Sunday reading: Why the Extremists Took Over on the Right
I wrote about the escalating sense of besiegement that has fueled the rise of dangerous people and truly radical ideas that fully define the Right today.
This week’s piece:
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/why-the-extremists-took-over-on-the
We have been talking a lot - and with good reason - about the “crisis of liberal democracy.” But in crucial ways, it is the conception of “real America” as a white Christian patriarchal homeland that has come under enormous pressure. That’s why the Right is freaking out.
Socially, culturally, and – most importantly, perhaps – demographically, the country has moved away from the rightwing ideal since the middle of the twentieth century. As a result, the conservative hold on power has become tenuous.
It is not just political power the Right seeks. They desire cultural domination and affirmation. In the cultural sphere, the public square, and across many societal dimensions like the family, the shift in power away from white male conservatives has been more pronounced.
For decades, different factions on the modern Right disagreed on whether the advancement of “un-American” leftism, liberalism, and egalitarianism could be halted from within the political system – or had to be stopped by much more radical means, including the use of violence.
The radicals have emerged victorious from this internal conflict: The people in charge on today’s Right are at war with pluralistic society, unwilling to accept the confines of democratic self-government. They are openly embracing state authoritarianism and militant extremism.
The general sentiment that traditional conservatism needs to be replaced by a much more radical form of politics to answer the “leftist” challenge is now being echoed across the Right. People at the center of rightwing politics are now rejecting the label “conservatism” outright.
What unites all factions on the Trumpist Right is the belief that a “leftist” revolution has already taken place, the radical “Left” has taken over the major institutions of American life. As there is nothing left to conserve, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can save the nation.
The Right’s political and intellectual leaders believe they are engaged in a noble war for the “soul,” the identity, the very existence of the nation. If the stakes are so high, moderation, restraint, and patience are not an option. There is no line they don’t feel justified to cross.
@tzimmer_history@mastodon.social
“They did it first, so we have no choice” is the simplest and most direct way to get most people to cross all kinds of moral lines that they think they have. Which is why the rhetorical propaganda about the left has been so wildly over the top, and reads from here as so much projection: because for every step in the program they want to do, they need to convince their base that the left has already crossed that line.
@DavidM_yeg@mstdn.ca @tzimmer_history@mastodon.social
it's inoculation against cognitive dissonance
@tzimmer_history@mastodon.social
Incidentally, this is part of the reason the Epstein business doesn’t seem to phase a lot of republicans: they are sure that democrats went there first, and they already know their guy is a Very Bad Person, but having a Very Bad Person of your own is how you fight the Very Bad Person on the other side, right?
This theme encapsulated the core plot of a large percentage of the action movie industry (propaganda for the fascist movement imho) : the idea that it’s not only permissible but good and redemptive and laudable to do Very Bad Things as long as you do them to people prejudged to have been Very Bad People themselves.
Thomas Zimmer
