Category Archives: Right-wing Extremism

No room for Moderates in the Tea Party

Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

The tea party came out in force to oppose Obama’s health care plan. As Justin Ling said,

“Glen Beck leaned in hard on Tea Party populism. He leads a tax revolt march on Washington, he hosts another huge rally. He started something called the 9-12 project…The Tea Party fueled by right-wing radio begins to think of themselves as actual revolutionaries.”

 

They saw themselves as involved in a civil war for control of the country, not just the Republican Party. They believed the establishment in both parties was fighting back against them. They claimed to be fighting against the leadership of both parties to take their power away and give it back to the people where it belonged.

Radical Republicans challenged moderate Republican incumbents and were celebrated on Right-wing radio. This was changing the political landscape, not unlike the rise of the Trumpsters after Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 presidential election. A good example was Mike Castle who was called a Republican in name only (RINO’) because he was not radical enough. Rush Limbaugh supported Christine O’Donnell in the Republican primary in Delaware even though she was not much of a candidate and he raised $1million for her campaign in one day! It did not matter who was the better candidate. Talk Radio loved the pure and extreme. What did matter was who was the more extreme Republican? They wanted the most extreme.  The Tea Party ushered in a new era of extremism in Republican politics.

At its height there were 60 Tea Partiers in the House and a dozen in the Senate. They were a radical force to be reckoned with.

As Justin Ling said,

“Right-wing radio sent representatives to Washington who had no time for compromise with the Democrats or even the moderates in their own party. The Tea Party forced Republicans in safe districts to look over their right shoulder and fend off challenges from the conservative fringe. It made the business of governing increasingly difficult. And that was partly the point. This antipathy to government and this all or nothing ideology would play a crucial role in fracturing American politics and fueling the insurrection on January 6th.”

 

 

There really has been little room for moderates ever since, particularly in primary contests, where every Republican politician fears extremists. Never moderates. Only candidates more extreme than them can defeat them. In my opinion this sad fact is a major contributor to the rise of extremism and polarization in America.

The Tea Party: A Populist Uprising from the Right

Right-wing Extremism

 

When Barack Obama took office as president of the United States he inherited from his predecessor George W. Bush a financial disaster of epic lineage. Many traders said they had never seen a day like it. I admit he had to take quick action and did not have adequate time to think things through. It is difficult to do the rational thing in the midst of general panic.

Obama immediately took action to quell the disaster. Now some of the things he did were dubious. For example, he arranged for massive  bailouts of businesses that had caused the market tank while being much less generous with ordinary people who could not pay their mortgages.

One month after his inauguration, in February of 2009, an event occurred when the  an analyst named Rick Santelli was heard live on CNBC the financial news network, standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and said this:

I have a proposed modification. You know the new administration is big on computers and technology. How about this: Let’s put up a website on the Internet to have a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ or would we like to at least buy cars and houses in foreclosure and give them to people who might actually have a chance to prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water…We are thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July.

It really was a plea for the ordinary people who got screwed by paying for bailouts for rich bankers while they got no help at all. It was a legitimate cry for justice for those that Obama ignored in his rush to save the financial system.  This later morphed into the Tea Party which of course was another failure to drain the swamp in favour of feeding the swamp creatures with expensive caviar and champaign. But they had a point. A very good poiiint in fact.

Donald Trump would later repeat exactly the same thing when he promised to help the little guys by draining the swamp and actually rewarded the wealthy with deep tax cuts instead. This is what has happened over and over again in American politics and Obama was not immune.

Republicans actually took this idea to heart and organized an informal Tea Party, but their efforts were of course confined to working for the rich rather than the ordinary citizens of the US. For a few years they were very powerful on Capitol Hill and were a definite thorn in the side of Obama.

According to Justin Ling  in his podcast “Tehe Flamethrowers,” where he went through the history of the right wing in talk radio said Mark Williams became the defacto leader of the Tea Party. The Daily News said this about him: “the flamethrower leading the battle against the Ground Zero mosque, was kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation Saturday for a racist blog post.” Williams  started out as a radio commentator in Sacramento where he took over from Rush Limbaugh.  He organized a series of rallies across the country to celebrate Tax Day, the day that supposedly people had paid their taxes on their earnings so they started to work after that for themselves. It was a grass roots Republican uprising. And they loved dressing up in the regalia of the American revolutionaries. Wearing their tri-corner hats, breeches while carrying muskets and crying to reduce taxes, smaller government, and support individual liberty. It really was a bit of a party–for awhile.

 

The birther Conspiracy and the Star of 30,000 Lies

Right-wing Extremism, Trust and Distrust

 

The birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in the United States, and hence an illegitimate president, was born out of racist beliefs that it was not possible for America to have elected a black man for the office of president, and drove the consumers of talk radio to fits of apoplectic anger against the black usurper in the White House. It just was not possible for America to have voted for him they thought.

In June 2008 the Obama campaign released a copy of Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii, but the conspiracy theory had legs and could not be beaten down with a stick. As Justin Ling said in his CBC Podcast Flamethrowers, , “But on right-wing radio, hosts could smell blood in the water. They claimed the certificate had obviously been heavily photo-shopped. No way was it genuine.” It just could not be genuine.

Jerome Corsi became an “expert” on this conspiracy theory.  Nothing could be said to convince his followers of the falsity of this theory. They claimed that Obama’s mother had to go to Kenya before he was born, and the pregnancy was so advanced she had to stay there for his birth in Kenya.  After all, why did Obama not release the original birth certificate? In fact, as Ling said, during the campaign, “Corsi went to Kenya on some kind of Scooby-do mission to find ‘the real birth certificate.” He ended up being detained and eventually deported from Kenya because he did not have a proper visa for being there. That deportation of course was part of the conspiracy.  In the world of conspiracy, it is almost impossible to deflect the theory. Any obstacles can quickly be swallowed up and dutifully explained as obviously being part of the conspiracy.

Corsi was an American author and participant in many conspiracies. See for example, the HBO Documentary Film, After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News (2020) for more on this colorful conspiracist. Corsi next flew to Hawaii where his grandmother was reported to be sick because he wanted to track down the original genuine birth certificate. As Justin Ling said, “these radio personalities were on the radio day in and day out telling their listeners that the likely next president was illegitimate, foreign, and not one of us.” That was the key, a black president could not be one of us! Another commentator called him an illegal alien who should be arrested and deported!

 

Of course, at this time, a failed presidential candidate from 2000 jumped on the birther band wagon.  Donald Trump began to lead this absurd campaign. Or as Ling called him: “the real estate developer, fake university chancellor, purveyor of staged reality TV star” was claiming Obam was a fraud! Or as other reporters liked to call Trump “the star of 30,000 lies.”

 

Trump jumped into the fray and “earned” a lot of international publicity as a result. He even said he sent his own people to Hawaii to investigate and promised he would present the evidence. Naturally, it goes without saying, he never presented any evidence. Evidence is beneath Trump. Truth is beneath him.

 

As Ling said, “Call it what you will, a meaningless diversion, a pernicious racist conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Whatever it was, Donald Trump was now the head of it.” And right-wing talk radio was going crazy over it!

 

Perhaps the most important part of Trump’s ridiculous campaign was to imprint on his supporters that the election of Obama was illegitimate and hence his entire presidency was illegitimate. As result millions of people doubted whether the presidential election of Obama was legitimate.  They lost whatever trust in the government they had, and trust in government in a democracy is essential to it working. In my view, this has had long-term effects to this day.

 

Barack Obama: the ideal enemy

Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

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.

Fuelling a Racial Rage

Hate, racism, Right-wing Extremism

 

When you look at the right-wing hysteria it is very difficult to avoid reaching the conclusion that race plays a vital role in the anger stoked up by right-wing media.

Rush Limbaugh, a dedicated purveyor of hate and vitriol on American talk radio, had a very different reaction to flooding in Iowa and other largely white Mid-west states a couple of years after Katrina, than the right wing did about mainly blacks in New Orleans. There were no verbal assaults on the lazy whites. This is what he said,

“I look at Iowa, I look at Illinois. I want to see the murders. I want to see the looting. I want to see all the stuff that happened in New Orleans. I see devastation in Iowa and it dwarfs what happened in New Orleans. I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property and save their reputations. I don’t see a bunch of people running around waiving guns at helicopters. I don’t see a bunch of people shooting cops. I don’t see a bunch of people raping people on the street.”

 

As Justin Ling reported on the CBC radio podcasts said about the right wing reaction to blacks in harm’s way during Hurricane Katrina:

“As aid workers tried to help, right-wing radio told stories of snipers on rooftops. As the media tried to bring the reality of the situation home to other Americans they were called liars. And as the poorest people in the world had suffered, right-wing radio painted them as lazy and dishonest at best, and murderers and rapists at worst. They have given listeners plenty to be angry about.”

 

The rage machine was fuelled and ready to go. Owners of right-wing radio and their employees were ready to reap the profits of rage. And they knew who to blame—lazy good for nothing blacks and their liberal facilitators.

 

The Rage Machine

Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

In many respects right-wing radio is based on resentment and the fury that it can fuel.  We resent them. We have been victimized the others. They are taking our country. And we want our country back. And we are going to get it. It really is us against them! That is still a big part of right-wing ideology.

 

As Justin Ling said, “Right-wing radio is most effective when there is a focus for all of that rage. What it comes down to is these guys are in the rage business.”

 

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit US shores near New Orleans, setting in motion another hateful attack by America’s right-wing. Many people were stuck under water and badly needed help. The George W. Bush administration was strongly criticized for being slow to get aid to the people in Louisiana devastated by the storm. Local political leaders were begging for help from the federal government.

 

But then something astonishing happened. Many right-wing pundits across America began to criticize the New Orleans and Louisiana politicians for ‘sitting on their asses.’  One right-wing pundit said the problem was that New Orleans police were too busy getting in on the looting to stop the looting. It was their point of view that the police did not want to confront the looters and thugs that had taken over the city.

 

In the weeks following the hurricane strike, right-wing radio was filled with stories suggesting that New Orleans was overrun with looters, murderers and rapists. They claimed people were shooting people with assault rifles that were coming to rescue them. These pundits asked if liberals would be upset with this, or would side with the looters. As CBC reporter Justin Ling said, “Many of these reports were overblown, some were outright lies. And all that misinformation—it has a real impact. These false reports actually hindered efforts to get aid to the hardest hit areas of New Orleans.”

 

One of the right-wing pundits, Neil Boortz, said, “That’s not the voice of the downtrodden. That’s the voice of the useless, the worthless.” Right-wing radio hosts were arguing that the suffering that was plain and clear was not actually real. Some hinted they must be faking it. Some suggested people had created their own misfortune. Or that they did not deserve help! One such pundit said,

 

New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not or had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.

 

The racial tropes of people sitting on their asses and doing nothing, of being welfare bums and doing nothing are of course part of the racial ideology of the right-wing.  Black people are lazy. Those who are poor deserve to be poor because they are not willing to work.

 

The real problem, the right-wing pundits insisted was “big government.”  Not incompetent government of Bush cronies being appointed to positions of power for which they were uniquely unqualified. Government was the problem. Rush Limbaugh said liberal democrats had run the city for 60 years so they were to blame. It could not be the fault of George W. Bush and his crony appointees. He said, “What was on display here was the utter total failure of liberalism!”

 

Justin Ling described the situation this way:

 

“To some degree this was about protecting George W. Bush. But in many ways it was irrelevant who occupied the White House. When these hosts went after the victims of Hurricane Katrina they weren’t worried about winning elections. They were worried about winning the air war. Winning new listeners. Winning ad dollars. And the way to do that was by ginning up controversy and outrage. These hosts are not in the Republican business; they are in the rage business.”

 

 

That is what the right-wing in America is all about–stimulating rage and pointing the angry in the direction of the liberal enemies! Right-wing talk radio learned quickly that rage sells. And they  have never forgotten that lesson.

Rich and Righteous Victims

Right-wing Extremism

 

In the early 2000s right-wing radio took off and started to control the air waves. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast, “These broadcasters decide what wars are good; they decide what countries are bad. They decide who’s a patriot and who’s not. It is a thriving and profitable ecosystem.”

 

The left lost its grip on media, at least on the radio airwaves. But that was not enough for the right-wing.  As Ling said,

 

“And yet they are still able to convince millions of people that it’s the conservatives who are the victims. The marginalized. The downtrodden. But now that they control the narrative this rage machine just needs the right target and they are about to get it.”

 

 So the right wing became a collection of righteous victims.  The left were the perpetrators. The right were the victims and justice demanded reparations for the right-wing stalwarts.  I keep wondering though how the white and privileged can be the victims. This is still a common complaint among the right. How is that possible?

 

Air America

Right-wing Extremism

 

Right wing talk radio was immensely successful; in America.  Left Wing talk radio was a bust. Why is that?

Air America launched in 2004. It was intended to be the Left’s answer to right wing talk radio. Rush Limbaugh mocked this group as being about him. They thought they could pluck some liberal, put him on the air and instantly he would have a platform on 600 radio stations in the country like him. Air America was built over night. Limbaugh had built his network over years from a small radio platform. As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast series, “Air America tried to go full national right out of the gates.”

Air America assembled a line-up of liberal comics. Many of them were funny but none had experience in radio. They bombed! Al Franken had been a star on Saturday Night Live and he was smart and understood politics, but as Ling said, “On air Franken can’t match the ‘us’ against ‘them’ outrage of rightwing talk radio.”

Franken just could not operate in a binary universe like Limbaugh could where it was a matter of pure evil against pure good. Talk radio was the home of bombast, not nuance or careful thinking or argument. To right wing radio the truth is clear and the enemies are simple and stick out like rotten cabbage. And right-wing radio knew we are at war with the liberals. Leave the nuance in the bag. Liberals like Franken could not understand this. Who of us can?

Bill O’Reilly said “this whole liberal network thing is just plain stupid. NPR fills that prescription and they do it very well. These pinheads backing the venture will lose millions of dollars because the propaganda network is simply tedious and tedious doesn’t sell.”  He was right!

 

 

Demonization of Muslims

Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Hate, Right-wing Extremism

 

 

Right-wing extremists have always liked scapegoats.  It used to be Catholics, or Blacks, or Communists. After 9/11 another arose Muslims. And right-wing radio in America stepped right in.

As Justin Ling the host of the CBC series Flamethrowers said, “The demonization of Muslims became a sport. One that would ensnare millions of Americans. And it was disgusting.” As one visitor to right-wing radio said, “The Moslems are fighting the Jews. The Moslems are fighting the Christians. The Moslems are fighting the Hindus. The Moslems are fighting the Buddhists. They’re slaughtering the blacks. Even the Moslem blacks in African Darfur. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, wherever you want.”

The right-wing radio talk-show host Glen Beck  made his point of view known , and that of the right-wing in America when he commented to that: “well they certainly are adept at slaughter, I give you that.”

 

After the 9/11 attack the right-wing attacks against Muslims escalated exponentially. As Ling said, “Every week brought a new terror alert. George W. Bush led the invasion of Afghanistan, launching the war on terror. And conservative radio is on it.”

The 9/11 incident electrified the American right. They had a new Satan to replace the presumably vanquished Soviet Satan. The Muslims were the new Satan. With  a new sinner, the gospel of hate was thriving as never before. And the domestic how grown terrorists were fired up.

 

January 6th:  A  Culmination

2024 Trip to South West United States, American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Domestic Terrorism, Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

After 9/11, Americans understandably, began to fear foreign terrorists. They were hit hard by the events that day. As a result, they created the Department of Homeland Security which concentrated on doing everything possible to stop foreign terrorists. Over time, they began to realize that there was a much bigger problem and it was home-grown. Terrorism, by Americans in their own country!  I call this domestic terrorism.

In the talk by Professor Jacob Ware and  his cohort Bruce Hoffman that we listened to thanks to Arizona State University, the speakers concentrated on domestic terrorism. Their talk was called “God, Guns, and Sedition. “

Importantly, Ware and Hoffman do not see the events of January 6th as a ‘one-off.’ Rather, as Ware explained they see January 6th as the culmination of a movement that has been growing for decades. Many Americans, looking through their rose-coloured glasses frequently are heard to say, after each tragic event, ‘we are not like this,’ or ‘this is not America’ when actually that is exactly what America is about. America was created through violent insurrection, genocide of native peoples, and  violent slavery and the biggest problem is that this has never been seriously acknowledged by a country that thinks it is exceptional. It is another example of American wishful thinking. That is the way they want it so it must be true. Ignore reality. Live in FantasyLand where it is much more comfortable.

 That, of course, is why Republicans, and the American-right, including the extreme right in particular, is working so hard to deny history. They see January 6th as a bunch of rambunctious tourists or crisis actors as Matt Goetz claimed in the House of Representatives. They don’t see the reality, which I submit impartial observers with all the facts, would readily admit they saw that day. That reality is that they were American right-wing extremists: Trumpsters and their ilk.

 Unless Americans are able to face the truth about their country they will never solve the horrible problem they have with domestic terrorism. There is little room for optimism here either.  They show no signs of wanting to learn the truth. To them, ignorance is bliss.