"It's Them That do the Bad Things"

The response to the murder of Charlie Kirk by various right-wing and “conservative” pundits and politicians has been all too familiar. There has been the accepted narrative that was initially presented that supposedly the shooter was “trans” or a “leftist”. “They” obviously had killed Kirk. Then the shooter turned himself in. The spin began in earnest because the shooter Tyler Robinson was a white male who came from a MAGA family. All of a sudden, he had to be indoctrinated at the college he only attended for one semester, then it became a roommate that might be “trans”. This scramble to keep the narrative is similar to what I’ve seen in churches and denominations when sin and tragedy strikes there. It isn’t just that this thing happened, it’s that it’s not supposed to happen. Tyler Robinson from all appearances grew up in a MAGA, 2^ndamendment, “conservative” home in one of the most conservative and religious states in America. Therefore he had to have been “corrupted” by the “left”… somehow.

I’m not too much interested in whether Tyler Robinson was motivated ideologically as much as I’m aware of a culture that is dangerously failing to understand and wrestle with the fruit of it’s own ideology. The very afternoon Charlie Kirk was murdered a student spouting white supremacist ideologies shot two in a high school and killed himself. This is after shooters in Madison Wisconsin and Nashville Tennessee also expressed similar fascinations and attractions to nihilistic meme culture. This is more about a culture that is so incapable of self-reflection they will ignore the real threat only so they can justify their own prejudiced reality.

The Delusional

One of the things that initially shocked me after the Kirk shooting was how many “conservatives” simply dismissed any notion that anyone other than “leftists” engaged in political violence. It's incredible because the data isn’t even close- right wing and white supremacist violence is the #1 source of domestic terror in America by a fairly wide margin. This doesn’t mean there isn’t “left wing” violence, but more people have been killed by white supremacists than by the combination of any other groups. Thus, to simply dismiss any possibility that right wing political violence exists or that the left is the only perpetrator of violence is delusional.

Source: https://x.com/AlexNowrasteh/status/1966955650115924209

However, I’ve seen this behavior in other contexts. When there has been a “fall” of a religious leader or a scandal there are always a few that simply don’t believe it. This is where the cognitive dissonance is so great the person (or persons) decides to choose an unreality over what is true. This has been seen particularly in the Southern Baptist Convention in regards to sexual abuse. There are persons and even institutions that are adamant that there is no such thing as an “abuse crisis”.

The delusional are sadly not reachable. No amount of fact checking, information, or testimony will dissuade the delusional from their preferred narrative. What is sadder is they are precisely the people who lean into conspiracy theory because the conspiracies give them a preferred narrative and they will choose that narrative over a reality they don’t like. What is important is to look for who is either pandering to the delusional or who is using them for cover. The panderers know the delusional are going to be a captive audience (where else are they going to hear they are right), and captive audiences are great revenue streams. Those using the delusional are even more nefarious because they are using them to cover for an agenda. It’s not that “I” have an issue with that or “I” said X about such and such, “I’m” just repeating what another has raised. Trump is a master at this. He routinely says “people are saying” or “I’ve heard…” as a way to justify saying something outrageous without claiming responsibility for it.

“It’s them that do bad things”

For the majority of Christian and conservative people I really haven’t come across a better description than this passage from the book Jingo by Terry Pratchett:

“It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable then of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”

One of the things that has become a part and parcel of the conservative/Christian right is the cultural assumption that the problem (whatever it is) is THOSE people. I believe this comes from two places ideologically, the first is a basic presumption in what conservatism has ultimately rallied around, namely that the “system” whatever that is and however you define it- works. Conservatives, because they have largely benefitted from the status quo and have historically had social shaping dominance see the systems of belief and social order they are in as being inherently good. It’s the disruptors, the rebels, the non-conformists that are the source of whatever “problem”. This is coupled with a presumption that rights, if anyone has any, inherently come from conformity and obedience. This naturally makes an “us vs them” dynamic because conservatives are inherently suspicious of change. It also (ironically) makes conservatives reactionary and angry because they perceive life and society as being static when time itself means change.

This preference of “normalcy” is also coupled with essentially a kind of “prosperity gospel” that is believed by most Americans but almost canonized in conservative and Christian spaces. This is the corruption of the verse “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Essentially the idea is if you raise your children in a certain environment, discipline them a certain way, they’ll turn out “right”.

These two things explain the scramble to try and explain Tyler Robinson. It also explains the ridiculousness of the narratives that some are trying to make stick. A part of this is because of a need to craft a narrative to enact political violence. But there is a real need to explain why Tyler Robinson exists, because he’s not supposed to happen. Tyler and his family, from all appearances, are a typical MAGA gun loving religious, suburban, white, family. Tyler even dropped out of college and was attending trade school, something many MAGA influencers explicitly told their followers to do after Kirk’s death. There is a cognitive dissonance that does not compute because Tyler Robinson should not exist.

NETTR and How a Culture Creates its Own Downfall

What little we know about Robinson is he was definitely involved in meme and online troll culture. This has tracked with other mass shooters especially young ones. It is unclear how much, if any of Robinson’s online activity was channeled into “Groyper” culture but we also know Nick Fuentes very quickly has tried to distance himself both from any possibility he inspired Robinson and his past criticisms of Charlie Kirk. The promulgation of white supremacy, “edgelord” trolls, and outright nihilism in places like 4-chan and Reddit is the result of a phenomena in conservative circles called “No Enemy To The Right” (NETTR).

The NETTR idea is that as long as someone is aligned with you in some way they are “helping” your cause, regardless of how extreme they are or what other offensive positions they might take. As long as that person or that group has some ideological parallels the rule is you don’t call them out, you don’t challenge them. This is in part because they are saying what you are dog whistling. Both they and you know you don’t really disagree with their substance, you just want to have a measure of “maturity” or cultural respectability.

This “NETTR” mentality does two things simultaneously, it pushes the whole of the culture away from moderation while giving cover for ever farther radicalization. Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes are both excellent examples of this drift. Kirk himself was a provocateur who often said out loud what other politicians or pundits wouldn’t, especially when it came to racial issues. Fuentes gave Kirk cover by being even more radical, more offensive, more arrogant. So, you might have a Joe Rogan who could say “I’m no Charlie Kirk” while Kirk could say “I’m no Nick Fuentes” and Fuentes on the extreme end can turn around to his radical listeners and say he’s no Rogan or Kirk. Modern “conservative” online culture doesn’t merely allow for the creation of radicalism, it needs and sustains radical spaces and influencers to exist. People need there to be no guardrails, need there to be no lines that are “too far” to cross because of what they have normalized.

The biggest reason for this normalization is of course Donald Trump. The reason the “right” no longer has boundary lines of decency or depravity they will not cross is if they were to establish one inevitably Trump would end up on the other side. The only reason many right-wing pundits exist is to both normalize through repetition and desensitize people as to how far they have excused the behavior and character of the current President of the United States.

Here is the problem with NETTR, as less fundamentalist, racist, or extreme mid-to-right wing people ignore the hard-right thinking “we’re pointed in the same direction” they miss how the hard-right hates them. I’ve been in numerous contexts where hard fundamentalists displayed as much vitriol towards those on the same side they considered “soft” as they did for mutual “enemies”. It cannot be underestimated how much those on the fringe despise and are jealous of the resources and reach of those who are not as fringe as they are.

Reckoning With Where Sin Comes From

One of the most difficult things to reckon with when it comes to conservatism and especially the Evangelical culture that is so intertwined with it is the utter inability to self-reflect. This is part and parcel to both the need to locate “sin” in “them” and a belief in the “prosperity gospel”. The belief that “our side doesn’t do that” or “my kids wouldn’t” is getting confronted with a powerful internet culture that is all too happy to prey on young and disaffected men. A great example of the inability to reckon with reality is the recent erasure of a study that identified that far-right extremist homicides far outpace any other form of extremism combined.

This is a failure to reckon with where sin abides. Sin does not only exist in certain locals or neighborhoods. You can’t limit sin to an ideology or merely a list of behaviors. You can’t put walls up and keep sin out. You can’t make rules and regulations that prevent sin. You can’t educate people out of sin.

Those of us who have experienced the culture of fundamentalism will tell you, no amount of control, or shame,“rules”, or speech you silence will protect you from sin. In fact, all of those things often will just as easily incubate and protect sin. We’ve seen this particularly in Evangelical churches where for decades we’ve believed the lie that LGBT persons were “grooming” children and now you can barely go a week without either a pastor, elder, or other “leader” getting arrested for some form of child sexual abuse. We are finding out that even judges and officials in deeply “Red” states have been found to be doing horrendous things. (here are just two recent stories here, here, and this literally came out yesterday)

The most dangerous thing we can do as a society is to look at political violence and immediately say it’s “them who do the bad things”. The reality is our entire culture goes into creating shooters like Tyler Robinson, the 16-year-old in Colorado, Natalie "Samantha" Rupnow, Solomon Henderson, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and the list seems endless. The question for all of us is where we will look and how much of a hard look we will take at the parts of our society that we don’t want to admit are there before we confront what we are enabling as a culture. Sadly, it appears too many are ready to blame it on “them” to gain political points. What’s really scary is often we don’t see the real danger we have decided to blind ourselves to.

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