I’ve been thinking about writing this for a while, and while it’s not so much about writing, it does have some history tie-ins. It’s political. I will go somewhere with this, I swear. I think. And it may be a two-parter.
In 2018, someone I’d known some years ago and had kept some social media contact with responded to one of my Facebook posts (which was a link about voter purges in Georgia) with a bizarre comment in all caps: “NO ILLEGALS OR DEAD TO VOTE” complete with a link to some dodgy video on an off-brand site. The person in question had always been this kind of love-and-light hippie (not entirely unproblematic, but basically benign), so I was puzzled enough to check the link. It was a bizarre rant about “illegal refugees” in a “UN-planned invasion” pouring into the country, spreading horror in their wake. Now, these particular people were also apparently time travelers, as they were bringing in smallpox and leprosy (I am not making that up.) Possibly King’s evil and an ague or two as well. Pause for a beat to contemplate that. I was aghast, disgusted, and bemused, in that WTAF kind of way: did she not know how to…read the room? Why would she think I would be at all receptive to this ludicrous, hateful, xenophobic, racist garbage? How did she think I would react to the demonization of oppressed people desperately trying to survive—people with whom I have much more common ground than someone like her?
Naturally, I dropped all contact with her because when someone goes from pleasant vague acquaintance to “what is wrong with you?” in a twinkling that’s what you do, but did check out what was unfolding on her page, and this was my first experience of the movement…known by a certain alphabet letter. There was all this horrifying conspiratorial mess, served up with the most rabidly racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and frankly bat-guano bizarre commentary. I check on her social media from time to time; her latest obsession is very trans- and homophobic. Post after post of it. I wonder how many of her former acquaintances and friends from marginalized groups now feel betrayed: so this is what you really think of us? Have you always thought this? (To clarify, and this is very important; I’m putting it in bold so people will not try to assume this is negotiable with me: I am not down with either homophobia or transphobia. Ever. I’ve angsted over how to present historical LGBTQ+ issues in my writing without suggesting I promote marginalizing anyone, even casually—this is especially so because I’m Muslim, and I strongly believe we collectively need to clean our house on that, especially because it wasn’t historically and culturally always the case. I’ve had friends read for that where I’ve touched on it, which doesn’t mean I’m home-free. Anyone can mess up, however unintentionally, and even unintentional needs to be addressed. It’s my responsibility to own that; the same goes for antisemitism and anti-black racism in my community.)
I framed her “conversion” as a strange volte-face, but I don’t think this is true. I suspect a lot of the previously expressed allyship was convenience. I know that we’re seeing a lot of masks dropped with this. “This isn’t you, is it?” Sadly, it IS them. It is who they are, and it is their responsibility. I’ve lost a few friends in the past few years over politics and realizing they weren’t who I thought they were, some of which losses cut much more deeply than this acquaintance’s did. But it was my first experience of this nascent cult.
My second experience involved a couple in my neighborhood who owned a cute little shop and who’d always been kind and friendly. They got gradually more distant to everyone—not socializing, not stopping to converse, and then one day the signs went up in the windows of their store: carefully crafted and cryptic, one just featuring…that letter of the alphabet. They soon sold their store and moved away. Everyone noticed how sad they seemed; I certainly did. I still worry about them, even while abhorring what they have bought into and what it says of them.
I think about the sadness, the shrieking, the anger: that movement seems to produce no joy. At most, there seems to be a kind of shrill, righteous glee, a spurious kind of triumph. Which is one of the reasons I think that ultimately this, like many such kind of radical fringe movements, will fail (iA): it offers its followers nothing tangibly positive. It destroys, but does not build up. It offers nothing in return.
I have read a fair amount about fundamentalist and extremist movements through history, and these are just some very scanty thoughts on how this fits with them. One of the things that I’ve seen discussed by many writers is that these movements rely on revisionist narratives (Karen Armstrong in particular discusses this in a way I found very accessible): that brand of fundamentalism/extremism is reactionary; it frames itself as a return to the past as a reaction to the “evils” of modernity, when really the “roots” it’s trying to claim are mostly wishful thinking. It’s reactionary and revisionist, claiming faithfulness to an “ideal” past that did not exist. It requires the creation of a narrative of a kind of purity, and a narrative of an “evil” to rail against. In these things, this particular movement is typical, with its focus on a “return” to the “good old days,” and its creation of bogeymen. In all of this, the movement at hand is rather typical.
However, here’s where it goes off-script, even while it tries to adhere to the script: to be compelling, the narrative that accompanies these movements has to have some roots in legitimate grievance, the corruption of the elite being the most common. For people living in a state where a very rigidly stratified inequality exists, this is going to resonate. Hence many of these movements find traction as populist movements, and a following among those who are marginalized. The vision they offer of bettering oneself is presented as a kind of meritocracy, usually spiritual: instead of having people who are at the top because of wealth and family, one flourishes due to the merits of one’s soul, as expressed by how pious one is, how “pure” one’s faith and behavior is. It is therefore theoretically attainable for anyone to be “better”: just be good enough, for x value of good. There is no accident of birth involved, or acquisition of money. There is usually a denial of the material, in the form of asceticism (think of ibn Tumart’s Almohads, or Savonarola’s Piagnonis.) There may be a carefully-crafted narrative giving these leaders a particular legitimacy to lead (ibn Tumart presented himself with a genealogy of descent from the Prophet SAWS to give himself additional legitimacy, for example.) But, regardless, there’s a level of equality and justice being promoted. Denial, not indulgence, is good; indulgence in the material, after all, is the mark of the corrupt elite.
These movements often have a stated commitment to some form of social justice, of collective care. They often act on that (true, it’s really inconsistent and often does more harm than good, but it’s a common stated goal/act.) There’s a certain level of carrot before the stick comes out—and the stick, it is said, is for those other people. Until of course it isn’t. Because no one can be “pure” enough, even with rigid guidance. And while it can be of comfort to some to have a rigid ideology to follow that covers every aspect of life (you know what you must and must not wear or eat, say, with no interpretation room, and with whom you can associate), that can wear many people down after a while, and they start to question it, simply because it isn’t very nice to deny oneself any kind of joy or pleasure. Never mind if they start seeing their leaders failing in that regard. Then more sticks come out, hitting in many directions. Eventually, such movements may eat themselves. But the denial of the worldly and the stated goal to level the social order are common threads, and commonly appealing. At first, until the cognitive dissonance gets to be too much.
This is where this current…movement…will likely fizzle rather than gain ground into a full revolutionary movement, to my thinking. It rails against an elite, but is very particular about what it assigns to this “elite” in a way that doesn’t reflect reality, in large part because it also loves money, and its concept of “purity” and “right” is exceedingly muddled, to put it mildly. See “prosperity gospel.” It doesn’t level, and it’s not really about any merit, and it’s hard to rail against the evil trappings of the modern world when you like the trappings so much. And it doesn’t offer any form of possible social betterment and welfare in the form of communal thinking and care for others (or at least among members of the in-group, because it has no inclusive vision.) All it really offers is lies and blame for The Other, and maybe the dopamine rush of “belonging” to a group who “knows the truth.” But when that fraudulent “truth” is exposed again and again even with the mere passage of time (predicted events don’t happen, as they haven’t), attrition of the group occurs. And when it doesn’t offer anything to make things better for those within it (because it won’t; that is ultimately antithetical to this ideology), it will lose even more traction among many.
Never mind that we exist in a highly pluralistic society, where the boundaries and borders do blur, so that one can’t purely exist in a group of only like-minded ideologues with no experience of “the other” unless one lives in a really strictly-enforced compound (that may be coming, I’m afraid, for the hardcore true believers. There is already a church affiliated with this cult.) Sooner or later, most of the people who’ve bought this and continue to buy it because they’re so heavily invested in it will have to look into the eyes of someone they know who is a person of color, or gay, or trans, or Muslim, or Jewish, or an immigrant, or just—gasp!—liberal, and either explain to them why they are not worthy of being treated as a human being, or fold and realize they’ve bought into a terrible parcel of lies because they can’t say it.
As for both the hippie-gone-fascist lady and the couple, I’d like to think that ultimately they’ll come around and recognize that they’ve invested in hatred and rebuild their lives and grow, but I won’t subject myself to it in the meantime, and nor should anyone else be expected to make space for it, on either the personal or social levels.
Maryam Payne, Writer & Editor 