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hard to overstate the impact the "zombie apocalypse" genre had on normalizing the idea of mowing down or driving through crowds of unarmed people as self-defense. remember how popular zombie shit was four or five years ago? it went straight to conservatives' lizard brains 1/9
and they all went out and bought Ford F150s and AR-15s, and now this is where we're at.
I think the most explicit connection was made in AMC's 2017 "Fear the Walking Dead", in which, in the second episode, anti-police protests erupt over the shooting of a black "zombie". 2/9
I think the most explicit connection was made in AMC's 2017 "Fear the Walking Dead", in which, in the second episode, anti-police protests erupt over the shooting of a black "zombie". 2/9
although it didn't make it explicit, it was pretty clearly referencing BLM, and the message was extremely reactionary: "see, these BLM protesters will protests any police shooting, no matter how justified, even if it was a [fictional undead creature]!" 3/9
the conclusions one could draw are grim; in the episode, the protestors are wrong and their actions worsen the outbreak--"these protests are undermining our society's defense against the hordes!" One doesn't have to reach to see parallels to contemporary conspiracy theories. 4/9
of course, everyone knows zombies aren't real, but one has to question why, in that cultural moment, writers were contriving reasons for anti-racist protest to be irrational and unjustified, and justifications for running over / mowing down unarmed humanoids. 5/9
this is a far cry from George Romero's iconic 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead", which popularized the 'zombie outbreak' genre in the US-- 6/9
--in which a smart, cool-headed black man holes up against zombies with a group of panicked white people—who all perish, leaving him the lone survivor—only to be casually shot by a trigger-happy 'zombie extermination posse' replete with cops, good-ol'-boys and hunting dogs. 7/9
in that story, the outbreak is a limited phenomenon which, one might surmise, temporarily gives the white posse free reign to enact racial violence. in Fear the Walking Dead, the outbreak leads to the collapse of society, spurred on by 'irrational' anti-racist protests. 8/9
the genre managed to pull a complete 180 over the course of fifty years, from a somewhat vague anti-racist ethos, to slavering "anti-anti-racist" apocalyptic paranoia. the course of its development mirrors the rise of American fascism. 9/9
i feel the need to add an addendum because people are interpreting this as direct causation: I don't think zombie movies are what made white supremacists want to murder BLM protestors. https://twitter.com/ComradCapacitor/status/1300583369420480512?s=20
but the type of violence (driving through a crowd) and the preemptive / post-hoc justification for that violence (my VEHICLE was being OVERRUN) come straight out of zombie flicks.
if someone talked about needing to plow thru a crowd because their truck was being "overrun" and we didn't have the cultural context of zombie films where that's an action presented as smart and necessary to survival, no one would hesitate to see them as a bloodthirsty freak.
I muted this 12 hours ago so if ur mad at me or wanna hit me with a truck or w/e idk maybe perish
