Greg’s Thread:

Greg’s article:

Opinion  The MAGA persecution complex is eating itself to death

“At last week’s hearing, Republicans alleged that the FBI investigated conservative parents at school board meetings. (That’s entirely baseless.) They insisted FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a registered Republican, personally sicced the FBI on conservatives. (Wray called this “insane.”) They claimed the FBI has eagerly persecuted Trump. (The FBI has actually been rule-bound and cautious.) They railed that FBI plants incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. (The central evidence of this has collapsed.)

“The barrage of these allegations and others — the FBI is covering up President Biden’s bribery, it’s investigating would-be GOP informants, it’s colluding with social media giants to censor conservatives — is dizzying. Storylines eclipse each other before any can gel into something coherent.”

“Contrast that with today. Yes, the public is sour on the FBI. The agency did make serious mistakes during the Trump years. But voters are being asked to hate a villain that’s far more baroque and insidious than “mistakes were made.” The enemy is either absurdly nebulous (the “deep state”) or fantastical (thousands of federal officers conspiring against conservatives).

It also clashes with how the FBI has long been perceived in mainstream culture, noted Tim Weiner, author of a history of the agency. It’s a “very White, very male, very conservative law enforcement agency,” Weiner told me, and Republicans are trying to portray it as “antifa in a Brooks Brothers suit.”

That’s a tough sell. But as Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein notes, this conspiratorial rhetoric has become party-wide dogma. Repeating it earns party approval, creating a self-reinforcing effect.”

“Finally, Jan. 6 sharply illustrated the true stakes of the situation: Many on the far right did commit serious crimes against the country. While Trump-loyal Republicans are handwaving it all away, law enforcement is meting out appropriate accountability. This probably inclines news organizations to cover right-wing attacks on law enforcement more harshly than Benghazi.”

“But no matter: The zone-flooding conspiratorial antics will keep on coming. The MAGA persecution complex requires no less.”