I am meandering back to the history of far-right extremism particularly on American Talk radio.
Of course, all of this rage machine was just the opening act for what was to come. As Justin Ling said on the CBC podcast series, “If you can turn a hurricane victim into a victim of rage, Barack Obama is going to be a piece of cake!” Remember that is precisely what the far right did in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. As Ling said,
“Barack Obama was really an easy target. Most importantly he was black. But he was also a liberal; he had gone to an elite eastern university (Harvard); he was a lawyer turned liberal politician. His last name was weird. But—this is BIG—his middle name is Hussein.’
As Ling said, “Right-wing radio could not have found a more ideal enemy.” These right-wing pundits and their listeners became apoplectic at the thought of this black man and his family in the White House! This could not be! Something was horribly wrong. And the right-wing movement intended to right this horrible wrong.
These right-wing pundits made it absolutely clear to their listeners that this was something to fear. They should be worried. The blacks were taking over “their” country!
Radio host Bill Cunningham told his listeners, Obama in the White House was like this:
“Now my fellow Americans this is the day we have been waiting for. Much like Castro took over Cuba. Mao Tse Tung took over Red China. And the communists took over Russia.”
Cunningham called his squeaky-clean election “a bloodless coup.” He referred to it as “seizing power.”
Right-wing pundits like Michael Savage claimed he was setting up a civilian police force as large as the US military. He likened him to Adolf Hitler even before he took office! He said Obama wanted to bring in “a Marxist revolution.” Right-wing pundits were bathing in the murky waters of hysteria. And racial anxiety had a lot to do with it.
There was only one thing that made sense of this hysteria about Obama. It was the hidden presumption—a black man just could not be a legitimate president of the country. This could not be tolerated. This was why the birther movement, in which Donald Trump had played such an important part, just could not tolerate the thought of a black president and a black family in the White House. Some actually referred to them as “monkeys in the White House!”
As Ling said, “racist dog whistles were a constant refrain in the election” of 2008. One said “his [Obama] father was a typical black father who right after the birth left the baby. That’s what black fathers do; they simply leave.” As Ling said, “this stuff is hard to hear, but a lot of people enjoyed hearing it. It reinforced their racist beliefs. It gave them permission to say this stuff out loud. And in some cases, it even changed people’s thinking.”
Gordon Liddy went on the air to say that Obama’s childhood made him a threat to America. He said that over in Indonesia at a Catholic School he was listed as a Muslim. “He was in Indonesia, which is Muslim country, until about 10.” They considered Barack Obama, whom they usually called by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, to give their claims the full authority, that he must be Muslim.
I remember at the time, a client of mine, who was a truck driver driving throughout the United States and constantly listened to talk radio, particularly the revered Rush Limbaugh, and received absolutely assurance that Obama was a Muslim. There was no doubt about that.
I remember a client of mine, a long-distance truck driver, who once told me solemnly that Barack Obama was a Muslim. Until then I had never heard of the birther conspiracy. I had never considered the effect of talk radio either at that time. My eyes were opened.
This kind of smear had dogged Obama throughout his life, according to Justin Ling, and “it wouldn’t go away because these right-wing radio hosts were peddling anger. Anger was their business…And Obama was great for business.” People like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, and other rightwing radio hosts and kooks opened a barrier to a phenomenal wave of resentment in the American people. It rushed across the country. At first the only people who noticed were the people who listened to it. Soon the rest of us found out about it as well. American was changing and going farther to the extreme right.