Weirdness and the Right
At the time of writing, the USA’s Democratic Party has recently hit on a new line of attack against their far right opponents (Trump, Vance and so on): these people are weird. Which, of course, they are — but is that really one of the main problems with them? And what about all the other weirdos caught in the crossfire in attacks like this?
First, let’s look at why this angle of attack seems so effective.
The thing is, the far right are extremely weird, but their whole thing is about attacking weirdness. They are weirdo-hating weirdos.
https://x.com/TheThomason/status/1817973560172020046
The authoritarian right has always been about imposing control by enforcing conformity, persecuting those who deviate from certain norms, and idolising people seen as embodying those norms. The control might be the real point, but the mechanisms for maintaining power revolve around attacks on the undesirable other.
So of course, there is power in pointing out that people like Vance are in fact deeply peculiar personalities, with values and priorities wildly at odds with those of the population at large. If the norms they’re trying to enforce don’t match up with those of their nation, what kind of nationalists are they? If they themselves are oddballs, creepily obsessed with the genitals and reproduction of strangers, who are they to be telling anyone else how they should act?
Speaking as someone who has always been weird, though, and drawn to other weird people, it seems dangerous to be reinforcing the idea that being weird is automatically bad and shameful. People see me as weird because I’m autistic (although I didn’t make that connection until I was in my 30s) and because I’m queer, have complicated feelings about gender, care deeply about things that many people are seemingly indifferent to (like science and injustice), and struggle to deal with hierarchies and authority. I have learned not to be ashamed of any of those things — to embrace my weirdness, in other words, despite what conservatives want. It hasn’t always been easy.
Weird Pride is something that many people badly need.
So if I see someone using ‘weird’ as an insult or an attack, I am less inclined to trust that person — I know that progressives sometimes push conformism too. They may not mean to, but people using terms like ‘weird’ as insults are implicitly positioning themselves on the side of ‘normality’ against ‘weirdness’, and that puts them in opposition to diversity. Valuing diversity absolutely has to mean accepting and embracing things seen as weird.
The far right is rattled when they get called ‘weird’ because they see themselves as being for normality, and against diversity and weirdness. It rattles them, but on some level it plays into their hands at the same time.
It’s possible that’s a price worth paying here, but it is a lot like when people who think of themselves as left-wing or liberal ridicule right-wingers for their weight, masculinity, femininity or anything related to disability. The attacks might well hit home, but who else is being hurt when stigmatised characteristics are used as fuel for attacks?
