🧵 I want to follow up this earlier thread by examining why the USA finds itself in the state it does at the moment; the process of disordered discourse capturing state institutions and how it inevitably results in a slide towards authoritarianism, a process we're seeing unfold before our very eyes.
Reposted from
Eliot Higgins
What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.
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fully established” you are going to have to be quicker if you want to get ahead of history,
right now you’re a good
year behind, and they’ve been planning and planning and planning and You’re just waking up.
sorry. i had to share.
Oh by the way....
How many sycophant Repub senators will get a Tesla in the next 3 months?
Obama running a genuinely beautiful, powerful campaign implying generational change—then getting repeatedly kneecapped from within *his own party* by Baucus and Lieberman—was only fifteen years ago.
That was the start for many of us.
Over a longer term of years and with some extra twists, this is also how ruzia fell into its current state and, why it stays there.
But NOW it troubles you?
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If I have to get off my couch and drive 1000 km to go defend my border, I'll be in an even pissier mood than I am now.
I’m just tired of intolerance.
https://www.impeachtrumpagain.org
Just think Brexit.
They get to be reborn and may actually get societal approval.
Change your policies or get rolled. Spare me with the disordered discourse psychobabble
Usually gatekeeping is a form of credentialism that rejects evidence or good arguments because the source isn't sufficiently insider.
I suppose the opposite (where any old rubbish is considered legitimate) can also happen
The final stages are familiar, but I don't think we got here because of a failure of gate keeping.
So he is living proof that allowing ‘Bullshit’ to ‘Baffle Brains’, is what leads to an authoritarian liar taking control of an entire Country.
Any new narrative within the "ordered discourse" would follow a somewhat similar path, from its emergence in the public ...
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It would be precious to clearly define, at each stage, what distinguishes an "ordered" narrative from a "disordered" one, since it could hint at how we can safeguard the state from capture.
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I'm just sharing the idea.
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The main example that comes to my mind is nazi Germany, which only found its way out through military defeat...
Snarky comments aside, I'm sure history is full of examples of disordered discourse rising and falling, achieving different stages of state capture.
And that could be of major interest for the present.
Ensemble de fils précieux sur le "disordered discourse" (définition dans les fils précédents) et son emprise sur les institutions, appliqué ici sur l'exemple des US.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america
Not all disordered discourse leads to institutional capture.
Some narratives, like Flat Earth or Bigfoot conspiracies, remain fringe, self-contained, and irrelevant to policy.
But others infiltrate formal institutions, and that’s where the danger escalates.
From what I see, online, Flat Earth is more and more shifting from the 'anti-establishment' people to religious motivated people. And they want education reformed. They'll see opportunity in closing the Department of Education.
It’s not a metaphor. It’s a structural process.
Barrier Weakening (Gatekeeper failure)
Legitimisation & Normalisation
Adoption by Elite Actors
Restructuring of Institutions
Entrenchment & Epistemic Closure
Gatekeepers, editors, regulators, party leaders, moderators, begin failing to hold the line.
Distorted narratives aren’t endorsed yet, but they’re no longer blocked. The gate is ajar. Think early election denialism in the US starting to appear on places like Fox News.
Disordered narratives are framed as “just one opinion,” “part of the debate.”
Media covers them neutrally. Platforms amplify them.
Politicians echo talking points to signal alignment without full endorsement.
This normalises unreality.
Now the narrative is openly embraced.
Politicians, institutions, pundits internalise it as part of their platform or identity. It becomes part of institutional logic, not just tolerated, but defended. Again, think back to how election denialism was being promoted.