Racist and those on the far right are pretty stupid

The thing that strikes me most about lots of comments from racists and those from the right is a lack of specific knowledge. This is rather a worrying development. Generally if someone expresses strong views about something you expect to find someone who has at least thought about the issue in detail, and who has made at least some attempt to familiarize themselves with the facts and knowledge about this particular issue. Likewise you expect those with not much knowledge about an issue to not express strong views about something they have no knowledge of.

Yet now with the popular right you have people who will express strong views, and dispute expert knowledge and insight, whilst making such basic errors, that it's clear they've never made any attempt to learn about this issue and to acquaint themselves with the facts. They engage in convoluted arguments, whilst the basic premises of their arguments are wholly false. They seem to have got their certainty about the world from what are basically propaganda sources who reduce complex issues to brief false and misleading sound bites.

There was a report the other day about research indicating that conspiracy theory thinking and the consumption of false and misleading fake news is almost wholly confined to the right. Incidentally the world does not consist of people who are either very right wing, or very left wing as those on the right appear to mistakenly believe. A lot of those who take issue with the right, are not really left wing, in that they don't adhere to socialist ideology. There are in fact many positions which don't lie on the left right axis.

It's impossible to reason with those who have these rabid right wing populist views. If you present them with evidence which contradicts what they say, they just dismiss it as a conspiracy, or imply that anyone referring to in depth knowledge is part of some "liberal elite" trying to do them down. Most on the right have absolutely no idea what "liberal", "socialism", "Marxism", "communism" actually are. They are just insults they use. Anyone who disagrees with them is labelled with one of these terms, even if it is completely inaccurate and this person does not actually adhere to any of these ideologies. No wonder they look up to Trump, Farage etc, and don't understand what liars these people are, when they have no grasp of what the truth, evidence or knowledge actually is.