans for governing without drawing too much critical scrutiny. Their desire to hide their plans should be a real concern, given their willingness to embrace authoritarian models of governing, like purging the bureaucracy, revoking programs put in place by Congress, turning the legal system into a partisan tool, and using the military to end dissent.”
writes that “Tim Walz has famously, and effectively, charged Republicans with being “weird” because of their obsession with cruelty and bullying. And sure enough, many people suggested that Coulter, et al., were not just horrible, but weird and broken for attacking a 17-year-old expressing pride in his father. Coulter is weird and broken—or, at least, I would like to live in a world where it is considered weird and horrible to bully neurodivergent kids, or for that matter neurodivergent adults. I’m not convinced we live in that world, though—not even among Democrats or progressives.”
