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A brief history of the far right in America

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
This answers a lot of questions. I found this particularly informative, because I grew up in a radio broadcasting family, and not spreading lies on the airwaves was a given to me that was rather common sense. How then do you have this unmitigated swill being spewed with impunity nowadays? I thought there were FCC regulations about this. Well, there were....

Their job got easier after 1987, when the Fairness Doctrine ended. That Federal Communications Commission policy had required public media channels to base their stories on fact and to present both sides of a question. When it was gone, talk radio took off, hosted by radio jocks like Rush Limbaugh who contrasted their ideal country with what they saw as the socialism around them​

Are there any proposals to bring back common sense FCC regulations?
Regulations?! Socialist tyranny!
:rolleyes:
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
For those with the patience to peruse something longer than a RF post, I thought this was an interesting video on Fascism and its parallels with today's political climate.

 

SomeRandom

Still learning to be wise
Staff member
Premium Member
For those with the patience to peruse something longer than a RF post, I thought this was an interesting video on Fascism and its parallels with today's political climate.

Woah. My worlds are colliding. Been a fan of Renegade for a while now.
Video essays from YouTube on RF. Never thought I’d live to see the day. :eek:
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Because it traces the rise of the far right in America, who were responsible for the Jan 6th riot and sedition at the Capitol.

Orbit...

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.” ― Thomas Paine
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Here is my summary of the content:

- The meaning of "socialism" in US political parlance was twisted out of recognition as early as the end of the c.19th, by wealthier people using it as an excuse to object to the funding of infrastructure, health etc by government, which they would have to pay for by taxes.

- Then, in the 1920s the meaning of "socialism" was further twisted, to include any extension of trade union rights or rights for Blacks, capitalising on the fear engendered by the Russian Bolshevik revolution which had just occurred.

- Next, post WW2, the embrace of FDR's New Deal by (Republican) Eisenhower led to the emergence of far-right thought, in which this was resented as being redistribution from hard-working Whites to lazy, undeserving Blacks.

- The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which controlled bias in the media, created an explosion of far-right talk radio, Murdoch etc. This allowed these ideas to gain traction far more widely, because misrepresentation became legal.

- In the 90s, there were two shoot-outs, one involving someone called Weaver and a year later the Waco siege. Both were represented by these far-right outlets as government overreach, crushing individual liberty. The Waco one apparently is what motivated Alex Jones to start his activities.

- By 1995, the movement had become one railing against perceived government activism. However, in the opinion of the writer, the subtext was really about who benefitted from that activism: the Blacks.

And so towards the present day, when Trump was able to take up that agenda in the name of the presidency and put it on steroids.

Looking at this timeline it seems to me the biggest blunder was repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. That seems to be what really opened Pandora's Box.

That's a basically an accurate history, so far as I know (which is not much), but I do have one huge reservation. It largely ignores how progressively worsening economic conditions for (mainly) lower middle class, working class, and rural people from about 1980 to the present contributed to the extreme radicalization of the right that is seen today.

That is especially significant in that the same phenomenon has been studied in many nations around the globe and almost always unfolds with the affected groups radicalizing either to the left or to the right. In America, the direction has been to the right, obviously. Currently, the hypothesis is the direction the radicalization takes is determined by whichever politicians are best at exploiting the situation. That is, it's not inevitable they go one way or the other. The pols determine that.

Racism -- or anything like it -- is a factor in the process in America, and in some other countries, but not everywhere that radicalization occurs due to worsening economic conditions.

Just a bit of trivia: Eisenhower wrote to a friend sometime during his presidency that the New Deal was now firmly established in American politics, and that no one at all was challenging it, except "a few Texas millionaires".
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Only one seditiously invaded the Capitol seeking to overthrow the US government, however.
While examples are easy enough to find on both sides, it's the right that's intrinsically authoritarian and aggressive. The left is generally more tolerant, co-operative, egalitarian and pro-social. Most political violence comes from the right.
 

Orbit

I'm a planet
While examples are easy enough to find on both sides, it's the right that's intrinsically authoritarian and aggressive. The left is generally more tolerant, co-operative, egalitarian and pro-social. Most political violence comes from the right.

People also fail to make a distinction between the far left and the left. The far left are more radical, but really less of a problem in US politics currently and historically; the left simply seeks civil rights and human rights. A riot is not the same on the both sides; the left riot is the language of those who seek participation in democratic society on an equal level; the right riot seeks to overthrow democratically-elected government.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
That's a basically an accurate history, so far as I know (which is not much), but I do have one huge reservation. It largely ignores how progressively worsening economic conditions for (mainly) lower middle class, working class, and rural people from about 1980 to the present contributed to the extreme radicalization of the right that is seen today.

That is especially significant in that the same phenomenon has been studied in many nations around the globe and almost always unfolds with the affected groups radicalizing either to the left or to the right. In America, the direction has been to the right, obviously. Currently, the hypothesis is the direction the radicalization takes is determined by whichever politicians are best at exploiting the situation. That is, it's not inevitable they go one way or the other. The pols determine that.

Racism -- or anything like it -- is a factor in the process in America, and in some other countries, but not everywhere that radicalization occurs due to worsening economic conditions.

Just a bit of trivia: Eisenhower wrote to a friend sometime during his presidency that the New Deal was now firmly established in American politics, and that no one at all was challenging it, except "a few Texas millionaires".
Interesting about Eisenhower. But the "Texas millionaires" subsequently fought back, via Murdoch and talk radio, didn't they?

And yes of course this timeline didn't mention the effects of the de-industrialisation and casualisation of work, which have built up a genuine grievance which as you say has found expression in this far-right explosion - and for us, Brexit.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Interesting about Eisenhower. But the "Texas millionaires" subsequently fought back, via Murdoch and talk radio, didn't they?
The corporatists been trying to claw their way back to unregulated hegemony ever since their reversal under FDR, after the crash of '29. Their attempted military coup failed, but it was the Powell Manifesto that really rallied the right to 'take back their power'. Reagan's neoliberal "trickle down economics" began seriously dismantling banking and industry regulations, stagnating the economy. Finally, there were the Koch brothers' many right-wing affiliates chipping away at government that pushed the whole democracy over the edge.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
This has nothing to do with anything in this thread. Make your own thread if you want to argue false equivalence.
How can it be false equivalence if it actually happened?

Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.
 

Ponder This

Well-Known Member
This is a quite interesting read in the light of recent events:
Home-Grown Extremism: Look to the Right

I agree that it is an interesting read.
But I have to rate the article as possibly misleading.

For example:
the article frames right-wing extremism as "right-wing authoritarianism"
authoritarian:
favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.​

Quote from right wing senator (from the article):
“This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty…. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom.”​

I think the opinion of the article doesn't make sense because it goes back and forth between the right-wing wanting personal freedom on the one-hand but being authoritarian on the other. I think it is showing a one-sided view of history that a discerning reader should balance with some sort of counter-opinion before buying into its conclusions.
 

Orbit

I'm a planet
I agree that it is an interesting read.
But I have to rate the article as possibly misleading.

For example:
the article frames right-wing extremism as "right-wing authoritarianism"
authoritarian:
favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.​

Quote from right wing senator (from the article):
“This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty…. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom.”​

I think the opinion of the article doesn't make sense because it goes back and forth between the right-wing wanting personal freedom on the one-hand but being authoritarian on the other. I think it is showing a one-sided view of history that a discerning reader should balance with some sort of counter-opinion before buying into its conclusions.

The right wing is authoritarian--that's what defines it. Note there is a difference between the far right being discussed here and the moderate right.
 
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