This year, there was reason to be concerned about the capture of the right political power, and we are concerned Jacobin shared. People complained about inflation and crime, issues that the right was talking about more than the left. Historically, public suffering over these problems has been good for the right. But the 2022 midterm elections signaled a shift in vibe: The right-wing has become strange and dangerous even for America, where we’re used to young men walking into public schools and shooting people. the reason.
Even in this context, the Republicans have gotten out of a remarkable position. It’s not just that many people are claiming without evidence that Trump won the 2020 election. Even more shockingly, for example, they ran a guy into the Senate, venture capitalist Blake Masters, who made a series of Nazi fetish videos about guns. In one of them, in the middle of the desert, standing like a regular assassin, he affectionately caresses the deadly assault weapon and mutters reverently, “Made in Germany” several times.
Congressional and gubernatorial candidates, along with many grassroots scumbags, are trying to foment a moral panic on trans youth and the Drag Queen Story Hour (what decade is this?), claiming that tolerance for trans kids has led to garbage. Boxes in public school bathrooms for kids who identify as cats. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said, “They kicked God out of school and welcomed drag queens. They took down our flag and installed a rainbow in its place.” The level of hatred and vitriol behind these absurd claims is troubling enough, but they also aim to discredit and defund the libraries and public schools and public institutions that so many people rely on.
At least twenty-six congressional candidates in twenty-six states have been followers of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles run our government to run a worldwide sex-trafficking organization to forcibly evict said pedos.
None of this nonsense is popular. Many of Masters and QAnon followers, like Kari Lake, lost the election. Republicans lost the Senate, and they also largely lost school board elections.
Turns out, voters were concerned about abortion and the climate — a good reason to vote against Republicans — and perhaps more surprisingly, paid enough attention to federal policy to notice that Joe Biden had made some progress on climate.
But you know what happened does not exist Too surprising for America, contrary to what mainstream pundits keep telling us? Left. In New York, where Republicans have made significant and dangerous gains in Congress, the reason Democrats have lost the House is because all socialists, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were easily re-elected. In the Hudson Valley, socialist Sarahana Shrestha won a state assembly seat by promoting energy justice and the urgency of combating climate change, and by encouraging voter turnout, she helped Democrat Pat Ryan win a tight race for Congress. other close Democrats stumbled. A simple message of economic justice — abortion rights, criminal justice reform and marijuana legalization — also won a key Senate race in Pennsylvania, where left-liberal Berniecrat John Fetterman defeated Dr. Oz, a health-prone, Trump supporter. and a resident of New Jersey.
There are some downsides to the Republican “weird and scary” regime. First, this really dangerous. Realizing that they cannot win the elections even by suppressing and harassing voters, the right-wingers are resorting to violence. Armed, violent thugs have sprung up across the country, terrorizing people attending Drag Queen Story Hour events, and much of the threat has been fueled by organized right-wing groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front.
Furthermore, it would be foolish not to see the Democrats’ ability to fight the far right, even from the Right itself, getting so much help. Arizona’s governor’s race was much closer than it should have been, and New York’s congressional races were farcical. After all, structural problems will remain. Given corporate America and the wealthy, Democrats are ill-equipped to tackle problems like crime that require massive social investment. New York should be a dire warning to the rest of the country, because that’s exactly what happened here: Democratic Mayor Eric Adams increased the threat of crime and chaos by imposing an austerity budget, and suburbanites panicked and voted, giving the Republicans a majority in the House of Representatives.
Still, 2022 offered plenty of reasons for hope. For years we have been told that mainstream America is afraid of socialism. We’re also told that this same mainstream fears queer people and unusual pronouns. 2022 has, in fact, shown that America is afraid of the queer right. Drag queens and socialism, on the other hand, seem increasingly normal.
