The Banality of Evil and Thoughts on Meta Ditching Politics

What counts as "politics," anyway?

Hello, readers. Parker here.

Yesterday, Brynn Tannehill had a piece at The New Republic titled, “Earth to Media: Try to Get It — Nice, Ordinary People Can Be Fascists.” She argues, correctly, in my opinion, both that Trump supporters are treated with kid gloves in the media and that it matters that mainstream news organizations do this.

There are two types of news articles that, whether they intend to or not, always end up painting Donald Trump’s supporters in a sympathetic light. One type of story usually points to “economic anxiety” as a reason why “average Americans” would support someone as awful as Trump (despite all the data proving this isn’t true).

Another tends to describe his supporters as regular people who have fallen down a rabbit hole of kooky ideas and conspiracy theories peddled by malign actors. One notable recent example of this was written by McKay Coppins for The Atlantic, who urged readers to go to a Trump rally to see what MAGA looks like today.

She argues that these articles all tend to paint Trump supporters as “passive vessels being acted upon,” which strips them of agency in their support of a man who declared his plans to be a “dictator” who will enact “retribution” on his political enemies and their supporters. She highlights one of the problems with these sorts of, as she calls them, “Ohio man in a diner” stories, and highlights it as an example of “herrenvolk democracy,” in which certain groups constitute “real” Americans. Those “real” Americans get written about with endless sympathy so long as they’re friendly with their fellow members of the in-group.

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Tannehill continues [bolded emphasis mine]:

The greatest failing of such reporting is that both the “guy in the diner” and the “person at the rally” interviews show reporters surprised at how perfectly normal the people seem in person. As Coppins noted in his article: “I found the wholesome, church-barbecue vibe a little jarring.”

This misses the forest for the trees. As a young man, abolitionist John Brown was hosted by a slave owner for dinner. The host seemed perfectly charming until he nearly beat an enslaved boy to death in front of Brown for being too slow. Frederick Douglass observed, “The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.” Milton Mayer, a Jewish American author, journalist, and educator, was surprised by how perfectly normal and cordial former Nazis were when he visited the shattered country in the early 1950s. Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil” to describe how unremarkable Adolf Eichmann was at his trial, and how Eichmann replaced coherent thought with “stock phrases and self-invented clichés.” (Sound familiar?)

What these reporters (who are largely white and male) seem to forget is that these people seem friendly toward them because they are not members of groups that the GOP rank and file think should be “eradicated.” Similarly, John Brown’s initial impression of his host would have been a lot different if Brown weren’t white. I would likely have a very bad time at a Trump rally if people recognized me as trans (and I’m not particularly willing to go along with the eradication order).

The people at these rallies have made it clear that their policy goals include harming others, but because those “others” don’t look like McKay Coppins, we instead get another piece where a writer will go oh gosh, I’m surprised by just how nice people were to me! Yeah, man. You’re not their target.

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This isn’t saying that anyone should write a piece that’s like, “Here at the Trump rally, I stand among thousands of uniquely evil beings!” because that’s not the point — and they’re not uniquely evil, they’re people. The point here is that these people who seem very nice (to certain people) have normalized the sort of bloodthirsty approach to politics Donald Trump has offered them. Should Trump be elected again to office, he’ll enact some really horrific policies. The people pushing to make that happen should be discussed honestly and as people with agency.

A Second Trump Term Would Be Hell for LGBTQ People

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My thoughts on Meta going politics-free-ish.

In case you missed it, Meta — the company behind Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp — announced that it would default to not amplifying “political content.” Here’s a write-up about that in CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter:

In a series of posts announcing the policy, Adam Mosseri, the Meta executive who oversees both Instagram and Threads, said the company does not want to "proactively amplify political content from accounts you don't follow." Mosseri said that the platforms will still show users content from the accounts they have chosen to follow, but added that the company will "avoid recommending political content" to the broader masses.

"Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to choose to interact with political content, while respecting each person’s appetite for it," Mosseri explained. 

The sweeping and opaque decision to reduce certain content it deems undesirable further extends Meta's announcement in the fall that Threads is "not going go to amplify news on the platform," sending chills through the community, much of which had just fled Elon Musk's X for a stable platform to share information.

CNN’s Oliver Darcy asked me to share my thoughts on this move, which you can find in the newsletter, but I wanted to expand on them a bit.