Academic Unanalysis: Being Polite Is Now "Soft Fash" (as in Fascist)?
When projection masquerades as "brilliance"
Academia has gotten a bad rap for its one-sided political posturing, and for good reason.
I’d like to go back to the days where the default was “moderate” and we were not preached to by professors, TV news anchors, or debate moderators.
But right now, academia has more than its fair share of highly partisan people, who have no qualms about pushing their political belief systems on everyone else, on and off campus.
This is a problem, not just because of the bias, but worse because…
These professors are not as smart as they think they are. They are “fake smart.”
Some sort of professor in something or other, it’s not clear, Dr. Lisa Corrigan, wrote the following bizarre thread on X after the VP debate trying to make JD Vance out to be a violent predator and fascist (“fash”) - her comments are highlighted with blue:
https://x.com/DrLisaCorrigan/status/1841456362707956063
Let's talk about JD Vance's approach in the debate. It's it's soft fash and it's a way of mainstreaming "traditional family" fascist aesthetics. A short [thread emoji]
1.) Soft speaking is prized as a rhetorical skill. It makes social violence more palatable (in the family and nation). It's more likely to draw women in (see also the pink tie). The contrast is when he talked over the female moderators and flashed anger at being fact-checked.
Wait, so she’s saying that being polite is creating more “social violence”? And that a traditional family is fascist? Yikes! Already, this is insane!
(Yes, I also know that academics are telling us it’s not “inclusive” to use the term “insane” in a derogatory manner, but they also don’t want to use the term “insane” to label people who have mental health issues, due to “stigma,” so now that the term “insane” is divorced from mental health, I think it’s fitting we use it in other contexts, such as this one.)
I also take issue with this hypocritical feminism that wants women to be strong and equal to men in all respects but also frail little flowers that must be protected from the mean man debating with them. Ridiculous.
2.) His repeated strategy of pointing to alleged similarities to Walz is designed to move the Dems right and manufactures consent for the GOP agenda.
Umm…isn’t the whole point of political rhetoric to persuade? What is the problem with this? She makes it sound like some sinister plot to brainwash people.
3.) Calling Walz by his first name produced an implied intimacy but also equality between the two men's accomplishments, despite the fact that Vance is wildly unqualified. He's the Dan Quayle of the moment.
I don’t know how she can say this with a straight face considering Walz literally called himself a knucklehead.
4.) Trying to be chummy in a gentler voice produces a softer fash alongside the lies about his support for a pregnancy registry, a national abortion ban, and forced labor for grandma (who will now be raising the grandkids, despite the fact that he's slashing Medicare)
OK, who’s really lying here? There is no plan or desire to create a “pregnancy registry”! Remember, she is likely one the same folks blasting the “Trumpsters” for being against vaccine tracking and digital ID!
5.) Aesthetically, we see this in the fash women with Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her prairie dresses or with Casey DeSantis and her Disney princess schtick. Given the attention to Vance's goth eyeliner, the pink tie and soft speech attempted to normalize his violence.
WHAT violence? See how they have redefined violence here to mean…whatever they have projected onto you? This gives them an “excuse” to justify shutting your speech down, because, you are “violent.” Even when you are being polite and cordial. Unreal.
Also, the fashion shaming here is just petty and juvenile. For all their crowing about busting gender roles, the left sure is obsessed with Vance’s alleged eyeliner. (If his TV make-up team puts some subtle eyeliner on him for a debate, I really don’t care. Give me a freakin’ break.)
6.) Given that Vance lies like he breathes, this was an attempt to create some aesthetic coherence to his completely unmoored and opportunistic politics. But you can't put lipstick on a pig, as we learned in 2008 (that was forever ago [eyeroll emoji]).
Nice callback to all of the misogyny thrown by the left at Sarah Palin in 2008 - “lipstick on a pig” was one of their favorite phrases to trash her, along with using the C-word. Pepperidge Farm remembers. It was one of the reasons I left the left, their vitriolic, misogynistic hatred thrown at Palin.
7.) Don't get it twisted, though: Vance is the most overtly bloodthirsty candidate at the top of a presidential ticket since Andrew Jackson.
WHAT? Where on earth is she getting this stuff? Andrew Jackson, president from 1829-1837? Not even GW Bush? She’s now making crap up out of thin air. Unbelievable.
8.) The sexual politics of fascism is actually quite widely studied & the extremely oppressive natalism, restrictions on contraception and abortion, support for misogynist violence, and anti-immigrant sentiment converge in race/sex panic to justify widespread violence.
What a bunch of ridiculous word salad, a jumble of emotionalized words designed to get her followers all worked up and nodding their heads in unison, thinking they are smart when they are not. Never mind her apparent past support for misogynistic “violence” against Sarah Palin.
Abortion, by the way, is not pro-woman, but I’ll have to write a long essay as to why in the near future.
9.) His wife functioned a prop to justify the hypermasculine worldview, particularly as he distanced himself from any responsibility for housework/childcare/balancing the family with labor. He doesn't see himself as a father but as a breeder with echoes of Musk & other fash dads.
This is just a lot of weird projection on her part. Vance’s wife is an accomplished career woman, so I have no idea why “Dr.” Corrigan is trying to make out like she’s barefoot in the kitchen.
10.) It's no wonder that they are all so preoccupied with the slur "cuck." It speaks to the internal dynamics of white masculinity in the fash moment. They're all so unmoored and anxious about being exposed.
Exposed for what? Oh, see next post for clarification:
11.) This was the dynamic at midcentury because J. Edgar Hoover had so much sexual dirt on men operating in the political sphere and he used it as interpersonal (and sometimes political) leverage against them.
Oh, I get it now. With Vance’s pink tie and eyeliner, she is hinting here that Vance is really a closet homosexual, and that this somehow makes him into a bad guy. I love how the pro-LGBTQ+ crowd exposes their internalized homophobia with all the hatred they spew at the supposed closeted Republicans.
12.) This dynamic around "cucks" is just insecure white masculinity peacocking for each other trying to outdo the most extreme version of themselves. This is why the contrast with Walz was painful at times to watch. But soft fash is THE mask for the racial and sexual violence.
Now look at what she did here. She started off equating “soft speaking” with violence and wrapped it up with some bizarre tangent about “cucks,” without saying one damn thing of substance about what Vance actually said in the debate.
This “professor” is engaged in the worst form of rhetorical propaganda, using her “mind reading skills” to project a hate vision she concocted of Vance out into the world, twisting his Midwest politeness into some sort of nefarious call to violence.
Along the way, she showcases her own internalized misogyny against both Sarah Palin and Vance’s accomplished wife, as well as her homophobia towards allegedly closeted gay Republicans.
Am I perhaps also projecting a little when I claim this “doctor” is misogynistic and homophobic? Perhaps. But I’m actually analyzing her actual words, not making cheap shots at her X profile picture. Her dripping condescension about Vance’s alleged eyeliner goes to show you that any gender fluidity she supports on the outside is simply politically expedient and not genuine.
I shudder to think what this woman is teaching students at the college level.
One thing we can do is improve our own ability to dissect this type of pseudo-academic garbage language and showcase it for what it really is: Mean, hostile, biased emotional projection. There is nothing scholarly about this, not one bit.
PS Speaking of school, I am working on my master’s in education right now and I’m mostly unemployed…please consider throwing a few coins in the Tip Jar. Thank you!
I like how they call nasty comments "violence" but don't regard the murder of a million Iraqis, a million Syrians, a million Libyans and a million Ukrainians "violence". And putting all of at risk of global nuclear war due to their proxy war against Russia. No violence in that. Not a bit. $billion punishments for the former, big money promotions and investment bonanzas for the latter.
Good analysis. “Cretins with credentials” I call these academics. Utter destruction of any empathy or critical thinking skills.