Progressive Politics

I think Cory Doctorow does a good job of explaining this when he talks about Naomi Klein's book. They both call it a "mirror world" of political beliefs.

Qanon's obsession with "child trafficking" is a mirror-world version of the real crises of child poverty, child labor, border family separations and kids in cages. Anti-vax is the mirror-world version of the true story of the Sacklers and their fellow opioid barons making billions on Oxy and fent, with the collusion of corrupt FDA officials and a pliant bankruptcy court system. Xenophobic panic about "immigrants stealing jobs" is the mirror world version of the well-documented fact that big business shipped jobs to low-waged territories abroad, weakening US labor and smashing US unions. Cryptocurrency talk about "decentralization" is the mirror-world version of the decay of every industry (including tech) into a monopoly or a cartel.

It's easy to be convinced by that type of logic. I used to be heavily into cryptocurrency because I saw the failure of capitalism to protect us from corporate consolidation and monopolies, so I assumed "this system that decries centralized authorities must be better."

They were only half right though. It's true corporate consolidation was a problem, and the centralization it brought causes issues, but the reason that consolidation happens is because of capital, which crypto is very much not against, and heavily supports, through tokens that give you ownership over a share of all the income a protocol generates, even if that protocol could run just fine indefinitely on-chain without paying you a fee.

People slowly accumulate more wealth, more voting power, and eventually control how these "decentralized" protocols operate.

In the same way, MAGA thinking has the same problem, where they'll correctly identify an issue or motive, but entirely misjudge what the cause of it is, will fight the wrong enemies (or worse, support their true enemies), and only later will they realize things have just kept getting worse.