There's been a lot of arguments over how much, exactly, South Park shaped the politics of generation of middle class white guys whose material conditions were going to push them towards reaction anyways. And I think the reality is that it probably didn't exactly indoctrinate anyone, but it did provide a shape for the reactionary tendencies of its target audience, and it kept mirroring that back on them and feeding them rationalizations and stereotypes and easy to digest lines that made those tendencies take on a particular character and helped to strengthen them. It's one reason why that generation of reactionaries looks like it does, why the self-serving, chauvinist libertines became a core part of the modern fascist movement instead of remaining alienated from politics because of their hostility to both the feminism and anti-racism of the left and the theocratic moralism of the old far right.
Because that's how reactionary socialization through media works: it doesn't create reactionary tendencies from whole cloth, it creates a sort of resonating space for existing reaction and helps propagate and teach the reactionary tendencies already present in society, along with their tropes, stereotypes, and aesthetics. Like cowboy shows and movies didn't give boomers brainworms, but they did help cultivate the dominant brainworms in society at the time and they helped to teach them a bunch of reactionary individualist nonsense with simple moralistic fables that exalted the archetype of the domineering, isolated patriarch that's at the heart of American fascism's warrior-cult identity.
There's been a lot of arguments over how much, exactly, South Park shaped the politics of generation of middle class white guys whose material conditions were going to push them towards reaction anyways. And I think the reality is that it probably didn't exactly indoctrinate anyone, but it did provide a shape for the reactionary tendencies of its target audience, and it kept mirroring that back on them and feeding them rationalizations and stereotypes and easy to digest lines that made those tendencies take on a particular character and helped to strengthen them. It's one reason why that generation of reactionaries looks like it does, why the self-serving, chauvinist libertines became a core part of the modern fascist movement instead of remaining alienated from politics because of their hostility to both the feminism and anti-racism of the left and the theocratic moralism of the old far right.
Because that's how reactionary socialization through media works: it doesn't create reactionary tendencies from whole cloth, it creates a sort of resonating space for existing reaction and helps propagate and teach the reactionary tendencies already present in society, along with their tropes, stereotypes, and aesthetics. Like cowboy shows and movies didn't give boomers brainworms, but they did help cultivate the dominant brainworms in society at the time and they helped to teach them a bunch of reactionary individualist nonsense with simple moralistic fables that exalted the archetype of the domineering, isolated patriarch that's at the heart of American fascism's warrior-cult identity.
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