Billionaire and maybe-Twitter purchaser Elon Musk certain loves memes. Sometimes they make sense, typically they don’t (and often he’s not the one making them.) Thursday’s viral meme definitely fell into the latter two classes.
The argument being made right here is a straightforward one: From 2008 to 2021, the political left moved much more to the left, whereas the appropriate remained in the identical actual spot. This I didn’t change! It was the left who left me! perspective is a fairly frequent trope amongst center-right sorts, but it surely’s merely not true. While maybe comforting, there’s a lot of empirical proof to refute the core declare.
Obviously, political whims shift over time, and events might flip-flop on particular person points. But broadly talking, the appropriate has been shifting to the extremes for many years. Can you think about the fashionable mainstream Republican response to President Richard Nixon’s determination to create a model new federal company to guard the surroundings? Or how about President Ronald Reagan’s determination to supply amnesty to just about three million undocumented immigrants? How about President George W. Bush’s speech during which he mentioned the phrases “Islam is peace” — even when his administration’s actions mentioned in any other case?
Look at how rapidly the Republican Party turned towards 2008 presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and 2012 presidential nominee (and now senator) Mitt Romney, who’ve each been slammed as RINOs (“Republicans in Name Only”). The face of the social gathering is now represented by the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Arguably the highest-profile non-congressional Republican proper now (moreover Trump) is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has spent the final yr passing a dizzying array of payments designed to cater particularly to the far-right.
The face of the social gathering is now represented by the likes of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
As for Democrats? Well, they’ve positively moved to the left on a couple of key points. For occasion, the social gathering’s stance on LGBTQ rights has definitely shifted prior to now a number of years, even when that hasn’t resulted in a ton of LGBTQ-inclusive insurance policies being applied on the federal stage. (Meanwhile Republicans like DeSantis have not too long ago gone on the assault, with laws just like the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” invoice focusing on LGBTQ academics and youth.)
Democrats have additionally, usually talking, shifted to the left on sentencing reform and police accountability, even when, once more, that hasn’t resulted in a ton of coverage to replicate this stance. For all of the thought items discussing whether or not cities ought to “defund the police,” metropolis officers in each purple and blue states are as soon as once more pouring cash into legislation enforcement. Elected Democrats nonetheless are typically fairly reasonable on most points — particularly when in comparison with “leftist” positions overseas.
To take one other instance, whereas different international locations have government-funded well being care, the U.S. stays tied to its private-market insurance coverage business. As I’ve written prior to now, the positions usually held by Democrats that get labeled by the press as “extreme” or “leftist” — resembling bans on high-capacity firearm magazines, common background checks on gun purchases, assist for LGBTQ rights and taxing the ultra-rich — aren’t truly that excessive. These insurance policies are typically fairly widespread with most of the people, which is one thing you may’t precisely say about Republicans and their campaign to ban books, prohibit abortion rights and assault LGBTQ folks.
Perhaps, as others resembling The Washington Post’s Will Oremus have mentioned, it may very well be that that is simply how Musk (and others) sees the world round them: not within the type of precise coverage however by means of the lens of the tradition wars.
And usually talking, it is sensible that having curated a media food plan heavy on the misinformation peddled by Fox News and co. or surrounding your self with pundits screaming about how trans individuals are supposedly ruining all the pieces good on the planet might warp your perspective. If you spent the summer time of 2020 being inundated by Fox News footage of Black Lives Matter protests, you may genuinely assume that the left is out of management. This notion, nevertheless, merely doesn’t match reality.
It’s not unusual for folks to delude themselves into believing that their most popular political aspect is the affordable one and that it’s the different aspect that’s out of management, as Musk has. That being mentioned, if Musk truly believes the meme — which was created final yr by Colin Wright, who writes a Substack largely about gender and earlier this week attacked the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group, as half of the continued right-wing smear marketing campaign focusing on LGBTQ adults and youngsters — that’s extra worrying. After all, Musk is prone to quickly management Twitter, a device which, for all its faults, nonetheless wields energy.
If, as Musk has said, he needs to have a “politically neutral” platform, which he defines as “upsetting the far right and the far left equally” (that isn’t what “politically neutral” truly means), and he believes that Twitter has a bias that favors the left, as one other meme he not too long ago shared baselessly steered, we need to know what “neutral” actually means to him. In simply the previous few days, he’s used Twitter to work together with right-leaning pundits like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, Saagar Enjeti, Steven Crowder and even one-time Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich. Does he acknowledge these as conservative voices? Shapiro, for his half, has referred to as on Musk to type a “Truth and reconciliation commission revealing past manipulation” and for Musk to “Fire a LOT of people.”
For the “upsetting the far right and the far left equally” discuss, Musk certain appears to be telegraphing a fairly conservative imaginative and prescient for Twitter, full with conspiracy theories about anti-conservative bias and complaints about “the woke mind virus” and “pronouns.” There are quite a bit of questions on what Twitter will appear like underneath Musk’s management, but when his memes are to be believed, it might not be very “neutral” in any respect.