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As everyone looks forward to the new year and the changes they would like to see, I believe it is also a helpful practice to look back and reflect on the year that was. So, as 2022 winds down, here are AVC's top five stories from a wild year in politics and misinformation on the Right.
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The Dissenters Trying to Save Evangelicalism from Itself by David Brooks. Brooks lays out a good path for how evangelicalism can be saved from the damage caused by Trump, sex scandals, and racial tensions. But, as we asked at the time, is evangelicalism worth saving?
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Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets by James Pogue. Pogue's coverage introduced many to Curtis Yarvin, the "Prophet" behind much of the New Right's philosophy. But Pogue's most significant contribution was to illustrate how this New Right is like authoritarian groups of old.
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Do Many Americans Believe in the Great Replacement Theory? by Tarah Williams, Nazita Lajevardi, Evan Stewart, and Roy Whitaker. This group's findings, reported in the aftermath of the Buffalo shooting, noted that 6% of Americans, 10-20 million people, fear demographic changes and believe violence is necessary to combat it. At the time, the stats were alarming, but in a world where antisemitism is making a comeback, the report helps explain a little of the world we now live in.
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American Idol: How Politics Replaced Spiritual Practice by Michael Wear. Wear has been one of the most consistent voices that what ails Americans is a misunderstanding of the role politics should play in our lives. And while his piece for CT focuses on a study that shows voting against your opponent is a more significant motivator than voting for your candidate, Wear still finds ways to give us reasons to hope.
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Antisemitism Gets a Boost. This one feels like cheating, as it links to one of our newsletters. But the recent rise of antisemitism is not found in just one article but is a constellation of factors, many of which you can see in this newsletter edition. Rising Antisemitism is a powerful story from 2022, but as you can see from Pogue's Vanity Fair article and the Washington Post's reporting, the groundwork for this rise has been laid for some time.
4 More Things
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Writing for The xxxxxx, Mona Charen calls for a mature immigration policy in the wake of another political stunt by Gov. Abbott. On Christmas Eve, Abbott flew 130 men, women, and children to the doorstep of Vice President Harris' home in sub-freezing temperatures while many immigrants wore t-shirts. Charen calls for generosity and sensible reform instead of Abbott's performative cruelty. Immigrants are people, after all, worthy of being treated with dignity.
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A new study from Nature's Scientific Reports section shows that time pressures decrease our ability to distinguish fake news from real news. However, time pressures do not affect the biases that cause us to view a story as true or false. As a result, the study believes that one avenue for combatting misinformation, especially online, is to "develop interventions aimed at promoting online users to engage in more deliberate thinking."
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Lena Sun of the Washington Post reports that vaccine hesitancy is growing and fueling a resurgence of measles and chickenpox in the US. What is most interesting about this reporting is where those denying vaccines lie politically: people who identify as or lean Republican. Sun reports that many are linking their anti-vax beliefs to their views on personal liberty. Ironically one of the men Sun quotes in the piece uses the language of the pro-choice movement, arguing that vaccine policies do not allow for "my body, my choice."
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The Washington Post has a profile of Harry Waits, a Wisconsin man who ordered the absentee ballots in the names of others to expose the fraud in our election system, as promoted by Donald Trump. Waits is now in court, facing up to 13 years in prison for voter fraud, but remains undaunted in his argument that absentee ballots are a hotbed for fraud. The Post shows that even while some in the Republican party are trying to move on from election denialism, many, like Waits, are proving to be a thorn in their side.
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