Just as I feared I’d write another riff on
’s writing, came to my rescue with a reply that deserved a post for an answer.Two posts, actually. Here’s the first.
Fulgurite asks why ZAnon - the RUSSIA B WINNING! guys - write what they do.
I don’t know. I’ve ignored them all for three years because they were so wrong. But I still keep an eye on ZAnon people I once knew. And I wasted a couple of years as a neoCON (NAnon for Neo? WAnon for Dubya?) blogger. So here are speculations mostly based on personal experience.
I’ll get the first three that aren’t out of the way first.
Rurik pointed out the spooks among the biggest ZAnon guys. Once a spook, always a spook.
Compromise. Some of those big names have … troubled pasts that make them susceptible to … recruitment.
Someone (
? ? Rurik? - sorry, my memory fails me as always) noted how Scott Ritter is quoted in Russian domestic media as a supposedly representative Murrican voice, giving Putin’s policies a pseudostamp of Waste-rn approval.
I think all three are true in combination with four more:
Money. Not just from spooks but from an audience desperate for hopium. Z-cheerleaders can’t admit they’re wrong, lest their income plummet. When I admitted I was wrong on my (formerly) neocon blog, my audience shrunk to almost zero. I didn’t care because I wasn’t blogging for money, whereas Z-cheerleading is the primary source of income for some.
Ideology. In my neocon blogging days, everyone I knew in the parasocial pseudomovement seemed to be a true believer until I got out - when spooks and money came into play. Our beLIEf boiled down to contrarianism - to buying into the opposite of whatever the MSM was selling. The Z-ideology is no better - if BBCCNN says Putin is Satan, he must really be Jesus! (I saw some Z-guy claim Putin was Jesus - the exact words elude me, though I’m certain of the names.)
Ego. Z-cheerleaders enjoy playing Authorities revealing the ‘reality’ of the Tsar’s oh-so-Orthodox kingdom hidden by the Ukromedia - and accumulating followers in the process. I remember when I used to obsess over muh stats as a neocon blogger.
Muh Stats
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A lot of our problems are due to what I call the Mismatch. We are cavemen stumbling through the cyberpunk future. Technosavages. We look down on ‘primitive’ people while failing to look at ourselves - to admit we are tribesmen LARPing as global citizens.
Homeland. Russians abroad root for their roots. This isn’t just a Russian phenomenon. I’ve seen expat MAGA up close.
Four of the seven (2, 4, 5, 6) spell MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego), the spook (1 in my list) mnemonic for motivations.
‘Mouse’ in Mao Zedong’s handwriting.
7 could be forced into the Ego category since one’s homeland is part of one’s self-conception.
Only 3 has nothing to do with MICE; it’s about how foreigners can be useful idiots at home.
I also have an eighth motive, but it deserves an article of its own, and I’m out of time.
I’ll try to think of more.