How an Uncritical Agreement Leads to a Reactionary Turn (Patreon)

The tactics of propaganda and political manipulation are essentially the same tactics kids on the playground use, except with greater consequences.

X and Z are best friends. But Y wants X to defect and be best friends with Y. Y waits until X and Z fight, which will be for personal reasons, perhaps over a favorite movie. Y jumps in and tells X that X is right about the movie, but then tacks on reasons to dislike Z.

Now the personal becomes ideological. Now X and Y are best friends, even if Z is a much better person than Y.

The uncritical agreement is when you only look at the agreement, or the lack of agreement, not at how someone got there. The reactionary turn happens when a third person who might be ideologically opposed to you agrees with you in sentiment, but then gives you new reasons on why you are right, or generally speaks on your behalf and tells you what to think while you're too vulnerable to catch on. Since the emphasis is on the agreeing, you are now IN agreement with this person. You now shun the people who believe the same things you do and side with the reactionaries.

There are many famous right-wing pundits and celebrities who were once liberal. They had some personal disagreements; then they started "listening to the other side" who agreed with how they felt. Now a specific disagreement with a specific person turns into a whole sum change of beliefs.

This happens all the time on the left. If you are further left, you might get into a disagreement with another leftist over a candidate, a liberal/centrist jumps in and tells you "you're right and furthermore," then gives you liberal/centrist or even right-wing answers not to like this candidate. But you're so mad that you feel solidarity with the person agreeing with you, and you feel attacked by the people disagreeing with you even though their principles are the same as yours. So you focus there on what's different, you tell your old friends to fuck off, and then side with the people telling you "war is good, international solidarity is bad, helping the poor is bad, bombing brown people across the world is good, healthcare for everyone is sexist and racist because it paternalizes women and PoC and assumes they can't be gritty enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

But no one told you or warned you about this tactic, so you're not sure what happened. You feel resentment towards the people who you fought with, and now there are new people who want to be your best friends who are telling you everything your old friends said was wrong. And now you are one of them, you've been gaslit, and unconsciously you now also wait for a moment of in-fighting to say how the left is wrong.

This is also why the New Right and centrists have such hodgepodge, confusing politics—because it sometimes mixes the new stuff with the old stuff.

This is actually an old warning about colonizers: they'll want to shake your hand, so worry about why they want to shake your hand.