A good article in which the author researched how Twitter’s algorithm pushed people interested in history into alt-right content.
Quote: “Adhering to my guidelines to follow accounts suggested by the algorithm, I clicked the “follow” button. This was the first time I was recommended content adjacent to alt-right and “manosphere” ideology. Prior to that, it was all history related. After “liking” approximately 100 Tweets, however, I saw that the accounts suggested to me were becoming increasingly political, and I was specifically being recommended accounts run by internet political commentators – as opposed to professional politicians or journalists. I cannot definitively call this observation evidence of being led down an alt-right pipeline, but it was interesting to note that those were the types of accounts suggested to me by the Twitter algorithm.”
I just don’t understand how someone interested in antiquity can possibly fall for Trumpism. The fall of the Roman Republic was presaged by a guy literally trying to get elected to office so that he could escape prosecution for illegal abuses of power, and the legal system standing aside and saying “yeah, we’ll let you do that in order to maintain the peace” and then falling into civil war anyway.
How much of that sounds familiar…?
someone genuinely interested for intellectual reasons would likely not fall for it. I would imagine that a non-trivial percentage of “antiquity enjoyers” are very light on history substance and heavy on history feelz.
once the appropriate brain tickles have been pushed into their heads their “history substance” feed content becomes decidedly propagandized.
Agreed. Anyone who studies history should understand why Trumpism is bad and unsustainable.
But a lot of people are just in for the historical “aesthetics”.
Aesthetics, plus the seductive appeal that pre-modern, pre-liberal-democratic societies (when the governments were authoritarian, the women were submissive, and the men “were men”) have for reactionaries, incels, and cryptofacists.
I think this is it.
The historians I know of actually seem to lean quite left of the average person; it’s the light hobbieists, who are often more interested in the aesthetics/surface stuff, who seem to fall victim to the alt-right stuff.
Honestly I’m a light hobbyist myself. My exposure to history is primarily via YouTube channels like the excellent Historia Civilis (their series on Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Roman Republic is stunning) and via games like Age of Empires.
Gotta remember that rome was a genocidal slave regime. That’s why the founding slavers worshiped it so much. That’s why there are fasces all over state churches. That’s why fascists started fascism.
This all lines up perfectly with maga fascism.
As a Christian, the guy is literally an anti-christ, lol. Although I can see people voting for him because they dislike Kamala more