Category Archives: Right-wing Extremism

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.

 

 

Nixon and the Politics of Division

Culture Wars, Right-wing Extremism

 

Donald Trump did not invent the cultural wars, nor was he the first right-wing politician to take advantage of them.

 

The author Rick Perlstein  was interviewed in the film The Brain Washing of my Dad in which he said “the  brilliance of Nixon was to bend a politics of deference to money and autocracy and frame it to a kind ofcultural populism.” Nixon’s idea, according to Perlstein, was “the real snobs are not the people who hire and fire, but the people who decide cultural trends.” Nixon early on, realized the importance of culture wars, though that expression was not to my knowledge used by him.

George Lakoff is the author of the book, Don’t Think of an Elephant! The Essential Guide for Progressives.  He was also interviewed in the film about Richard Nixon. In 1964 the Republican Party candidate for president, Barry Goldwater got smoked.  Lakoff said, “conservative” was a dirty word. Nixon started running for the presidency in 1967 and he knew he had a problem. How to get around the apparent despising of conservatives? How could he change the Americans who wanted to be liberals?

Specifically, he wanted to get working people to vote for him, rather than a Democrat. Many veterans saw the anti-war movement in the US as a betrayal of their service and unpatriotic to the country. Nixon was hostile to protesters. He also opposed women who were railing against societal norms that forced them to stay at home and raise children. Their movement was called. “Women’s Liberation,” and Nixon hated that too.  So did many others.

Nixon argued for traditional family values to attract working men who felt threatened by what they saw as radical feminism.  Women would try to upend their privileges and take their jobs. Which was, of course, was completely true.

Nixon capitalized on fears of whites that they would lose their hegemony to uppity blacks. He elicited fear and loathing among whites. He ran in favor of law and order, which was often a dog whistle for whites who felt most criminals were black. He latched onto white bias, often of a silent implicit kind of bias. Again, he concentrated on white fears. There is nothing quite like fear to bring out the vote.

Donald Trump used similar tactics in order to twice get elected president of the United States.  Many think those tactics were crucial to getting Trump elected both times. Winning the cultural wars can be a winning statetgy.

 

The Birth of Fox News and the Dividing of America

Death of Truth, Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

One of the things I found fascinating about the film The Brain Washing of My Dad was the importance of Fox News to the American right-wing extremist movement.

 

The John Birch society was a cauldron of right-wing extremism in America. As Claire Conner, author of a book called, Wrapped in the Flag: What I learned growing up in America’s Radical Right, How I Escaped and Why My Story Matters, said, “the John Birch Society was built on the theory that Communism was right around the corner.”

 

The Society believed that the bad communists were not just in Russia, or China, or Cuba, they were right here in America and in particular in our government. The John Birchers were considered nutty and extreme, which they were, so they resisted these attacks. In the election of 1964 where Barry Goldwater got hammered by Lyndon Johnson, partly because he had so many supporters in the John Birch Society, that many thought he must be as nutty as the Birchers. At the time, the American right was considered nutty or worse.

 

David Brock wrote a book called The Conservative Noise Machine in which he explained  how one of the first things conservatives did after the humbling defeat in 1964 was to attack the media on the basis of liberal media bias. As he said in the film, “the campaign to discredit the media would lay the groundwork for the vast alternative media that would come later.”

 

A central player in the media take down was Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News. Gabriel Sherman wrote a book about him, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the brilliant bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided the Country. As Sherman said, “Roger Ailes understood one thing about television. He understood that television is about emotion. And you need to communicate to the audience and hook into them on an emotional level.” Fox News embodied this insight and it did that with heart and soul.

 

Added that, Fox found that in America bombast engages. You can still see that on Fox today. Many Fox commentators are brimming with bombast. They don’t like namby-pamby. They like the extreme.

 

Richard Nixon exemplified how this worked. In the 1960s he debated John F. Kennedy and in the debates he looked slick with sweat and was acknowledged to be very smart and tough but he came off looking badly compared to Kennedy. He lost in a very close election.

 

As we all know Nixon came back. He picked himself off the ground and later became President of the United States. In 1968 when he ran again in a campaign for the presidency with Eugene McCarthy, Nixon knew he needed a media guy in his campaign. Roger Ailes was that man. And Ailes taught Nixon how to play the media.

 

Ailes was the power behind the sound bite. He taught Nixon to keep his sentences short with real bites. Short snappy one-liners that can stick in the audience’s mind. According to Sherman, Ailes told Nixon that America was dumb and would not understand him unless he kept his message simple. He should boil down his message and they would get it.  As a result, Nixon learned to master TV which had become a mass medium in the late 1960s.  And that made all the difference.

 

Years later Donald Trump learned the same message.  Keep it simple stupid. Or perhaps, ‘Stupid, keep it simple, would be more like it.

 

According to Sherman in a memo in 1970, Ailes said “Television had become such an important instrument, because people are lazy and want someone to do their thinking for them. It became the blueprint for Fox News.”  Later Roger Ailes said, “There are simple things the American people believe in. It is the reason that John Wayne is still one of the top 5 actors of all time 40 years after he died. You knew all about him: Don’t touch my woman; don’t draw a gun on me; don’t take my horse.”

When nuance becomes nonsense, truth flies out the door.

 

Reese Schonfeld, the founding President and CEO of CNN said this about TVN the news network for which Ailes worked at the time.  He said they wanted to be like a tiny tugboat pulling the Queen Mary a little farther right, and again further right to get the good ship to move as far right as he could.  He said this about Ailes: “He didn’t know much about news then and I’m not even sure he knows much about news now, but he sure does know television. He knows as much about television in the country as anyone and by the way he’s a great propagandist.”

 

When Ailes moved to Fox News it exploded in popularity and with it the interest in right-wing extremism. It engaged. Like nothing else on cable TV.

 

Raging Hate Machines

Death of Truth, Hate, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason

 

In the documentary film The Brain Washing of My Dad Jen Senko’s father started to listen to Rush Limbaugh on a small portable radio with ear buds. He was in business—ready to attack the world. At least the part of the world that was sane.

 

Then, as his daughter Jen Senko said, “it got worse when he discovered Fox News. It was like he had joined a cult or a new religion.” He started sending links to hateful stories to his relatives and acquaintances.

 

Jen Senko wondered if he really was brain-washed. She was determined to figure it out. So she made a film about her father and his changes. She found similar stories from around the country. She realized this issue went far beyond just her father and his wild politics. There were bitter and angry people everywhere.  Loving and caring people from around the country were turning into raging hate machines. What was going on? She wanted to know. So do I.

 

She concluded that ordinary people around the country had become raging hate machines after listening to and watching right-wing media. First it was right-wing talk radio, then it was cable TV, particularly Fox News.

 

Hillary Clinton referred to it as a vast right-wing conspiracy. She, of course, along with her husband, were 2 of its biggest victims.

 

Jen said when Reagan was elected president in 1980 she noticed the country going into what she called a more hardened place. This was also the time when her father started to change from fun loving to hating.

The School of Rush Limbaugh

Right-wing Extremism, Social Justice, Woke

 

In the film The Brain Washing of MY Dad, Jen Senko first noticed radical changes in her father when she took the bus from New York to visit her family and her father told her how upset he was to the reaction to women with their breasts hanging out at Hooters. How could the Feminazis object to that? This shocked Senko. He had never made such comments before. When she said the feminists might have a point, her father threatened to pull the car over and send her right back to New York.

 

Her father had started listening to Rush Limbaugh on American talk radio.  That was like university for a lot of American working people who listened to the radio a lot. Limbaugh taught them a lot about women. Especially, “Feminazis”, as he called them. He taught that “feminazis tried to make women more like men. Look like us. Dress like us. Have power like us. Have careers like us.” Feminism was clearly heresy. Now people might criticize them as woke.

Senko’s father’s position was simple. He  said, “Limbaugh is one of my heroes.”

 

The Brain-washing of My Dad

Death of Truth, Right-wing Extremism, The Sleep of Reason, Trumpism

 

A few years ago at documentary film festival in Winnipeg I watched an extraordinary film. It was called, alluringly, “The Brain Washing of my Dad.” I have often thought about it wishing to see it again. Then I realized you can watch it on You-Tube and I watched it again. it was worth the revisit.

This documentary film was written, directed, narrated, and produced by Jen Senko, a documentary filmmaker. It is a fascinating film.

Senko called the film a “Family Non-fiction Film.” In that film she described the father of her youth as a kind and friendly man, a goofy man, who never had an unkind word to say about anyone.  He never said anything bad about any group of people. He never demonstrated any racism for example. He was a truck driver who loved his family and his children who loved him. He was an ideal dad who took his kids on camping trips that gave them memories for their entire life. Sort of like my Dad!

Of course, the father, like a friend of mine, another long distance trucker who introduced me to Rush Limbaugh,  also drove a lot on long commutes listening to American talk radio. As I had already learned it was a cauldron of hate. Particularly as my friend, the long distance trucker also told me, “I listened to Rush Limbaugh because he kept me awake.”  This was a radio show without punches being pulled. It was real life radio. And it was filled with visceral hate against liberals, Democrats, elites, and a bit more subtly, blacks. Radio like that could keep a trucker awake, even if he, or later, she, had driven too long without proper sleep. It was never boring and kept one engaged.

Senko told the story of how when she was a young girl walking with her young sister and her dad and they encountered a homeless black man sitting on a sidewalk. The man held out his cup asking for help. Asking for change. She said her father gave him money. So much money it seemed like a lot to her. Of course, she was young, and young people are often overly impressed by sums of money. But actually, what impressed her more was the fact that her father called the homeless black man “Sir.”  He showed him so much respect it struck her as surprising. Her father was teaching his two daughters to treat everybody with respect. This was a valuable life lesson.

She said her family was not really political. She described her father as “a non-political Kennedy Democrat.”[1] And they lived in Arizona! But that did not last.  “When my father started listening to talk radio, I saw him change. A lot.”

It was an extraordinary film.    Here is an excerpt:

“In the 1960s Jen Senko’s Dad never had a bad word to say about any race or people or person. Then in the 80s after my Dad discovered talk radio, he suddenly didn’t like black people, poor people, gay people, feminists Hispanics and especially Democrats. After he discovered Fox News they became the enemy.”

 

Through the documentary film Jen Senko tries to show the transformation of her father from a non-political Democrat to an angry fanatical hate-filled Republican. How did that happen?

Yet the film is really much more than that. The film is not really just about one man who was brain-washed, it is really about a country that was boondoggled.

Politics as Blood Sport

Extremism, Right-wing Extremism

 

Justin Ling in his podcast on CBC, The Flamethrowers, pointed out that many pundits wondered how Donald Trump got elected and how he led the country to a riot on Capitol Hill? Hillary Clinton wrote a book called What Happened?

 

Ling reached this conclusion:

“What happened? Well Right-wing radio happened. I know it sounds a bit quaint to talk about the power of radio in 2021. By now most of us have a multi-media broadcast platform sitting in our pockets. But there is something special about the direct intimate connection between the human voice over the airwaves. At its most effective, it is an arrow straight to listeners hearts. For nearly a 100 years, broadcasters have harnessed that power to keep politics in America at a steady boil. Before there was Fox News, before there was The Drudge Report, there was decades of rage and loathing blasting out of 50,000 watt flame thrower towers.  All that heat would radically transform the character of radical right-wing politics in America. By the time Donald Trump was elected president, American conservatism was barely recognizable from even a decade prior. This was politics as blood sport. For broadcasters like Michael Savage, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh ideas were almost beside the point. And when you are in a war for hearts and minds and when winning is the only thing that matters, truth is the first casualty of the conflict.”

 

Ling is right. Right-wing radio was immensely important. But so was right-wing television. So was the Christian nationalist movement. So was the long history of credulity in the US going back to the Puritans that created a country filled with people who want nothing more than to be true believers. There are many forces that brought about the election of Donald Trump and the attempted insurrection he led. All of these currents met and flowed into each other to create this monstrous murky river of democratic decay, resentment, hate, racism, extremism and tortured reality.

Charlie Sykes, the Wisconsin broadcaster who stepped down from Right-wing radio after Trump arrived and he realized he had played a shameful role in fracturing American politics and that there was no place for him any longer, and his kind in this new conservative movement. He said,

“I was a part of this media ecosystem that contributed to the alternative reality media that we created. That we had succeeded in delegitimizing the mainstream media…There came a point we realized we had delegitimized all news.”

 

 

Justin Ling described it this way:

 “Instead of just being the other side of the story we had created this hermetically sealed bubble, echo chamber, whatever term you want to use that became impenetrable.’

 

Now of course, as Ling pointed out,  nothing was never hermetically sealed. He said,

“Some nasty stuff was leaking in and festering. Whatever right-wing radicalism takes, American talk radio played a central role in shaping the modern movement. And everywhere that the right-wing movement succeeded, it did so by following the talk radio playbook. And even as technology changes the simple power of radio is connecting with huge audiences …It comes by fibre optic cable now, but all the voices are there: a voice in the darkness, striking the matches, and stoking the fire. ”

 

What else can you say when Alex Jones, so admired a president of the United States, and millions of listeners, says, “This is what we are dealing with ladies and gentlemen, a Secretary of State having sex in a giant vat of feces?” Or other radios hosts say things like this: “That is what black fathers do, they simply leave?” Or “We are living in a Zionist matrix in this country.” Or “We have defacto vaccination quarantine camps already.” Or “What we need in this country is a good old fashioned American revolution.” Yeah, what else can you say?

Sadly, Clarence E. Manion got it absolutely right when as an early right-wing extremist he bellowed over the air waves, “This is not a political war, this is not an economic war, this is not even a military war, this is a religious war at bottom.”  That is what is was. And that is what it is. This new crusade is not over yet. Not by a long-shot.

After talk radio, right-wing television helped, to bring in a religious war to America.