Right-Wing Media Are Medieval Wizards
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
I’ve been reading The Bright Sword, a historical fictionalization of the Arthurian Age with some tropey dark/antihero and fantasy vibes.
And it strikes me that there’s a parallel between this world and today’s reports of right-wing media figures playing heavily behind the scenes of Trump’s foreign-policy team selection.
In essence, these figures are playing the same role as wizards did in medieval politics.
Arthurian Agenda
It’s easy to laugh about wizards and magicians now, but take yourself back to the 5th and 6th centuries when Arthur is alleged to have lived. Kings have long since arisen to take over the mantle ceded by Rome; Britain is crumbling from its Roman heights. These kings are basically local warlords and strongmen reassembling the rule of law from the Roman collapse one dead bandit at a time. Christianity is not a new arrival, but has grown its associations with British power structures and is eager to spread its influence. Paganism is still the religion of many reluctant holdouts who don’t see what all the fuss is about.
Enter magic. Magic isn’t the magic we think about today; it’s more like a side-set of religious beliefs and superstitions that, regardless of their individual religion, most people believe in. A medieval Briton wouldn’t have seen much difference between the Christian God or Odin or some forest spirit in terms of the magical nature of what they did. It was just how the world worked!
We might call today’s monotheistic and polytheistic religions “solotheistic” in the sense that they believe in the existence of their gods to the exclusion of all others. By contrast, the ancient world well on up through medieval times most commonly believed in a sort of “contheism”: a world of many gods and spirits with their own self-imbued magical powers, all competing with each other for the loyalty of their believers1. These gods were thought to favor individual humans, and the victory of one god’s followers was often seen as proof of their god’s superiority.
In this environment, a wizard or magician wasn’t just some kook who claimed credit for the random occurrences of happenstance — a storm here, a lightning strike there, a spontaneous flame — or even a charlatan who set up elaborate hoaxes. I mean, they knew such things were possible, they just applied their best powers of discernment to tell the charlatans from the real magicians.
Rather, a wizard or magician was an asymmetric military and political asset. Think of the Jedi on the battlefields of Star Wars: These are people more talented than the elitest of elite units, wielding powers unavailable to anyone else, completely changing the tide of battle or war by targeting the enemy’s highest-value, highest-leverage strategic assets. Luke and Anakin Skywalker ending the Galactic Civil War by killing Emperor Palpatine at Endor, or Anakin ending the assault on Coruscant by killing Count Dooku.
Wizards like Merlin were thus similarly situated as senior political and military advisors. A prophecy by Merlin could provide a strategic insight to help win a pivotal battle. Their policy pronouncements could carry more weight with the leaders, regardless of whether they were correct on the merits. Their magic powers (such as they were) could turn the tide of battle, or — most importantly for us here — sway public opinion with a dramatic demonstration or legend.
The New Wizards
That last part is what sticks out for me. Fox News and the rest of the right wing media are notoriously composed of charlatans of various stripes. It doesn’t matter whether they’re right or not about the merits of any given issue or policy. What they do well, though, is perform dramatic demonstrations that sway public opinion.
Likewise, like Merlin, they also shape the political machinations of the inner circles of their “king”. He listens to them. He relies on their “prophecies”, even when he doesn’t believe them 100% or knows that they have agendas of their own. He takes their recommendations on who to appoint, not because he believes they have expert policy knowledge, but because he knows they have a direct link to the people they propagandize and a better read on both the trends in public opinion and how to sway or navigate them.
Democrats have whined incessantly in the Trump Era about how “political gravity” doesn’t seem to apply to him. Even before then, and of course up to the present day, they also whine about how Democrats are held to double standards by the public.
The simple explanation to all this is that Trump has “wizards” on his side. People who can magically bend the laws of political gravity to their will. It’s not actually magic — it’s just hoaxes and charlatans all the way down — but functionally speaking, it’s magic.
None of this is to imply that Democrats should just start lying, or just embrace their most extreme impulses. That’s learning the wrong lesson; it’s like a kid jumping off their roof with a Superman cape because they saw a wingsuit video on TikTok and thought, “My parents must have been lying about the cape not working! This guy did it with a ‘cape’ and it worked for him!”.
But it does mean we need to start studying some of these dark arts that we’ve been so loathe to deploy for so long. Even Hogwarts taught its students about the Unforgivable Curses so they could understand them and defend against them.
Of course, unlike the cartoonish caricatures painted by religion-haters, there were atheists who either believed the gods didn’t actually exist, or that the gods were all assholes undeserving of one’s loyalty.