The Right and Weaponized Fear

The attacks on Ketanji Brown Jackson are part of a larger GOP effort to use conspiracy theories to forward their agenda

For anyone paying attention to Senator Josh Hawley, the performance was less than surprising. When it came time to question Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Hawley attacked her repeatedly in a display intended, specifically, to replicate for social media and fundraising advertisements. Hawley insinuated that Jackson had been lenient in cases involving child abuse and child abuse images, a charge he has continued to level in tweets leading up to the hearing.

This demented posturing is part and parcel of Hawley’s brand as he continues to cement his position as one of the leaders of the far right National Conservatism movement, but what also resonates here is just how firmly entrenched the Republican Party and the authoritarians are in a paranoid reality brimming with conspiracy theories. Hawley’s disgusting attack was a rehashing of QAnon and an assortment of Right Wing scare tactics that have powered their reactionary project for generations.

Many have scoffed at the overall influence of the QAnon phenomena and its myriad offshoots, but numbers don’t lie. Millions of Americans, whether they are even aware of the term “QAnon” or not, have internalized the components of its narrative and the essence of its lies. They believe that satanic cabals of child abusers run the world and the only means of stopping them is through violence and antidemocratic action. That people can even deny this fact has more to do with the GOP’s use of ridiculous figures in spreading the ideas and their swift discarding than any material evidence. The damage has been done, however, and even if “Q” never posts again, and even if history books want to forget what has occurred, the consequences will continue to ripple through our culture.

Simply put, GOP opposition to the first Black woman on the Supreme Court has nothing to do with cabals or child abuse. Similarly, the continuing attacks on public education relying on myths about “Critical Race Theory,” which Senator Marsha Blackburn accused the nominee of intending to inject “progressive indoctrination” into the culture, have little to do with the stated subjects. Instead, these conspiracy theories are weapons and cudgels wielded to hide the ugly, disturbing truth that the Right simply wants to conceal.

This is about protecting white, evangelical, patriarchal control.

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It would be one thing to say modern culture doesn’t appeal to them. If the Right could go on their hackneyed shows and level critical complaints or, god forbid, constructive criticism, that might be respectable or defensible. The fact is that conservatives hate modern culture just as they’ve hated all past modern culture. Looking through history, the story is depressingly familiar. Newspapers and books and articles are filled with bizarre, hateful screeds about trends and changes, ranging from politics to baseball to jazz to dancing.

In retrospect, they’re absurd. And they’re absurd because there’s nothing to the critiques save for some gut-feeling that things are changing and changing in a way that is frightening and, more so, offensive to the beholder. But they’re also scant in specificity and that’s because, as is the case now, the problem has nothing to do with the culture or the individuals engaged in it. This is an issue that lies, solely, in the critic.

Culture wars have dominated American culture for as long as there’s been an America. Though some would like to pretend that this current moment is an aberration, there’s always been a simmering feud between the majority of the people and the very vocal and very angry reactionaries. In my research, I’ve tracked it back to the settling of the first colonies and they’ve wound their way throughout. And, in every case, they have a similar essence: white, evangelical patriarchs fearing a loss of control.

As America is constructed explicitly to serve these people, their grievances are consistently given preference. This minute minority enjoys vastly outsized power and privilege, but in order for their complaints to be disseminated among the people, the message needs a palatable veneer. It isn’t acceptable to say that Black people or women or LGBTQ populations shouldn’t have power or representation, and so the conspiracy theories take that viewpoint and launder it through religious narrative.

In the case of Jackson, what we have seen is a two-fold explanation for her candidacy. The GOP can tease that they don’t believe she’s qualified, which of course they don’t considering she is a Black woman, but instead of continually expressing that distasteful narrative, Hawley is now presenting her as an agent of the “Deep State cabal.” Blackburn’s CRT charge either positions Brown Jackson as a radical dead-set on brainwashing children or as an agent in a larger Marxist conspiracy.

We need to remember, when investigating this, how the first Black president Barack Obama was treated: as both a secret Muslim antichrist or a puppet of the New World Order. In both cases, the white supremacist perspective, that of people of color as being both inferior and always susceptible to manipulation by evil Jewish puppetmasters, determines the reality.

This is a frustratingly predictable pattern. And in every instance the white supremacist paranoia of being replaced motivates the movement. Surely the changes and progress in society are plots against them. Surely there is an evil, malevolent force seeking their destruction.

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These conspiracy theories allow new offensives to open with every passing day. In the “CRT” panic, extraordinarily wealthy individuals are using this new emphasis on “parental rights” in localities to destroy teachers unions and dismantle public education, setting the stage for privatization that would net them trillions of dollars and full control over the flow of knowledge to future generations.

“CRT” was the initial impetus, but now things are taking an even darker turn. As in the past, the Right is combining multiple elements of the conspiratorial narrative, including the dangers of people of color and the “plot to undermine culture” on behalf of “sinister forces.” The term du jour recently has been “grooming,” or the accusation that gay people are using the educational system to either recruit into their ranks or target children for sexual abuse. If this sounds familiar, it should. The evangelical Right, led by charlatans like Jerry Falwell, Sr., have been claiming this decades.

What is beginning to emerge is a redux of the Satanic Panic that gripped America in the 1980’s and supercharged the Right Wing revolution spearheaded by Ronald Reagan. In that instance, fear of supernatural evil was used by the wealthy and corporations to completely shred regulation and usher in a new era of hypercapitalism and neoliberalism from which we are still struggling to free ourselves from. Stories spread like mad in respectable newspapers and on prime-time TV that Satanic cults were running daycare facilities and that around every corner lurked a demonic presence waiting to snatch up children.

That ridiculous period was fueled by concerns that women entering the workforce and asserting their independence was tantamount to spiritual betrayal and left children sitting targets for all the wickedness in the world. It was white, evangelical patriarchs hating how things were changing, how their dominance and power was suddenly being tested. They looked out into the future and saw nothing but destruction.

So many lives were ruined. And so many more will be ruined with this iteration. Ketanji Brown Jackson will hopefully be confirmed despite these absurd and insulting attacks, but the LGBTQ community is in the cross-hairs. The GOP, desperate to reinforce white, evangelical patriarchal control will hound them for years, accusing them of the worst crimes imaginable. And the narrative framework, made possible by the QAnon mythology that is simply a retelling of past antisemitic conspiracy theories, will make these lies more palatable and acceptable.