The paranoid style of the “red-pilled” right was on full display after the Kansas City Chiefs upset the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship game Sunday night—and the alpha male “fuck your feelings” crowd began to collectively imagine a Deep State bogeyman everywhere, even among the most macho and violent of team sports (not to mention their own 13-year-old daughter’s Spotify).
In case you missed it, not only is Taylor Swift an FBI and Pentagon psyop, the Deep State is also rigging the NFL to make one of the world’s most famous entertainers and her already Hall of Fame-bound boyfriend, Travis Kelce, “artificially” famous.
Think I’m making this up—or just “nut picking” the rantings of a few obscure randos in the fever swamps of the right? This crazy conspiracy is quickly gaining steam. Take Vivek Ramaswamy, for example. In response to Pizzagate pusher Jack Posobiec, the failed presidential candidate tweeted, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall…”
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He may be “just asking questions,” but Ramaswamy’s unhinged insinuation was generally greeted with applause on Twitter. One response came from a verified account with 55,000 followers, who added: “Nothing feels organic about Taylor’s rise—or this whole ‘relationship’—or now this whole Superbowl thing.” (Note: This sentiment is widespread, with some version of the phrase “not organic” being constantly invoked to describe the Chiefs’ playoff win—and the Swift-Kelce romance.)
But did the Deep State build Swift in a laboratory last year? Swift’s first hit, “Tim McGraw,” came out when George W. Bush was president. Her smash hit pop album, 1989, came out almost a decade ago. So yeah, this was all a long con.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs are headed to their fourth Super Bowl in just five years. And anyone who watched Sunday’s playoff game versus the Ravens (including the catches made by Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce) knows rigging the outcome would have been a million times harder to fake than the moon landing.
So why is this happening? It is obvious that many on the new right view Swift as a serious threat to Donald Trump’s electoral chances. And—putting aside the crazy conspiracy theories about “psy-ops,” etc.—they do have a point.
It’s safe to say that Taylor Swift is incredibly popular—perhaps even more popular than you realize. She’s not just “famous.” A recent NBC News survey, for example, showed Swift has the highest net favorability rating of any person or group tested in the poll.
The new breed of culture warrior understands the power of…pop culture. They see Joe Biden as an old fart who can’t possibly defeat their celebrity, Donald Trump. But they also see the potential for Swift to have a major impact by rallying her army of “Swifties” to register to vote (in 2020, one Instagram post from Swift reportedly led to 35,000 new registered voters), and then to turn out and vote for the slightly older of the two codgers.
What is more, it is true that Swift does have a political motive—and not just because of the recent attacks she has endured. After staying out of the 2016 race, Swift endorsed Biden in 2020. It’s no secret that Biden desperately wants her involved in 2024.
And if the potential for her to utilize her mega-fame weren’t enough, Swift is now allied with one of the greatest players currently in the National Football League.
Travis Kelce displays all the masculine behavior that these right-wing keyboard warriors fetishize (they also hate him for starring in a COVID vaccine commercial, a move that inspired conspiracy theory-obsessed New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers to go after Kelce for being a tool of Big Pharma).
And if Travis isn’t enough of a threat to the narrative about “latte liberals,” look no further than his older brother, Jason (a center for the Philadelphia Eagles and also likely Hall of Fame-bound), who is the kind of guy who recently celebrated his brother’s on-field performance by drinking 40 beers and going shirtless in frigid Buffalo.
Yeah, good luck trying to cast the Kelce brothers as soy-drinking “pajama boy” elites or Colin Kaepernick-like activist types.
The idea that Swift, Kelce, the Chiefs, and the NFL are all part of some Deep State conspiracy is only slightly less plausible than the idea that leveling such an allegation could actually work politically.
Still, those who are desperate to piece together some tenuous conspiracy theory will find threads where they can.
After sexually explicit deepfakes forced X to temporarily pause searches for the pop star, right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool tweeted, “see this is all part of the psyop,” adding that disabling the search for images that run counter to X’s terms of service means users can’t “search for the psyop.” (Following the tortured logic of Pool’s conspiracy theory, the online far-right’s favorite billionaire—X owner Elon Musk—would have to be personally overseeing this “psyop.”)
While this particular narrative is just now coming into focus, similar strands of paranoid idiocy have already been going on for months. And like many narratives on the far-right, the most unhinged allegations seem to have been started by QAnon, before trickling into more mainstream places. A few weeks ago, for example, Fox News host Jesse Watters said Swift could be a “front for a covert political agenda.”
People who are predisposed to believe this will, of course, believe anything. That is dangerous enough. But just as the Kelces can’t easily be other-ized, Swift simply cannot be Hillary-ized the way a polarizing politician—as opposed to a widely beloved pop star—could be. This is a fight that the paranoid right would be wise not to pick. But, of course, they will. They have. This is what they do.
“Haters gonna hate.”
