It's important to note how deeply rooted & completely canonical these kooky ideas are in the US far right, & how dangerous it is that a sitting president is giving legitimacy to them. It's like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, and Geo Lincoln Rockwell had an orange baby.

Thanks (I think) to @z3dster for bringing this batshit tweet to my attention.
There's a long history of the American center-right and center-left laughing at this kind of stuff. It is indeed laughably ludicrous. But it's important to know that to millions of people, this is their truth. This is how they see the world. And now the President is condoning it.
One hallmark of fascism is that it defines "communism" as its enemy. One can be opposed to communism without being a fascist. But it's impossible to be fascist without being obsessed with the existential (and often hysterically overblown) threat of communism.
Every significant, US variant of fascism has depicted itself as a movement of Christian patriots defending the US from anti-American enemies of Christ. One can be a Christian and/or a patriot without being a fascist, but fascists almost always call themselves Christian patriots.
At the outset the speaker identifies the "goals of the Communist Party" as outlined in Congressional testimony in 1963. What he doesn't mention is that these come from a book written by an American fascist named Cleon Skousen. https://t.co/s6xgMRKuZ7
Skousen was so far right that Goldwater and then the John Birch Society distanced themselves from him. His "ideas" made a big comeback when Glenn Beck mainstreamed them in the late 2000s. https://t.co/PVUf0aeFp7
Another thing to know about Skousen is that he's also been a big influence on Senator Mike Lee and other LDS conservatives. https://t.co/R79ZunWBTa
The guy who made that video is, of course, connected to the far right conspiracy paper The Epoch Times which is owned by Falun Gong. https://t.co/UkWdz1DvNG
TIL that Ben Carson is a Cleon Skousen fan as well. https://t.co/lQbX5zXUa6

More from Seth Cotlar

This reminds me of a 2010 poll of Tea Party supporters in which 84% said that "the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans." Only 20% thought Obama shared the values of most Americans.


Full polling data here. I was asked to give a talk on campus about the Tea Party in 2010, and one of my main points was that it was a weakness of the movement that it had such a delusional perception of the American people. Oops.

Anyway...the dynamic described here has been a long time coming.


That's the weird, seemingly illogical, thing about the right's culture war. They simultaneously think of themselves as speaking for the majority of Americans, AND they think that they are the saving remnant protecting a decadent society from ruin.

What squares this circle is the assumption that "the real American people" consist of straight white, rural or suburban people, & anyone not in that category doesn't really count as an American. That's how right wing culture warriors can both be the "majority," and a minority.
Historian here, with a message for folks arguing against holding people accountable for the siege of the Capitol because "history will be the judge." We are in this mess, BECAUSE people in the past didn't hold their contemporaries accountable. Please don't repeat that mistake.

Nixon was forced out of office, but he was never held responsible for his egregious actions as President. You'll never guess what sort of precedent and example that set for the future President who most shared Nixon's moral turpitude.


In the 1970s, many "mainstream" media outlets buckled to right wing pressure & lent their platforms to gut bucket racists like James Kilpatrick & Pat Buchanan, rebranding them as "conservatives." We continue to reap the consequences of normalizing racism.


Here's a thread on Pat Buchanan. In the early 90s Charles Krauthammer and Bill Buckley, staunch conservatives both, called Pat a "fascist" and an "antisemite." And yet he still got major media gigs for DECADES.


Trump's career (and that of his family) is overstuffed with acts of white collar crime for which no one ever received more than a tiny fine as a slap on the wrist. Everyone one in NYC knew Trump was a morally bankrupt and corrupt crook. But somehow NBC still made him a star.

More from Politics

You May Also Like