Category Archives: Conservative

The Confidential Lewis Powell Memo (1971)

Conservative, Right-wing Extremism

 

The film, The Brainwashing of My Dad, gave an extensive background on right-wing extremism in America.

During the 1960s the student movement in the US and the hippie’s movement,  had achieved remarkable changes in American and Canadian youth. I must confess I was a part of that movement in a small way. This movement was highly successful at promoting opposition to the War in Vietnam and the hippy life of freedom, drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Some of my friends were amazingly successful at this while I was a sad sack hanger on. Poor me.

The corporate elites in North America were keen on fighting back. From their point of view, backlash was in order.  They focused a lot on a memo created by a Richmond attorney who sent a confidential memo to his friends at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce decrying possible threats to the American free-market system by unruly mobs of miscreants. This has been called, Lewis F. Powell Jr.’s “manifesto” and it figured in prominently as the impetus behind big business lobbying in America’s money-fueled politics. Powell was a lawyer who later became a judge of the US Supreme Court.

The memo, which has become known as the “Powell Manifesto,” among other names, which he wrote before Nixon appointed him to the Supreme Court and while he was still in private legal practice in Richmond Virginia.

In uncompromising words, Powell’s memorandum urged American business leaders to unite to defend their interests. As if they really needed defending. He felt that the “American economic system is under broad attack.” Powell also  wrote. “ … The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.” He decried this unfortunate circumstance and begged his fellow captains of industry to resist the left-wing hordes and unwashed masses.

He pointed to causes of this malaise that included environmental groups, consumer-rights organizations like those led by Ralph Nader, and a society that he feared was headed for socialism and away from free enterprise. He was also alarmed by acts of violence against business interests which he believed were on the rise.

Jeff Cohen, a former Fox broadcaster, interviewed by Jen Senko for the film, called this memo a symbol of the backlash. As Noam Chomsky also told her, about Powell, “he claimed that the whole country was being taken over by the radical left.” Exactly what Donald Trump has been doing since at least 2024.

Powell said in the memo that American businessmen had to support efforts to get conservative professors appointed in influential universities to teach the values of American business. He said we have to establish our own research organizations to promulgate our views. As a result, a vast array of American right-wing think tanks were born  such as the Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Center for the National Interest and many others, usually with innocuous sounding names that masked their true nature.

They also started journals and publishing houses to publish their views.

They also wanted to buy media to get out their views. This was probably the most effective part of that campaign. This led to the boom in right-wing talk radio nationally and across the country in every locale. Ultimately this led directly to the biggest media of them all—Fox News Channel.

The Powell Memo was extremely influential affecting politics, judicial law, and media and education. To a very significant extent it has helped to create our modern polarized world.  For quite some time it was the political Bible of the extreme right in America.

 

The Southern Strategy

Conservative, Right-wing Extremism

 

Nixon latched onto southern racism in particular to turn the white voters against the Democrats and in favor of the Republicans. The south had traditionally voted Democrat but that changed under Nixon’s campaigning. But whites in the south were horrified by Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation including the Voting Rights which had insulated the whites from losing power as a result of blacks voting against white interests. The whites wanted to maintain their hegemony as they do to this day in America. From their perspective, the less black voters the better. Sounds a lot like the modern Republicans doesn’t it?

 

In 1970 American workers upset at the anti-war protesters started beating the protesters with their hard hats as part of what rick Perlstein in the filmThe Brain Washing of my Dad, called “a marauding army.”[1] . As Perlstein said, “Rather than excoriating these essentially vigilantes, Richard Nixon invited the Peter Brennan the leader of the construction trades to the White House where Nixon was presented with a ceremonial hard hat. Nixon did not try to stop the vigilantism, he tried to use it for his own benefit. And he did that masterfully.  Again, it sounds a lot like Donald Trump.

 

In the process Nixon was creating what George Lakoff  called “conservative populism.”  He persuaded a large part of the working class “to vote against their economic interest in order to vote on the moral issues.” Just like modern Republicans do with the culture war. Of course, Conservative politicians have been doing this ever since. They could not persuade working people to vote for their platforms that obviously supported the wealthy at their expense, so he got them to vote for him on moral grounds, or what we now might call cultural grounds. This includes voting on the basis of sexual identity, anti-woke, and things like that.

That was how Nixon contributed to moving America further to the right. And Trump has joined the movement. And guess what the strategy works.

 

 

The Loveable Fascist

American Fascism, Conservative, Death of Democracy, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Conservatives in America dismiss the idea that Donald Trump is a fascist. They think the liberals are overreacting. Liberals can’t understand how Americans continue to support Donald Trump after it became obvious, to them at least, that he was a fascist.

Bill Maher had a pretty good explanation. Though it was disturbing. The people in Trump’s administration, like John Kelly who knew him best have said he talks like a fascist, he acts like a fascist, he wants to do fascist things, so he must be a fascist. All of that is true. But as Bill Maher said,

“The problem with pointing out these things is, that’s what his fans like about him. That’s the real problem. Especially men, he is killing it with men, even minority men.”

The Uncomfortable truth is that many Americans—millions of them—love fascists!

Trump does not hide his fascist tendencies. He revels in them. And his fans love it.

It is becoming obvious—Americans love fascism. Particularly American men love fascism.  They love Donald Trump, no matter how crazy he gets. In fact, the crazier he gets the more they like him.

Trump is their loveable fascist!

 

 

A Safe Place to Hate.

Conservative, Evangelical Christianity, Fear, Hate, Moral Humility, Politics & Religion, Right-wing Extremism, Trumpism, Woke

 

There had been a lot of social change just before Rush Limbaugh arrived on the scene. There was gay liberation, women’s rights, and liberalism. Many felt they could no longer say what they wanted to say. Political correctness was seen as a stifling chain. They also thought no one was speaking like them or to them. They were ignored and invisible. As Justin Ling said in his CBC. Radio series , “In the universe of right-wing media compared to the Wall Street Journal and like the later Fox News Limbaugh’s listeners were older, whiter, more conservative, and more religious. For this slice of America Limbaugh created a safe space.” He created a safe place to hate.

Surprisingly, because there was a Republican in the White House, as Ling said, “he convinced these old, white, conservative, and religious Americans that they were disenfranchised!” Even though they were in the majority! It was pure alchemy. He told them they were looked down on. He milked them for their resentment—the elixir of devils. As Ling said, “He formed a kind of counterculture; a resistance against the liberals, and the progressives, and the feminists.”

In the mid-80s he syndicated to about 50 stations across the country but by 1990 he got 450 affiliates. He was the rock star of talk radio and the conservative movement. He led a Rush to Excellence Tour to various stadiums around the country with as many as 10,000 people.  As Justin Ling said, “Limbaugh declared a culture war”. Limbaugh put it this way:

“We are in the midst of a culture war. What are rights? This culture war illustrates precisely what is going on. We in America are in the midst—it’s an exciting time to be alive—we are in the midst of a redefinition of who is going to define right and wrong, what the punishment is going to be for those who violate the limits that we place on our behavior. We are arguing about who has the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong. We’re arguing over what censorship is And to me its pretty scary.”

 

And there it is again—fear—the secret sauce of paranoia and right-wing hysteria.

Like Trump later, Limbaugh went from being a spoiled rich kid to a champion of the working class. People all over America were starting to take notice of Limbaugh. I remember at the time hearing about him from a friend of mine, a trucker. Truckers loved Limbaugh, just like they later loved Trump and basically for the same reasons. They liked to have a wrecking ball in their corner as did my friend the trucker, and much later the truckers convoy in Ottawa in 2022. They got a rush from Rush Limbaugh.

As Justin Ling said, “On his radio show he was the voice of God on a one way street. And he loved nothing better than to run over liberal women. On his radio show he said, “this is a show devoted to what I think.” On the Dave Lettermen show he said people were bugged by him because “I have almost a monopoly on the truth.” No one could ever accuse Limbaugh of humility. Humility was a liberal vice. And his fans loved it.  He also said “This is a benevolent dictatorship. I am the dictator. There is no first amendment here except for me.”

Now he was entitled to be the dictator of his own show. If we don’t like it, we don’t have to listen to it.

 

Ronildus Maximus

Conservative, Right-wing Extremism

 

Rush Limbaugh worshipped him like no other. He called him “Ronildus  Maximus.” This is what Limbaugh said about why he liked Ronald Reagan so much:

“I have to rank Ronald Reagan as one of the greatest presidents of all time. Certainly of my life time. Ronald Reagan demonstrated that all you have to do is unshackle the American people. Let them exercise the freedom that is the natural yearning, God-given of the human being—and nobody can stop them. Reagan said, you know better than anybody else what’s best for you and you’ll do better for yourself if people just get out of your way.”

 

That was American conservatism in a nutshell and it is not entirely unattractive.  I would not call it right-wing extremism.

 

Ronald Regan put it this way: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant; it is just that they know so much that isn’t so.” That is a pretty sly critique, and again, not without its attraction.

Rush Limbaugh however was different.  Very different. He was a right-wing extremist.

 

Saint Ronald: The Great Communicator

Conservative, Indigenous--Indian Act

 

After he lost the nomination for the Republican Party’s representative in the presidential election of 1976 won by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan had many opportunities but turned them all down in order to host a daily radio show. Why would he do that? He knew a good opportunity when he saw one.  A daily radio show was his springboard to success.

Saint Ronald was known as “the Great Communicator.” Unlike his much more bombastic right-wing personalities he talked quietly and smoothly without aggression and most importantly, without hate. He did not spew hateful and vile rhetoric like his brethren. He talked reasonably. He was not an extremist. By right-wing standards, he was a moderate, though when I first took notice of him I thought he was a right-wing extremist. Compared to what came after him he was definitely a moderate.

Everyday, Reagan had a platform on national radio for his ideology.  He preached self-reliance: “Hand-outs are demeaning. They do violence to a man, strip him of his dignity, and breed in him a hatred of the total system.” Liberty: “Poor men want the same as the rest of us.  They want jobs and control over their own destiny.”  And small government: “We seek to harness the creative energy of private enterprise to achieve a solution to America’s crisis.”

Of course, by then “the Federal Communications Commission had chased most ideologues  off the airwaves with its fairness doctrine.” Yet something did change about that time. Jimmy Carter was President and enforcement of the doctrine fell out of favor. Carter was nothing if not moderate. He did not know he was slitting his own throat for this left an opening by allowing Reagan to get on the airways and attack Carter, gently of course as was his style, at least in comparison between him and those who preceded him and followed him.

According to Justin Ling, on the CBC podcast The Flamer Throwers, “It was like a shadow presidency.” 30 million Americans a week listened to him, and Reagan knew how to communicate. That was what he knew best. Had he been a candidate the election rules would have demanded that he give equal time to his opponent. As a result, he did not give up the mike until the last possible moment in the next presidential race.

His campaign for the presidency was “rooted in a supposedly golden American past.” He wanted a country, he said, that would allow a 6-year-old American girl to enjoy the same freedom that he enjoyed as a 6-year old American boy. It was honey-dripped nostalgia. Of course, African-Americans did not have quite the same golden nostalgia.  They knew the ugly side of America that Reagan and his supporters knew nothing about. They had never seen it.  They were blissfully ignorant of it and the same goes for the current crop of MAGA enthusiasts. As Reagan said during that campaign, “Let’s make America Great Again.”  Sound familiar? That was his line; so were the red baseball caps. So was the innocence. He was the winner and as he said, “It’s morning again in America,” to the gentle tune of caressing music.

For Republicans it was nothing less than “a golden age.”  It was indeed a golden age for the comfortable. He began a legacy of cutting taxes, limiting government, and selling soothing fairy tales. There was no need for critical race theory or rebellion. As Reagan said, “For Americans living today there isn’t any problem we can’t solve, if government will give us the facts. Tell us what needs to be done and then get out of the way and let us have at it.” It was a most comfortable message. It was the message everyone wanted so much to be true. So it must be true.

As Ling, said, “In 1987 he quietly got the government out of the way of Right-wing radio.” Thus he gave a huge lift up to all those who followed him onto right-wing radio. When he became president, Reagan axed the fairness doctrine entirely and as Ling said, “that brought right-wing radio roaring back.”  This set the stage for the personality with the greatest heft in the history of right-wing radio—Rush Limbaugh.  Reagan was to Limbaugh sort of like John the Baptist was to Jesus.

 

 

Moral Bankruptcy of the Conservative Party

Conservative, Death of Truth, Indigenous--Reconciliation

 

This past week as the Manitoba election draws to a close, the governing party in Manitoba, the Conservative Party, has demonstrated its moral bankruptcy. 2 despicable political advertisements have shown that they cannot be allowed to speak for us. I will just comment on one of them today. The other one is equally pathetic.

One was a one-page ad published twice in the Free Press lauding Premier Stefanson’s promise to “stand firm” on the issue of searching the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of two slain Indigenous women.

It is one thing to come to a hard though-out position not to support the expensive search for remains. It is entirely different to brag about that to a base of voters largely unsympathetic to indigenous causes such as that of the Conservative party. That base may include  racists who will treat this as permission to turn ugly. It seems to me the Conservative Party has decided to try to electrify voters against indigenous people who don’t want to spend the money to find the remains of the two indigenous women.

Those remains are believed to be in a Winnipeg Landfill. As I bogged yesterday, I am not satisfied that such expense would be justified and that the money could be better spent elsewhere because money is never unlimited. Even governments have limited resources and must use them wisely. But I want to make it clear, that I dissent entirely from the actions of the Progressive Conservative Party. In fact, I admit I am uneasy about being on the same side as the Conservative Party on this particular issue.

It is also regrettable that their advertisements are not truthful. They claim the efforts to locate the remains will cost $184 million when the estimate they received said the cost would be between $84 and $184 million. Added to that, the ad claims the Premier took that decision “For health and safety reasons.”  This ignores the fact that some experts say it can be done safely. For these reasons Dan Lett of the Winnipeg Free Press called the ad “a symphony of misinformation.”

I also believe the advertisement  subtly alludes to last year’s Trucker Convoy, whose leader frequently used a similar statement during that strike and her subsequent arrest. I don’t think that similarity is accidental. Some members of their base will be attracted to that. I don’t believe the majority of Manitobans will agree.

Simply put, fuelling rancid debate like this is not what we expect of our Premiers. It certainly is not an act of reconciliation.

Charles Adler a long time conservative voice in Manitoba was bluntly harsh in his criticism of the Conservatives:

“I never thought the PCs would exploit murdered young Indigenous women to make some clumsy point about leadership character. The billboard which I first saw on Kenaston Boulevard just days ago, after doing a shop at Costco, made me want to buy a barf bag. “Stand Firm” falls flat. The message does not evoke strength of character. It does the opposite.Standing Firm on the remains of murdered Indigenous women is a confession of moral weakness. It illustrates the total collapse of values in today’s Manitoba Progressive Conservatives. As a person, who until this week has been for the most part, a reliable PC voter, I now view the party of Duff Roblin as the party of Maxime Bernier.”

 

Personally I  predict  the Conservatives’ attempts to sow division in Manitoba will fall flat and they will be roundly defeated in tomorrow’s election. Most Manitobans  are not Trumpsters.

Elementary Justice

Capitalism, Conservative, Social democracy

When you spend almost 4 months living in the USA as I did this winter  you get to hear some pretty weird stuff. This was one of those occassions.

Al Franken is a former Senator and now a stand-up comedian again. He has returned to his roots. I head  him guest hosting the Daily Show,

According to Al Franken, “the combination of stone age technology and understaffing has created a very weird situation.”

 

As Jesse Eisinger, a Propublica Senior reporter said, “You are more likely to be audited in the United State if you make $20,000 than if you make $500,000 a year.” Is this because Republicans think ordinary people should pay more  taxes than wealthy Americans?  Is it because this a very perverse form of trickle-down economics where many Americans believe that if you give money to rich people this is the best way to help poor people because that money will flow down to poor people? Or is it because the Republicans want to give their wealthy donors and cronies what they are begging for?

The reason is that the poor tax payers are low lying fruit. The less money you have the less likely it is that you can hire fancy accountants or tax lawyers to defeat the IRS claims!  So why should tax auditors waste their time going after the rich when they can go after the poor! Only in America!

 

As one commentator said,

“The IRS does not have enough money to go head to head with the wealthy. Ultimately it is easier for them to audit low income people because it is cheap and can be done by mail and does not take a lot of time.”

 

Or as Franken said,

 

“The IRS is so understaffed that they audit poor people more than the wealthy because they just don’t have the experts to handle the most complex returns. They are going after poor people because its easier! …So how much money are we talking about in lost taxes here? According to the former head of the IRS it could be as much as $1trillion a year! The solution is a bargain. Comparatively speaking, just adequately funding the IRS so it can improve its enforcement capabilities so it can collect that extra trillion dollars…”

 

And of course a lot of good things could be done with an extra trillion dollars. It could be applied to the national debt. Or it could pay for universal health care. Or subsidize child care as they do in every other civilized nation. Or as Franken suggested, a trillion dollars could

“eliminate taxes completely for the bottom 90% of American households!… Or we could fund an entirely new Iraq war. And why are we the only f…..g country in the world that doesn’t have universal health care? The point is that polling shows that 93% of Americans think that it is everybody’s civic duty to pay taxes and I think you can guess who the other 7% are. So let’s make sure that we give the IRS enough resources for it to make sure that everybody does what we all should do for the right to live in this great country and make it even better if we do the rational thing and collect the taxes that people actually owe.”

 

Everyone should note that this is not pie-in-the-sky rosy socialism. It’s not communism. It’s not evil. It’s not even wrong. It’s just a small attempt to get people to actually pay the taxes that are lawfully owing to the government so it can pay for the things that are important to us. Like social security. Like schools. Or the armed forces. Or police. Or fire fighters. Or health inspectors. A lot of the things we get from the government are good and important. Everyone who can afford to pay taxes should be required to pay their fair share. Even the rich! Even Republican cronies! Not just the poor suckers who have no one fighting for them. This is just elementary justice.