Category Archives: Right-wing Extremism

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.

 

 

From Election Fraud to riot

Death of Truth, Domestic Terrorism, Right-wing Extremism

 

In the election of 2020 American presidential election  there was fraud about voter fraud. Namely many lied that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2220 presidential election. This alleged fraud was not based on evidence. It was based on unsubstantiated claims made by the president and his henchmen. This lie is now threatening to undermine American democracy. As Ling said just before the 2020 election, “Dozens of American states are introducing laws to restrict voting rights of millions of people, particularly people of color. And it is all based on a supposed fraud that never happened.” That is voter fraud! To claim fraud where one knows there was no fraud, is fraud.

 

Trump was told repeatedly by his own people led by his own Attorney General William Barr that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election that Trump lost. Trump hated the thought of losing the election so much that he preferred believing a lie, which he knew to be a lie.

According to Justin Ling,

“Right-wing radio has been laying the ground work for this for years. In the days and weeks before the 2020 election they begin watering that lie. And after the votes are counted, it becomes one of the biggest lies in American history. An allegation that a deep state conspiracy rigged the presidential election. It alleges the states were involved, the Democrats were involved, the company that makes the voting machines was involved, the media was involved and they all conspired to install Joe Biden as president.  ”

 

Of course, the man who never saw a conspiracy theory that he did not like, Alex Jones jumped onto this wagon with startling enthusiasm. He said,

 

“The evidence overwhelmingly shows now, and I have a giant stack that confirms it, law enforcement is investigating that Dominion  illegally called the servers and covered up the paper trail, and of course, we knew that. Now by the hand counts they found that Trump won by a giant landslide. The same tactics were used in every other state. They stole the election.”

These were al lies.

Many Trumpsters believed, and many still believe, that the election was rigged but they could not overturn the results. Because they had no evidence of fraud.  It doesn’t matter that Republicans investigated the claims and universally dismissed them. It doesn’t matter because their belief in their leader is a theological belief not amendable to contrary facts. Religious beliefs work that way.

 

Even on and after January 6, 2021 many of the Trumpsters were firm in their belief that Donald Trump would not be removed from office. It just could not happen. Some believed that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be facing treason charges.

 

January 6th saw the explosion of the hyper believers led by people like the Oath Keepers and Alex Jones.  Jones made a stirring speech to the crowd that was on its way to the Capitol. He shouted through his megaphone in his typical growly bombastic style:

“We are not just going to take the country back, but the whole world back from Communist Chinese. USA. USA.USA. We’re not giving in to the grabbers. We’re never surrendering. The Great Reset is triggering the Great Awakening. And the Great Awakening will trigger the Great Rebellion and the Destruction of the New World Order.”

 

And there were cries to “take back our country,” and “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” Another said, “We’ve got the gallows set up outside this Capitol, now it’s time to start fucking using them.”  Another said, “This is now effectively a riot.”  That last one was right! One said, “At 1349 hours declaring it a riot.” Again, that one was right.

 

America had entered a period of insurrection ushered in by decades of lies on American talk radio,.

 

Immigrants: the traditional scapegoat of the Fascist

American Fascism, Extremism, Hate, Populism, Right-wing Extremism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

 

Just like Hitler, Orban, and so many other fascists, Donald Trump has been scapegoating immigrants, both legal and illegal. I was shocked to see how popular such language was in the 2024 Republican Convention where Trump was endorsed as their candidate. I shuddered when I saw posters held high and proud which specifically demanded “Mass Deportation Now.” This reminded me of the fervour of ordinary Germans in the 1930 calling for abuse of Jews.

 

Very similar words were heard demonizing immigrants in Madison Square Gardens in the 1930s at a rally that could only be called a Nazi rally. That’s what it looked and sounded like.  The rally in Madison Square Garden again in 2024 was eerily similar.

As Anne Applebaum the author and journalist for The Atlantic said this about Trump (near the end of the campaign):

 “His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.

 

These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held prefabricated sign: Mass Deportation Now. Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.”

 

These similarities are deeply disturbing. The support of ordinary Americans for such words and policies is shocking. It is so much like the support of ordinary Germans for Hitler, or ordinary Italians for Mussolini. In both highly advanced countries there was stunning support for the fascist policies. It seems to me this is exactly what is now happening in the United States.  I hope I am wrong; I fear I am right.

It is really shocking to me that Americans continue to support Trump’s fascist policies. This is the really scary part.  Trump is Trump. We all know that. He does not hide his fascist tendencies. Why then do so many Americans support him?  I think the answer is also deeply disturbing.

This is what Anne Applebaum had to say:

“These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents—none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics.

 

But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics. Several generations of American politicians have assumed that American voters, most of whom learned to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, grew up with the rule of law, and have never experienced occupation or invasion, would be resistant to this kind of language and imagery. Trump is gambling—knowingly and cynically—that we are not.”

 

Trump was clearly betting that he knows the American people will support him.  He hears a lot of applause at his rallies. It turns out he was right. More than half the Americans who voted in the recent election of president voted for him.   Were they voting for fascism?

 

 

How Fascism Works

American Fascism, Books, Death of Truth, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Philosopher Jason Stanley argued  in his excellent book How Fascism Works, that in essence “fascist politics dehumanizes minority groups.” It does that even if the state is not fascist. I have called this the philosophy of the bully. Pick on the vulnerable. In the recent election in the US the Republicans have made this a major part of their platform.  Pick on the immigrants and the trans kids in particular. Easy targets for bullies. The shocking thing is how many Americans love this.

 

What fascist policies do, according to Stanley is amplify the divisions in society. It takes advantage of them. For example, in Nazi German the Nazis intensified the beliefs that were already pretty common that German society had been undermined and sold out by Jews and their supporters, even though the percentage of Jews was very small. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia:

“According to the census of June 16, 1933, the Jewish population of Germany, including the Saar region (which at that time was still under the administration of the League of Nations), was approximately 505,000 people out of a total population of 67 million, or somewhat less than 0.75 percent. That number represented a reduction from the estimated 523,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933; the decrease was due in part to emigration following the Nazi takeover in January. (An estimated 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany during 1933.)’

 

This was really a very small percentage of the people and it was absurd and immoral to lay the blame for Germany’s decline on such small numbers, just as it is absurd and immoral to blame Trans-gender people and their sympathizers for poisoning the United States as so many Conservatives have been claiming.

 

What fascists do is turn the hated group (the others) into an enemy—i.e. “them.”  Then the world is turned into one of “Us” versus “Them.” And, of course, they [or them] can be dehumanized into something non-human, which makes them ripe for targeting. This is what Jason Stanley said about fascist politics:

“The most telling symptom of fascist politics is division. It aims to separate a population into an “us” and a “them.”  Many kinds of political movements involve such a division; for example, Communist politics involves describing the very specific way that fascist politics distinguishes “us” from “them,” appealing to ethnic, religious, or racial distinctions, and using this division to shape ideology and, ultimately policy. Every mechanism of fascist politics works to create or solidify this distinction.’

 

 

And of course, the most extreme manner of “Us’ vs “them” is to dehumanize them. Since it is the most extreme version of this, it can lead to the most extreme consequences—such as placing them into concentration camps and killing them.  That is why it is so disturbing to see Donald Trump and millions of his supporters start this awful process. Once the process is begun it is not clear how we can stop it or how far it can go. Germany demonstrated it can go very far indeed.

 

Often fascist politicians justify their abhorrent ideas by appealing to a common belief in a mythic past—a golden age where things were great.  For example, Donald Trump says he wants to bring America back to greatness whatever that means. But clearly it was some time in the past where things were great. At least for some—i.e. the privileged. It might be a time when men were men and women were women. Or the whites were in ascendance without any fear that they would be replaced. Again, whatever that means.

What it really means is that it justifies pummelling the others to make things better for those doing the pummelling.

 

To me it really seems that this is where America is headed.  And Canada, as usual, is not that far behind.

 

 

Is it extremism to call Trump a fascist?

2017 Trip to Southwest USA, American Fascism, Evolution, Extremism, Populism, Right-wing Extremism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Sometimes the truth is extreme. In Rwanda when Hutus launched genocidal attacks against the Tuttis minority in rhw  1990’s people were right to call it genocide. When Mussolini and Hitler launched their attacks on Jews it was right to call this fascism. These were extreme charges, but they were justified. They were fascists.

Yesterday, Donald Trump got angry at Liz Cheney. He sees her as a traitor. This is what Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin,

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

 

Trump is saying a political opponent who disagrees with him which of course she has the right to do, should be put in front of a firing squad. Is that not fascism clear and simple?  It is admittedly an extreme thing to say that Trump is a fascist.  But is he not nailed by his own words? He is a fascist.

This what CNN reported,

“Trump’s suggestion that Cheney be fired upon represents an escalation of the violent language he has used to target his political foes. And it comes days before an election in which the former president — who never accepted his 2020 loss — has already undermined public confidence. In recent weeks, he has also suggested a military crackdown on political opponents he has described as “the enemy within.”

 

Trump has suggested the military be used against his political foes. Trump’s rhetoric has increasingly become so unhinged that it is very difficult to deny that Trump is a fascist. Eventually, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck it must be a duck.

I think Trump must be a fascist. That is extreme, but I think it is true.

 

Dehumanization: the language of Hate

American Fascism, Extremism, Hate, Immigration and Refugees, Right-wing Extremism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Anne Applebaum understands well the language of dehumanization. Extremists around the world have used it because they know it works. It allows ordinary people to become vicious killers. Even, in some circumstances genocidal killers.

This is how Applebaum described such language:

“This kind of language was not limited to Europe. Mao Zedong also described his political opponents as “poisonous weeds.” Pol Pot spoke of “cleansing” hundreds of thousands of his compatriots so that Cambodia would be “purified.”

In each of these very different societies, the purpose of this kind of rhetoric was the same. If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable.

It is profoundly disappointing to see such dehumanizing language used by the former American President Donald Trump. It is even more disappointing to see such language electrify a large part of the American public. Until recently such language was not common in American politics, but ever since the arrival of Donald Trump on the scene it has become common.

Applebaum pointed out how George Wallace, whom she called a “notorious racists,” did not use such incendiary language when he advocated for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” He never spoke about blacks as vermin.  He did not say they “poisoned the blood of the nation.” No that is the language of Donald Trump.

Similarly, Franklin D. Roosevelt who sadly ordered the corralling of Japanese Americans into internment camps and he called them “enemy aliens” but never parasites or vermin.  All of this changed with Donald Trump. As Applebaum said,

“In the 2024 campaign, that line has been crossed. Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and many others. He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

 

According to Applebaum the use of such dehumanizing language by the former president is no accident:

“In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he. Is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

 And if you do use such words too much happens!

 Dehumanizing language is the language of hate. Its use by political leaders is sickening. Those who use it  clearly belong in the “basket of deplorables.”