The Right’s Critiques of the Left Reveal Its Motivations
Believe actions
When I listen to people who spend time in right-wing spaces online and IRL, sometimes I hear the most bizarre theories about the Left.
- “The Left self-deals through the nonprofit industrial complex.”
- “There are millions of dead people receiving social security benefits.”
- “The Left imports illegal immigrants to vote for Democrats.”
If you believe, as Elon Musk does, that USAID rewards its “woke” allies in the nonprofit world with dump trucks of cash for doing little to no real work, then dismantling USAID isn’t just logical. It’s righteous. DOGE is ending a corrupt system.
If you believe, as Elon Musk says, that millions of dead people receive social security payments on behalf of fraudsters, then cutting off a huge swath of social security payments makes perfect sense.
If you believe, as Elon Musk claims, that the Left wants as many immigrants as possible to enter the U.S. because they will automatically vote for Democrats, then a severe crackdown on immigration isn’t just logical. It’s a fight for political and cultural survival.
But why do people believe such nonsense? You don’t even need to fact-check the claims. They undo themselves.
The idea of a nonprofit industrial complex falls apart when you consider how much more money for-profit companies pay employees, disperse to stockholders, and consume in government loans and grants. The nonprofit sector isn’t the best place for rewarding friends and punishing enemies.
The idea that millions of dead people receive social security checks crumbles when you wonder how a few fraudsters manage to outrun the records of deaths reported to the government. How inefficient must government be if they can’t cancel payments to dead people?
The idea that Democrats want illegal immigrants as a voting bloc assumes that such people will expose themselves to the system by voting and that of course they will vote for Dems. Somehow, though, Republicans keep winning elections.
It’s worth considering why people on the Right believe ideas about the Left that strain commonsense. Their beliefs drive their behavior and rhetoric.
They believe such things about the Left because they project their own attitudes toward power. They think the Left self-deals, rewards friends, punishes enemies, and weaponizes state power, because that’s what they want to do.
Consider how the Right is governing.
Elon Musk poured hundreds of millions into supporting Donald Trump’s re-election. Shortly after Trump assumed power, a Biden plan to spend $400,000 investigating buying electric vehicles for State Department employees expanded into a plan to spend $400,000,000 on buying “armored electric vehicles.” Reporting prompted a backlash and the plan went away, blamed as a Biden initiative.
Trump pulled the security details for multiple former officials, including Mike Pompeo, and fired scores of attorneys involved with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump talked tough about mass deportations of criminals, but his “immigration czar” Tom Homan has focused ICE’s resources on detaining people with minor visa issues at airports and arresting international students who protested against Israel’s approach to its war in Gaza. So much for free speech.
Rewarding friends. Punishing enemies. Weaponizing state power. Check, check, and check.
The Left isn’t perfect, but there are no equivalent examples in contemporary history of the Left wielding power like the Right. In fact, digging into the details of the Biden administration undermines the Far Right’s claims — the Inflation Reduction Act dispersed most of its funds to conservative states. Biden gave rewards to non-friends to persuade moderate voters in Red states and protect the law’s durability.
The Right views power as a cudgel. The Left views power as a carrot. Understanding these differing views helps reveal underlying motivations.
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