Help a foreigner to understand Freepers

[mr blur]

I read the thing they say at Free Republic and I just see a lot of frightened people, hiding their fear behind slogans and an assumed - and completely unjustified - moral superiority. It's so sad that it's not even funny any more. What are they so afraid of? They're afraid to share the country with the rest of you, never mind sharing the world with the rest of us.

They loudly claim their superiority and America's right to control the world, appearing to expect the world to welcome their arrogance, neither knowing nor caring that much of the world is laughing at them. They offer no discussion, but offer as justification of their actions quotations from a book which a large part of the world does not accept as the last word in moral guidance.

Didn't these people ever go to school? Weren't they taught that there are many ways of making sense of the world and that no-one can know for sure which is right? Someone mentioned on DU a bumper sticker that says "Welcome to America - now speak English or get out" What the fuck is that all about? It might as well read, "You are different from me so go away or I'll hurt you". This isn't just arrogance, it's fear, pure and simple. It's not just that they hate Democrats - they're scared of you. What happened in America to make this come about?

[wuushew]

1. It is simply a poorly designed outlet

for homophobia, jingoism and racism among other ills.

[POAS]

2. How can you expect an explanation for

the unexplanable.

[LightningFlash]

3. Freepers a majority of them are sad cowards.

Thank god many of them are waking up to this nightmare and doing something about it themselves!!!!

But the rest, the 30% or so of america is totally brainwashed by a radical 10% of america who believes in fundamentalist christiandom: fascism. Who believes Bush and the junta are christ, when they are following satan. Who believes everything is moral, when it is in fact dead WRONG.

And they've been so brainwashed it would take years of deprogramming- A sad fact when you look at 4.3% of america is of poor mental health. The majority of those radicals, and they influence the full on agenda of republican leadership.

Truly sad.....We outnumber them so severely. So that's why I say we should keep demanding they do their jobs, keep pressing and picketing, for all members who aren't complicit in these CRIMES, to do their jobs and finish what they started.....IMMEDIATELY, I mean.

http://www.usalone.com/index.htm

But the 30% of them the freepers etc....Wow...Just forget reaching them. :shrug:

[KnightoftheRepublic]

4. It is the

fear of the unknown. That's the entire driving force behind conservatism, after all.

[burrowowl]

5. It is purely and

simply: Chauvinism.
I'm sure you have some in the UK.

[DBoon]

8. Combined with isolation

You can spend your entire life in the US and never get anywhere near another country. Harder to do that in Europe.

Europe has vivid memories of two world wars and various totalitarian movements. Europeans are wary of these things. Americans are largely innocent of the damage that unbridled agression causes. It has been almost 150 years since a significant conflict was fought on American soil.

[mr blur]

17. Yes, of course we do...

but not with such clearly defined battle lines, I guess.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. the economy sucks

this is part of it. People can't really get ahead, can't really "pull themselves up by their bootstraps"-and they think that only if they went back to "the good old days" everything would be fine. Instead of looking to the real causes of their plight, they look to scapegoats. Someone "different" makes them feel superior-they can think, sure, I'm in a dead end job, no way out, but I'm better than _____(fill in the blank with whatever group you wish).

This is really the same tactic used by the planter class in the South before the Civil War. They kept the poor whites in line, afraid to assert their rights of collective bargaining, etc, by making African Americans the lowest class and reinforcing the racial stereotypes.

[kevinmc]

7. Freepers: Proof Huffing Paint Fries Brains n/t

[DBoon]

9. Now that you mention the subject

I also seriously think meth abuse has a lot to do with it.

Paranoid agressiveness is one result.

[kevinmc]

16. I Agree. n/t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

10. mr blur, huh?

Which means, one could assume, that you have a passing acquaintance with the music of a band of the same name. So, I would suggest that you go listen to "Common People"(I personally think the Bill Shatner version is the best punk music since Da' Pistols) and ponder what happens when what is imparted in that song turns very, very toxic.

That's Freepers, mate.

[mr blur]

19. Actually, that was Pulp

who did "Common People" - great song, though. The name has nothing to do with Blur, which is/was an awful band, I always thought.

[TwentyFive]

11. My take on this stems from economics.

I think conservatives approach life from a win/lose perspective. If poor people 'win' benefits from social programs, then it comes out of their taxes - loss.

Conversly, liberals see the social programs as eventually benefitting them. More money for education means that someday the ailment you have, is cured by a doctor that came from a poor family, but was able to afford college.

So, the conservative tries to enrich his life by making sure other people lose as much as possible. So, killing the enemy means that we are safe. It does not occur to them that maybe we can co-exist with the ememy, turn him into a friend...or that killing one enemy actually creates 2 new enemies.

Just my 2 cents...

[uppityperson]

12. It is a really big country, lots of different folks

many of whom are different from each other. If I had a better answer, I'd be really happy.

[punpirate]

13. We've had more than thirty years of a concerted effort...

... on the part of the far right to control the public discourse of the country. Most recently, beginning with Reagan, the neo-conservatives have had a firm hand on the helm and have gradually come to convince a significant part of the country in the nation's exceptionalism. To understand the intellectual underpinnings of that belief in US exceptionalism, one has to delve into the philosophy of Leo Strauss, the neo-conservatives' intellectual godfather.

Try to imagine the intellectual supporters of Lepin finding influential places in the French government, the press and think tanks, all pressing the views of Lepin, steadily and inexorably pushing every institution in France toward Lepin's views for more than three decades.

That's pretty much what we have here....

[Cerridwen]

14. My opinion - thank you mr blur for asking

I agree - when I see the hatred at free republic and here on DU (Yep, see it here as well) I see a lot of fear.

I'm not sure what if any one thing specifically happened here in the U.S. to cause such wide spread fear. I do know that our public school system is designed to make good citizen consumers of U.S. kids and that most of us from the public school system have little knowledge of different cultures. We speak English and only English and expect all others who come here to learn our language; little effort is made to make them feel welcome.

I think, in the U.S. we have a long history of our leaders using many tools, i.e., politics, religion, fear of difference, to incite in U.S. people a constant feeling of fear - fear of scarcity, fear of financial ruin, fear of any person "not like me," and so on.

It is sad for me as a U.S. citizen to see such fear induced hatred and anger in my country. My friend and I were just moments ago wondering what has happened that it so "okay" to be cruel and heartless and uncaring in this country.

Look to our daily dose of television and film to see even more examples of making what used to be considered aberrant and unacceptable behavior, acceptable. "Survivor" "Desperate Housewives" "Cops" people watching for their entertainment "man's inhumanity to man." I keep waiting - maybe next will be something like the Roman Coliseum where we can watch men killing men and fighting animals for our further entertainment.

Just sad.

[Warpy]

15. They went to school but they weren't particuarly suited to it

and did as little as possible to get by. They put enough short term knowledge into their heads to pass an immediate test, then promptly forgot it. They're all surface knowledge, with nothing substantial inside. They have little insight into the processes of history. They prefer light social chitchat to deep discussions, prefer ATVs to bicycles, jet skis to sailboats, People Magazine to books, fast food to cuisine, crowds to solitude. They adore right wing pundits who daily illustrate that you don't have to make more sense than an opponent, you just have to yell louder. They are the people who drift through life, pretty much, and they're scared that some day someone is going to require more of them.

Hence the hostility and the anti intellectualism and the attraction to an incoherent man who nonetheless seems to know exactly what he wants and is rigid in the face of change.

I think between us, we have pretty much described them.

[tsuki]

18. I believe many of them are children. We had a 16 year old on the

conyersblog that finally admitted that he was really supposed to be doing his homework, a seven page essay.

After 9-11, it became very hip to be pro-establishment among the young, to spout not only the talking points of the establishment, but take them even further right.

Among my Repub acquaintances, their children have a computer, cable or DSL hook-up, a TV, DVD, X-Box and mobile phone in their rooms. All intercourse is over the web. They do not hold jobs, never delivered a paper or washed a dish.

So, the extreme is from youth, the fear from their parents, and the lack of social skills from an indulged lifestyle without interaction.

[izzybeans]

20. You've got them pegged down pretty well.

America is still dealing with the propaganda from the cold war, producing a fear of communists lurking around every corner. That fear is easily parlayed into a fear of anyone else being left out of the nationalist frame set by the propaganda machine. How could one be American and a member of the communist party back in the days of McCarthy? The answer is probably the same answer if you were to ask how could one be a Trotskyite in the days of Stalin. Today, they are sold the line about how one not be for the European's reclaiming the middle east and still be an American? How can one not be for "Operation rest of the Brown one's" and still be American?

If they learned anything during their school years, its been lost in a technocratic blindness. But then again, our school system is less about developing classical skills, such as critical thought and the ability to reason, and more about constructing the blindness itself. "I must take business administration classes. I must take business administration classes," says the legion of zombies, who could just as easily be saying, "must eat brains. I must eat brains." Very few students read critical pieces of literature, philosophy, and social theory. However, they are well versed in psychobabble, scientific management (taylorism), and the bullet points of one sided lectures on the mythical 'free market'. "I must eat brains."

When they walk out of their business admin. classes they get pretty fearful in a world that does not conform to the narrow frame of their puny little textbooks...and then latter in life, whatever the consultants happen to spewing at them during that round of corporate restructuring. But then again, most freepers haven't gotten that far. They've never taken business admin. classes, but their bosses sure have, and there's nothing like whipping a prole into shape with your newly minted MBA and flavor of the day management style. Chances are many freeptards just haven't been able to get their hands on something more enlightening. If you're ever in the states, let's say NY City, turn on the radio and start driving west. Here's a hypothesis for you to test. The greater number of small towns, of farms, and trees, and big trucks you see, the greater the likelihood you will find Rush Limbaugh on your dial and nothing else, no NPR, no WBAI, no Air America, no CBS news, etc. This will be the land where you'll most likely run into a freeper.

This is of course true from any major city, just start driving, you'll get a rough sense of what type of information these people have access to (try a.m radio where all the talk shows are located).

My Point: no matter the source of their knowledge, whether they are corporate freeptards well versed in slogans of the business class or their proletarian employees well versed in the slogans of the wingnuts, that fear will be there because they know nothing else. They shut themselves off to the rest of the world and in large measure the rest of the world shuts off to them (i.e. the reception for wbai is pretty bad once you hit Pennsylvania).

[Liberal In Texas]

21. If you compare the replies in this post to anything on FR

you'll note a distinct difference in the intellectual level of discourse.

Our education system is by and large appalling, which leads to a large part of the populace that is more interested in entertainment and diversion rather than knowledge and understanding.

For example, our television by and large is base and banal. If you lived here any length of time, you would eventually find that our media (especially radio) is rife with RW hate mongers that spew out catch phrases (talking points) that their listeners, largely uneducated dolts, repeat slavishly. Years of constant propaganda have turned the easily led into jingoistic racists.

I just wanted to add my two cents worth to the already well stated replies to this post.

[OnionPatch]

22. It's pretty creepy

There has been a concerted effort by the right, backed with tons of money, think-tanks, media buy-outs, etc. to brainwash people and it's working. Have you ever tuned into AM radio in America? It's nothing but right-wingers spewing forth their hatred and fear and explaining "the way of the world" in their twisted logic on EVERY station! Rural people listen to the radio when they're driving, working, etc. The only other thing on the radios out there in rural America is Jesus Radio. It's just as bad because the right has also infiltrated so many of the churches with their propaganda.

Other that those things, I really don't understand how so many Americans have become so shallow, ignorant and hateful. The only defense I have is that a lot of us are working very hard to change things.

[cally]

23. There's an undercurrent in Americans of extreme arrogance

We are taught that America saved the world from the Nazi's. We are taught that we are the supreme economic and military power. We are taught that our democracy and way of life is best and that all the world envies us. If we question these assumptions, then we are seen as unpatriotic and un-American.

Most of us are compassionate and curious but there is an anti-intellectualism in the US. It is seen as better to make it without an education then to tow the line and work through the best schools and be successful. To have a liberal education and study world cultures is not values. It's seen as intellectual elitism and snobbery.

To give us credit, most of us are different and I sense that most are changing and valuing other countries and cultures. But a place like free republic shows the extreme of our isolationist and anti-intellectual culture.

[Tahkcalb]

24. A translation for you.

Free Republic == Friends of Enoch Powell

[Stirk]

25. They're assholes. You've got 'em, too. The only difference is that

one of our political parties has organized assholes into a voting block. They've done it with decades of wedge issues that focus on racism, sexism, greed, and wrath.

[UTUSN]

26. FDR Said It: "Men of small vision"

Plus, at the core of all wingnuts are greed and some kind of corruption. The rottenness is easier or harder to see in different ones, but dig down deep enough and it's right there every time.

[Sather Gate]

27. Free Republic

You have to understand that there is no freedom of thought at JimRob's racket. The place was originally founded as an anti-Clinton site in the late 1990's. This was despite Robinson's being a Democrat. Christian Zionists have been a controlling influence from the beginning, and that's really the only "correct" Christian line on FR to this day. That and a whole wordwork full of Rapture and Left Behind true believers, who will love to tell you that YOU"RE left behind. Likkudnik and Kahanite jews are another strong faction. You can't criticize either group or you're banned. You can't criticize Israel, you can't criticize Bush (see exception below) or any of his lackeys, and you can't criticize the Republican Party. All these factions are probably contributing $$
to the site, and Robinson and his thought police moderators do as they're told. They read your internal Freep email, and there is zero privacy, nada. There has been one recent mini-revolt, concerning immigration, slightly before the Minutemen went in in Arizona. JimRob was trying to ban anybody who took an anti-illegal immigrant stand and supported the Minutemen; this may have been on orders from Bush operatives out of Rove's office, since Bush was simultaneously trying to put up a trial balloon for an amnesty program. Most everybody revolted, so he backed down. It's now OK to call Bush a schmuck on immigration policy, but not much else.
Somebody ought to do a sociological/psychological study on Freeperdom. They are a cyber mob, for the most part. Occasionally they run threads celebrating and gloating over the death of Rachel Corrie - you remember, the young American woman who was intentionally
crushed to death by an Israeli IDF house demolition bulldozer. I wish you could see one of those revolting, appalling threads. Try going on as a troll and post the next news about Rachel's parents suing Caterpillar Tractor and see what that draws out of the woodwork there.
:mad: :mad: - SG, banned a Looong time ago.....