Moronic Manichaeism
The reason the edgelord right and tankie left are susceptible to foreign influence campaigns lies in a shared belief system.
On September 4th, federal prosecutors indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state propaganda outlet, for a criminal scheme to pay several rightwing influencers to promote content aligned with Russian interests.
To mask the funds’ source, the Russian nationals established a Tennessee-based company called Tenet Media. Tenet Media branded itself a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on western political and cultural issues.” The company, the influencers were led to believe, belonged to a European businessman named “Eduard Grigoriann,” who, in reality, was a fictitious persona.
More concerning than their actual content is how easily they fell for such a pedestrian scheme in the first place. All six commentators willingly entered formal business relationships with Grigoriann, a guy purporting to be a wealthy entrepreneur yet who had scarcely any digital footprint.
The influencers, none of whom face charges and all of whom deny knowledge of Tenet Media’s Russian ties, are a who’s who of frothing idiots on the edgelord right.
They include:
*Dave Rubin, who hosts a popular interview show on YouTube where he muses with a rogues-gallery of neofascists and white supremacists about chemtrails, birtherism, and the need to ethnically cleanse Europe of Muslim immigrants.
*Laura Southern, who once suggested on Rubin’s show that Canadian Nazis are “egged on” by Jews to stir up “more, like, kind of hate crimes to point out.”
*Tim Pool, known for his trademark wool cap, under which there appears to be little going on aside from paranoid thoughts of an imminent civil war. He does not want a civil war; he just believes it will happen and talks about it incessantly. When it does arrive, he contends, it will be instigated by the left, which “will not hesitate to throw you in the gulag.”
*Tayler Hansen, who has a unique and remarkable ability to determine your immigration status by squinting and staring really, really hard at you.
*Benny Johnson, a serial plagiarist who interprets real and imagined events through the lens of MAGA fan-fiction (and who also, wouldn’t you know, turns out to be an asshole).
*Matt Christiansen, who traffics in pedestrian conspiracy theories about how the most persecuted group in existence happens to be mediocre white guys like himself.
In the course of their work for the company, one analysis found, the influencers posted less about Ukraine and other issues close to Russia’s heart than they did about more common rightwing bogeymen (sample headline: “Trans Widows Are a Thing and It’s Getting OUT OF HAND”).
Just as the inherent innocence of anti-Western regimes exonerates them in the eyes of neotankies, so too, for the edgelord right, is the blameless volk exempt from culpability.
More concerning than their actual content is how easily they fell for such a pedestrian scheme in the first place. All six commentators willingly entered formal business relationships with Grigoriann, a guy purporting to be a wealthy entrepreneur yet who had scarcely any digital footprint.
If the indictment is any guide, whatever due diligence they carried out on Grigoriann was remarkably shallow. For instance, Rubin, upon inquiring about the financier’s background, was apparently satisfied after receiving a glossy, one-page PDF.
In fact, the indictment is replete with evidence of their collective naïveté. Following the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, one of the RT employees inquired if “Commentator-3,” who appears to be Benny Johnson or Tayler Hansen, would record a video blaming Ukraine and the U.S.—this despite an ISIS affiliate having already claimed responsibility, a fact which was widely reported at the time. “He’s happy to cover it,” came the reply from a Tenet Media representative.
The Horseshoe Theory of Being a Moron
The credulousness they displayed is notable in light of the extreme mistrust in which they hold leftists and liberals. Every one of their brain-dead conspiracy theories is premised on the notion that the left is constantly scheming to persecute authentic heartland patriots and debase their cherished values. This suspicion does not extend to actors like Russia, however, which they view as advancing a rightwing agenda.
Such selective skepticism also features among neotankies of The Grayzone variety, despite their claim to hail from the opposite end of the political spectrum. These ostensible leftists view America and its allies with maximal suspicion while affording Western adversaries, like Russia and China, the benefit of the doubt.
Much has been made of the so-called horseshoe theory, which contends that there is more that unites the far-right and far-left than divides it. One such commonality is the gullibility they show toward the adversaries of Western liberalism.
But there is something deeper underlying this tendency. Their joint-credulousness is rooted in a shared ontology that views the world as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil—or, more accurately, perpetrators and victims.
This worldview has no place for complexity or nuance. Instead, it strains to fit every political actor—whether a leader, political party, or regime—into one of two categories. There can be no switching from one category to the other; once assigned to your designated box, you cannot leave, no matter what you do.
Neotankies divide the world into two blocs, each composed of different national regimes. In one bloc sits the U.S. and its Western allies, whom neotankies regard as eternal perpetrators. The other consists of regimes opposed to the West, whom they consider misunderstood victims. Because there is no moving from one bloc to the other, even temporarily, any apparent misconduct on the part of an anti-Western regime must be explained away as a lie or distortion and blamed on the West.
The edgelord right has its own Manichaean worldview—only instead of splitting the world into Western and anti-Western regimes, the duality they posit is between cultures—one decadent and liberal, the other traditional and hierarchical. In this conception, the forces of Western liberalism occupy the role of unceasing malefactors, out to upend the sacred hierarchies of race, religion, and gender prized by the forever-innocent volk.
Such Manichaeism also makes its adherents easy targets of foreign influence campaigns designed to exploit their gullibility. After all, if Russia is on the side of the innocent, it would never concoct such a devious scheme, right?
Just as the inherent innocence of anti-Western regimes exonerates them in the eyes of neotankies, so too, for the edgelord right, is the blameless volk exempt from culpability. When a white supremacist shoots up a Walmart to stop an immigrant “invasion,” it is but an understandable, if misguided, response to a real problem. When Donald Trump unleashes a violent mob on the nation’s capital, it is a false-flag orchestrated by liberals.
The Power of Manifesting, Only Dumber Somehow
The more detached from reality one’s worldview is, the more frequently one encounters real-life events which undermine it. The Manichaeism espoused by neotankies and the edgelord right, it turns out, is very, very detached from reality. As a consequence, they must spend an inordinate amount of time and energy cramming the day’s events into their distorted belief systems. If the Western liberal establishment is the root of all evil, its adversaries must necessarily lie beyond suspicion. Hence, any hint of culpability by those they deem innocent—the volk, for the edgelord right, and anti-Western regimes, for neotankies—must be rationalized, twisted around, or blamed on the other side.
This is hard work, since it requires a continuous effort to prove that things which mostly exist in their imaginations also exist in the real world. It also leads to some very moronic opinions on current events, as the contradictions reality keeps presenting forces them to conjure up more and more conspiracy theories to explain them away.
This is why neotankies such as Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté spend their days peddling idiotic atrocity-denial. It is why Elon Musk denies the Neo-Nazi motivations of mass-shooters with actual Nazi tattoos on their bodies. It is why David Sacks, another rightwing edgelord, reacted to the recent charges by musing about all the prominent figures Ukraine must be financing. And it is why the scheme described in the indictment is hardly the first time the individuals in question have fallen for dumb ruses.
Such Manichaeism also makes its adherents easy targets of foreign influence campaigns designed to exploit their gullibility. After all, if Russia is on the side of the innocent, it would never concoct such a devious scheme, right?
Still, one might object, don’t these commentators do what they do merely because they are paid to do it by their foreign sponsors? According to this argument, they do not actually believe the things they say; they are only in it for the money.
This explanation is incomplete, I think. Most people would find it hard to endure the cognitive dissonance required to spread nonsense for cash without adapting their ideology to fit their rhetoric. At the same time, their Manichaeism is what makes them susceptible to foreign intelligence operations in the first place. In other words, they are not just paid shills; the money influences their beliefs, and their beliefs attract the money.
Never underestimate the capacity of propagandists to fall for their own bullshit.
Tankies are incredibly credulous when it comes to the claims of their "anti-imperialist" heroes.
https://gnet-research.org/2023/10/02/tankies-a-data-driven-understanding-of-left-wing-extremists-on-social-media/
Good summary. I think they fulfil what Lenin's definition of 'useful idiots' was - people who are already geared towards helping the goals of the autocrat (in this case the Kremlin) for whatever stupid personal reasons they have and only need the tiniest nudge and handful of cash to make them that much more committed.