Their bread and butter has been to stigmatize other people.
In DEI terms, they consider themselves the ‘in group’ and for reasons ranging from media companies with agendas, conservative billionaires with think tanks and PACs waging influence campaigns, to voter inaction and gerrymandering, they’ve largely felt that they were ‘normal’ in their beliefs, morally correct, ‘mainstream’ and on the cusp of winning the culture war they insisting is being waged upon them. The assumption that they are normal, right, and justified in their whack beliefs allows them to live an unexamined life.
Trump has largely been their figurehead for the last 9ish years, and he’s so shameless that people calling him weird has no effect on him. I think people have idolized and embraced that shamelessness. Now JD Vance is up there sharing the spotlight and instead of being unmemorable like Pence, he’s not only weird like Trump and his followers, but also awkward and doesn’t steamroll his way through the weird stuff he says. I don’t stay up on conservative news, but whenever I see news about Vance on my feeds recently, it seems like he’s having a ‘please clap’ moment. He’s throwing water on their whole movement with his lack of charisma, and it’s breaking the illusion, so when folks get called weird, that armor just isn’t there.
MAGA folks being called weird in mass media confronts the illusion of normalcy and stigmatizes them as being part of an ‘out group.’
I don’t think they’re mad about being called weird, necessarily. I think they’re mad at being told their beliefs are abnormal by what seems like a majority. It’s a crap shoot on whether or not that results in self-reflection, or that folks will be whipped up into more hatred against others.
I think so long as the response is continued mockery of the figure heads (Trump, Vance, etc), or attacks are on the beliefs but not the regular people, even the hateful ones will exhaust themselves.
