I think all of these are refinements of the same sleazy, manipulative tactic that is growing more effective with each iteration.

Newspapers pushing xenophobia is about as old as newspapers themselves. But you had to actually buy the newspaper then actively sit down and read it, which isn’t a great start if you want to build an army of deliberately misinformed idiots.

Then we had your hate radio. Not only was it free, people could just let it passively wash over them, absorbing opinions like a sponge, unable to take a moment to think critically about what was just said, even if they cared to.

But even the worst of them struggled to openly advocate white supremacy and genocide.

That was left to extremists spreading xeroxed propaganda and they struggled to find an audience. They often targeted things like punk gigs, searching for an angry, disaffected group of young white men, instead finding a kick in the head from people who would be considered “woke” today.

Fortunately for people with dogshit where their personality should be, 24 hour reactionary TV was here to escalate things. With its constant barrage of flashing lights and blaring stingers, it was a struggle to ignore for even a second.

Bigotry was no longer just an opinion, it was full blown entertainment. But underneath it all the careful stage management and production value, you could see them seething at being unable to go mask off.

The internet eventually became accessible enough that they found it and for a while, they were so excited. They could say whatever vile shit they wanted! Their friends and family would never find out! Nobody could punch them!

But they had all the same pitfalls as the newspapers did. People needed to actively seek them out and people just weren’t typing “top ten reasons it’s cool to be a Nazi” into AskJeeves.

Sites like Stormfront tried their old tricks, “raiding” other forums to spam propaganda, but it was so easy to mop up. They struggled to get their misinformation out there without making it clear it was just 12 people with 80 IQs on a warm who couldn’t regulate their emotions.

Then social media arrived to give them everything they wanted, short of an ethnostate and a wife that was too scared to say no. It was passive, it was entertainment and you could say whatever horrific shit you wanted without worrying about repercussions in the form of violence or bad PR.

It took them a while to figure things out at first. Initially they tried just openly admitting they were white supremacists but quickly found platforms wouldn’t tolerate that. And so the “alt-right” was invented and they insisted they weren’t neo-nazis, they just happened to have the same opinions, talking points, figureheads and tattoos.

That plausible deniability took them to dizzying new heights. They were on the news! People were listening to their opinions and then not spitting on them! They were so confident, when “Unite the Right” came around, they tore off their masks, grabbed their tiki torches, paraded around with their swastika flags then killed an innocent woman for disagreeing with them in an act of domestic terrorism.

Which is when they learned they’re not as bulletproof as they thought. They were immediately fired, disowned and deplatformed. But the lesson they learned wasn’t “don’t be genocide promoting fuckstains”, it was to always stay mask on, no matter what. To cling to that plausible deniability even in the face of the most damning evidence to the contrary.

From that, the modern reactionary movement was born.

You just use social media to feed them a constant stream of talking points, “jokes” and trigger words, denying it the whole time. They’ll self-select and signal boost their favourites, form their own little incestuous relationships and get pushed deeper into culthood, guided by the gentle hand of “the algorithm”.