Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
‘Put a Ring on It & Knock Her Up’: The Proud Boys Credo of Far-Right Misogyny (Sian Norris / Byline Times)
In order to recruit (white) women to this so-called war, the far-right promises them a role of being a white goddess. They are encouraged to adopt a ‘trad’ lifestyle and praised as the saviour of the white race – celebrated for their fertile bodies. Simply by virtue of having a female body, she can be a “wife with a purpose”, as far-right trad influencer Ayla Stewart billed herself. That purpose is to be a wife and a protector of her “white culture” – having white babies to fight back against an imagined ‘white genocide’ or ‘replacement’.
The Proud Boys promise of veneration is predicated on women’s biological potential. But the flip-side, of course, is that such a movement reduces women to their biological potential. Women are gifts to men. But a gift is an object, an object that is owned. As such, women in the movement are owned by men – and ownership leads to oppression.
The Paul Pelosi attack video shows that the right’s conspiracy theory machine is out of control (Matt Gertz / Media Matters)
This narrative of a right-wing extremist who believed the conspiracy theories one sees on Fox beating up an old man while looking for his wife was very unflattering to Republicans. So the right’s extensive, well-funded media apparatus seized on the sorts of minor inconsistencies and trivialities that often characterize breaking news stories, and developed their alternative narrative: DePape was Paul Pelosi’s leftist gay lover and the assault was a tryst gone bad that Democrats, journalists, and law enforcement were now covering up to protect Nancy Pelosi and help the Democrats in the midterm elections.
Within days, this homophobic absurdity spread through right-wing fever swamps, was amplified by Twitter owner Elon Musk, and went up the food chain to outlets like OAN and Fox. Nothing seemed to give pause to the conspiracy theorists over the following weeks, including the federal complaint which stated that police witnessed DePape “striking Pelosi in the head” with a hammer and that he subsequently told an investigator that he had broken into the home as part of a plan “to hold Nancy hostage,” and reports from within the courtroom that police body camera footage showed the attack.
When Hillary Clinton went to Donald Trump’s inauguration
@justinbrooks7620♬ original sound – Justin Brooks7620
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