That is one of those big, identifiable moments when the media fucked up entirely. They exclusively focused on, and fed into. The noise about “attacking voters”. While completely ignoring the content of the speech. That was an important moment. And a good speech. Younger Americans and people with a fair bit of experience on line (particularly if they happen to be not white or not male) are typically at least some what aware of what’s been doing with the alt right. But the broader media and older folks have missed that. They haven’t seen the harassment campaigns. The toxic weirdness. And so forth. The reaction when things burble up into the national attention span is “What exactly is Gamergate?” shrugging.
And the subject needs a bit of explanation. Because that “movement” isn’t some innocuous “grass roots” bit of the GOP base. And it isn’t just Neo-Nazis. Is a very particular combination of the New Misogynist/Men’s Rights thing, white nationalism of the “we totally don’t hate black people we just want them gone forever” variety, and that weird ass dark enlightenment thing. That last bit there being explicitly predicated on removing things like education and democracy. Its like they pieced together classic fascism from the nastier bits of creepy online fan communities. The whole thing is often explicitly predicated on removing the American form of government.
So you get a big speech calling that out for what it is. Shining a spotlight on something legitimately dangerous, and directly effecting the election. And the news went whole hog on horse race coverage of whether there’d be an effect from attacking voters. And “reporting the controversy” by focusing on GOP spin and pearl clutching.
To be fair the deplorable line was poorly delivered, and poorly conceived. It should have been obvious that the Trump camp at least, if not the entire GOP would focus on that to avoid the implications of the rest of the speech. But the major news coverage just went with that to report on another shocking gaff. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS A GAFF.
