A few weeks ago we got a nice object lesson in the rhetorical strategies the right tries to rebut arguments about itself. Whether these are deliberate trolling strategies or just ones that propagate among the right in a more-or-less organic fashion, they are still fascinating to observe. My point here in collecting them, beyond the bemusement they may produce in seeing them together, is as part of the general project to understand those strategies and so to think about why the right relies on them, and how and why they work to whatever extent they do work.
On Nov 24, the NYU economist and long-time financial observer Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) retweeted a comment from Dogecoin developer Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson), one of the sanest people in the cryptocurrency space, who made the pretty unremarkable observation that this tweet from major cryptocurrency guru John McAfee is, at best, problematic. It’s also not all that unusual:
People don't seem to like talking about the overlap of the cryptocurrency community and this type of individual. 🤨 pic.twitter.com/fqzX0dHugc
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) November 22, 2018
Roubini went further (and tagged me and mentioned my book, which is how I got wind of this particular set of comments):
I agree: @officialmcafee is not one isolated racist crypto bad apple. As @dgolumbia has shown in his book the whole crypto ideology is Right Wing Extremism. So McAfee is just the tip of a racist, right-wing, white supremacist, conspiracy-paranoid, anti-semitic Crypto ideology https://t.co/Tdx1lPbXaT
— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) November 24, 2018
Roubini’s retweet prompted responses that are supposed to show that Bitcoin is not racist (whatever exactly that is supposed to mean–as I’ve pointed out many times, this is not actually the thesis of my book ThePolitics of Bitcoin, despite what definitely non-rightist and non-racist commentators may say, having fully informed themselves of the book’s title), the people around Bitcoin are not racist, and Bitcoin is definitely not aligned with the political right.
However, to the rest of us, these responses are… curious. To anyone to the left of #MAGA, they might seem to be proving Roubini’s point. The fact that people can think they rebut that point is part of a larger phenomenon of what I call “right reaction” that deserves separate treatment.
Say “I Have Friends Who Are…” (or “He Has Friends Who Are…”)
Say It’s Not Racist to Be Racist Because It’s Correct to Be Racist
Personally Insult the Speaker
Say the Speaker Is Racist for Pointing Out Racism
Be Incoherent and Angry
Accuse the Speaker of Being Incoherent and Angry
