I agree with this entire article, except that it's not just a right-wing phenomenon. Both sides distort the truth for financial gain and from a quantitative POV it's not a false equivalence.
The left has been traditionally anti-capitalist and in favor of improving rights and living conditions. Who on the left is gaining financially from distorting the truth to the level of someone like Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, the Koch Brothers, or Jeff Bezos?
When communism had claims to being more productive growth was the most important thing in the world and why we should adopt their ideology. Now look at the 'degrowth' people what a coincidence and they are literally arguing for worsening living conditions....
In a lot of country political ecology used to be liberal/capitalist (save a few radical feminist like D'Eaubonne who linked environment with feminism, but it's less than a minority). Basically Blair's 'third way' but with less nuclear (for some reason, although I think this position is loosing ground in ecologist), and more electric cars.
The degrowth movement is an offshot of that ideology. Degrowth is to political ecologism what anarchism is to communism, based a very Idealist and hopeful view of humanity.
Communists and ecologists are broadly on the 'left', but rarely allied until maybe a decade ago, and again, on minor things (Communists love nuclear,as it is typically something you don't want a capitalist with 'limited liability' to take care of), and while degrowth might be close to anarchists in some way, it is very, very dishonest to put them in the same basket.
- I didn't make an outrageous or extrordinary claim.
- I didn't paint either side as crazy, broken or evil.
- I'm not leveraging charged language like racial slurs, or historical tragedies (nazi-ism).
- I'm not personally attacking anyone or encouraging any violence.
Probably you have either more money, or more forgiving/powerful people on the right? Some grift to the center, but it's very rare, when libs are as powerful and rich as conservative, so I've no idea.
Not true. There are plenty of grifters on the left.
Both sides use the same pattern:
- Look at the crazy stuff *their* people are doing.
- We should all be angry -> generates clicks revenue.
- Donate/Buy XYZ to save the humanity/yourself.
I think the internationally known examples are the Tate brothers or the Paul brothers, but among the scammers who got pardonned by trump you will mostly find people who grifted to the right. In my country it is also quite clear. Doctors caught doing weird chamanism and not helping patient? Suddenly it's "cancel culture!!1!". Your "quantum energy" bullshit is caught and proved to be a weird MLM? Cancel culture! Every fucking time.
It happened with people who used to grift for kombaya/hippies with weird chamanism and yoga. Suddenly, 911 was an inside job and Donald Trump is our savior, Q is his prophete. I shit you not, my mother Yoga ayurvedic group went from hippies that use to get scammed into buying essential oils to "open the Chakra" to weird antisemites who purchased trumpm/melania coin in less than 3 years. And we're not even in the US :/
I cannot speak to your specific experience and i don't necessarily disagree. However, I do think there a potential selection bias here because by our media environment. Agree or not, the media believes that Trump is the most horrible person in the world at the moment. So there is a propensity to attack anyone that is considered allied to the right, so rightward grifters will get more aggressively exposed.
Agree with the selection bias, that one explanation. A second is that a lot of grifters who were caught now want to get pardoned, so maybe it influence their politics. And the third one is that the society as a whole shifted right, so grifters shifted right. When the pendulum will swing back, maybe grifters will also be shifting back (it doesn't match with Russell Brand/Andrew Tate timing though, but it match quite well with the podcast bro crowd and the Paul brothers).
I also think the age and money factor is also a thing (conservative have more disposable income on average, are older on average, so easier and richer targets). When you get caught grifting your audience will decrease. Concentrating on the richest/oldest is just good business.