Donald Trump pardoned Andrew Paul Johnson for his role in the January 6 insurrection.
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Donald Trump pardoned Andrew Paul Johnson for his role in the January 6 insurrection. Johnson then used his newly acquired freedom to sexually assault two 12-year-olds. Last week he was sentenced to life in prison as the latest of a long list of Trump insurrectionists who have used their freedom to commit new crimes.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5725470/trump-jan-6-pardon-sexual-abuse-prison
How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
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How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
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How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
@GeofCox @randahl I think it’s a belief in a strictly hierarchical caste system, in which they (white, Protestant, cis-het, men) are the top, and therefore allowed to do anything to a member of a lower class (women, children, foreigners, nonwhites) with impunity.
I also think they find this expectation reasonable, because it has been true in the US for most of its history: white men *were* able to abuse anyone else outside their class with impunity.
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How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
There's a psychological effect you get among people who are anxious about their status:
- This law binds the small people
- Higher status must have its rewards
- Therefore, if I am bound by this law, I am no better than one of the small people
- It would be intolerable to suggest that I am no better than one of the small people
- Therefore, I must not be bound by this law
- I should break this law to prove to myself that I am not bound by itWe see this everywhere. In covid-lockdown breaking behaviour, in the way people drive, in the way men treat women. Once people become anxious about their social status they very often start manifesting this sort of deliberate rule-breaking to reassure themselves.
Fascism, of course, is the very essence of a declining middle class anxious about its status.
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There's a psychological effect you get among people who are anxious about their status:
- This law binds the small people
- Higher status must have its rewards
- Therefore, if I am bound by this law, I am no better than one of the small people
- It would be intolerable to suggest that I am no better than one of the small people
- Therefore, I must not be bound by this law
- I should break this law to prove to myself that I am not bound by itWe see this everywhere. In covid-lockdown breaking behaviour, in the way people drive, in the way men treat women. Once people become anxious about their social status they very often start manifesting this sort of deliberate rule-breaking to reassure themselves.
Fascism, of course, is the very essence of a declining middle class anxious about its status.
Interesting. I've thought for a long time conservatism is really about fear - the obvious fear of losing what you have, but this is a fear which is never far from a general fear of change, which in turn - since change is the essence of life - is also really at bottom a fear of life and death itself (Sartre explored this in some depth - and linked it with the irrationality of the right, the desire to stop thinking, to become like a stone, since for humans thinking and feeling are part of living-change).
But it never occurred to me that at the extreme, this fear of losing what privilege they have is what prompts them to transgress, to demonstrate their privilege - to themselves as much as anybody else.
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How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
@GeofCox @randahl I feel it's not sexual or based on desire, except desire for power, and conservative belief in natural hierarchy.
Dark triad bullies all the way up.
One does not actually have sense of power if one does not *demonstrate* it in personal sphere.
There is no hierarchy of any value if you can't abuse "lower value" vulnerable people at will. Your wife, your kids, someone else's kids. Or bomb them.
They would abuse the shit out of their slaves if they still had some..
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Interesting. I've thought for a long time conservatism is really about fear - the obvious fear of losing what you have, but this is a fear which is never far from a general fear of change, which in turn - since change is the essence of life - is also really at bottom a fear of life and death itself (Sartre explored this in some depth - and linked it with the irrationality of the right, the desire to stop thinking, to become like a stone, since for humans thinking and feeling are part of living-change).
But it never occurred to me that at the extreme, this fear of losing what privilege they have is what prompts them to transgress, to demonstrate their privilege - to themselves as much as anybody else.
Yeah, that's well said.
I think it's part of what prompts people's radicalisation from conservatism into fascism: when that generalised fear of change ("I might, hypothetically, lose status at some future time") becomes actualised into a specific real panic ("I am currently losing status, this is a crisis"). In particular I think it's why fascists are so obsessed with reinforcing conventional gender roles, and why they're so weird about rejecting environmentalism.
This is also part of why pointing out hypocrisy in fascism doesn't work. Of course they hold others to different standards than they hold themselves. To them that's the point.
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How exactly is the political right linked with sexual abuse ?
That there is an association seems undeniable, given the number of cases of right-wing politicians and activists caught up in cases of paedophilia or violent misogyny (and near zero on the left - even in power).
Is it their well-documented lack of empathy ? Perhaps dark desires are a-political, but because the right-winger can't see things from their victims' perspective they don't care who they hurt ?
Or is it entitlement - that I-should-have-whatever-I-want mentality ? Or the more generalised belief in social inequality - women etc are there to serve alpha men ?
Or is it the other way round ? They are just violent sociopaths who adopt extreme right ideology as convenient self-justification ?
@GeofCox @randahl I don't believe this is 'the political right'. I believe that this is people who are powerful, testing just how powerful they are.
I wrote about it six years ago, and I still believe this is fundamentally true.
#EndViolenceAgainstWomen
#Billionaires
#TheAndrewFormerlyKnownAsPrincehttps://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2020-07-24-rape-grouse-and-the-pathology-of-power/
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Yeah, that's well said.
I think it's part of what prompts people's radicalisation from conservatism into fascism: when that generalised fear of change ("I might, hypothetically, lose status at some future time") becomes actualised into a specific real panic ("I am currently losing status, this is a crisis"). In particular I think it's why fascists are so obsessed with reinforcing conventional gender roles, and why they're so weird about rejecting environmentalism.
This is also part of why pointing out hypocrisy in fascism doesn't work. Of course they hold others to different standards than they hold themselves. To them that's the point.
Another example: the more that fascists know that climate change is real and that fossil fuels are running out, the more they want to drive a huge car with shitty mileage. They often defend this as "lol liberals are triggered" but they do this even when nobody is watching. It's not for the imagined seething liberal audience, it's to reassure themselves that they are one of the high-ranked people.
There is a really interesting example in the world of erotic fiction but that might be too NSFW for this discussion and the point probably doesn't need further reinforcing.
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Another example: the more that fascists know that climate change is real and that fossil fuels are running out, the more they want to drive a huge car with shitty mileage. They often defend this as "lol liberals are triggered" but they do this even when nobody is watching. It's not for the imagined seething liberal audience, it's to reassure themselves that they are one of the high-ranked people.
There is a really interesting example in the world of erotic fiction but that might be too NSFW for this discussion and the point probably doesn't need further reinforcing.
@passenger @GeofCox @randahl That does a good job of explaining different attitudes to nature between 1930s fascists and today's. Back then, nature was a site of aristocratic leisure. Today, concern for the environment threatens your personal lifestyle.
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Yeah, that's well said.
I think it's part of what prompts people's radicalisation from conservatism into fascism: when that generalised fear of change ("I might, hypothetically, lose status at some future time") becomes actualised into a specific real panic ("I am currently losing status, this is a crisis"). In particular I think it's why fascists are so obsessed with reinforcing conventional gender roles, and why they're so weird about rejecting environmentalism.
This is also part of why pointing out hypocrisy in fascism doesn't work. Of course they hold others to different standards than they hold themselves. To them that's the point.
Interesting! What's the environmental part? Is it like, people whose source of power/income is at the expense of sustainability, so that prioritising the environment is a direct threat to their economic power? Or is it more like "caring about that is weak and girly"? (Or both!) Or how would you summarise that element?
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