Rick Perlstein is a historian who has written about American conservatism. He says, “we got it wrong.”
In this very interesting and provocative article, he reflects on why American historians failed to understand the persistence of the radical fringe right or anticipate its rise from the fringe to the mainstream of American politics.
Since most historians are liberal, they tended to believe that America was steadily evolving towards an enlightened, progressive future. They saw conservatism either as the highly intellectual, principled ideology of William Buckley or as the discredited John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan, and McCarthyism.
Perlstein argues that what they did not anticipate was the rise of the Alt Right, which encapsulated white nationalism and a sense that the country was overrun with Others who did not belong here.
This is well worth reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m not so sure that William Buckley was highly principled. In the 1950s, he wrote articles in the NR that were very racist and white supremacist. Did he recant in later years? He was a big fan of Joe McCarthy, Franco and Pinochet.
Quote: “McCarthy and His Enemies, published in 1954 and coauthored by Buckley with Brent Bozell Sr., called Sen. Joseph McCarthy “a prophet,” and described McCarthyism as “a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.” [and] “General Franco is an authentic national hero,” wrote Buckley (National Review, 10/ 26/57), lauding the fascist for wresting Spain from its democracy and “the visionaries, ideologues, Marxists and nihilists” in charge. Pinochet was defended (National Review, 11/23/98) for deposing the democratically elected Salvador Allende, “a president who was defiling the Chilean constitution and waving proudly the banner of his friend and idol, Fidel Castro.”
http://fair.org/extra/william-f-buckley-rest-in-praise/
“I’m not so sure that William Buckley was highly principled. In the 1950s, he wrote articles in the NR that were very racist and white supremacist.”
Those were the principles.
WFB was highly badly (evilly?) principled? He admired two bloody fascist thugs and a lying sack of garbage like Joe McCarthy. I thought the term highly principled was reserved for people like Martin Luther King not WFB.
It was a joke, meaning that the principles were racism and white supremacy.
Whoops, sorry FLERP. My apologies.
Don’t forget Buckley’s deeply felt “principle” that people with AIDS should be forced to have publicly-visible and identifying tatoos.
In Buckley’s defense, sort of, his proposed “AIDS tattoo” was to be “privately visible,” not publicly visible. Buckley’s stated goal was at once interesting, insane, and disingenuous: to protect heroin users (through a tattoo on the forearm) and homosexuals (through a tattoo on the buttocks).
And note that Buckley’s proposal was intended as an interim measure until the science was in on how communicable the virus was. If it turned out that the virus could be communicated through means other than needles or sex, then Buckley was interested in pursuing public identification and “more drastic segregation.”
Agreed
“I was one of the historians who helped forge this narrative.”
‘Nuff said. In other words, he’s spent his life putting a pretty face on the conservatism that, in calling for “fiscal conservatism” has essentially called for economic sanctions against minority and poor people all in the name of “personal responsibility”. He has spent his lifetime blaming poor and minority people for their “poor choices” and thereby made it acceptable to persecute and demonize them.
I’m having a hard time accepting that he really doesn’t see the direct connection between his framing of the debate and our current state of violent backlash against anyone and anything “other”. Sorry, Lady Macbeth, blood doesn’t wash off that easily.
Dienne,
Pearlstein wrote about conservatism as a historian not as an advocate. Like many who have written about conservatism, he thought the far-right died long ago. Sam Tenenhaus of the New York Times wrote a book called “The Death of Conservatism” in the early days of the Obama presidency. That doesn’t make him an apologist. It makes him wrong.
Let me repeat his own words again, Diane: “I was one of the historians who helped forge this narrative.” (emphasis added). He didn’t just write about conservatism. In his own words, he was one of the people who created the myth of conservatism – the myth that you can separate economics and justice. That myth has done immeasurable damage and has led directly to Trump and the devastation he has unleased and will unleash. In fact, Perlstein and his fellows did such a good job of prettifying conservatism in “purely economic” terms that the Democrats started adopting it back in the 90s (if not before).
Dienne, I didn’t see it as making conservatism pretty. I see it as choosing one version of conservatism as evolving and the other (KKK, McCarthyism) as dead. That was the mainstream view. No one anticipated the rise of this dark underside of American life.
“In fact, Perlstein and his fellows did such a good job of prettifying conservatism in “purely economic” terms that the Democrats started adopting it back in the 90s (if not before).”
For what it’s worth, Perlstein’s first book was published in 2001.
“No one anticipated the rise of this dark underside of American life.”
Are you kidding me? You’re a historian, Diane, you can’t believe that! That dark underside is what America was founded on. The destruction of the Indians, the enslavement of the blacks, the takeover of Mexico, the violent reaction to the ending of slavery, the KKK, the violent reaction to the Civil Rights Movement, the violence against LGBTQ people, on and on and on. That’s what conservatism is – keeping power with the “rightful” people – rich, white men.
The modern conservative movement, as advanced by people like Buckley, Perlstein, etc. has been about prettifying that dark underside by talking in economic and other “nicer” terms.
Here’s Lee Atwater, for instance: “You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni–er, ni–er, ni–er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni–er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni–er, ni–er.””
Dienne,
I have written about the KKK, the John Birch Society, the Minute Women, McCarthyism, etc., and yes, I thought they had mostly died off. I never thought the Republicans would be captured by the far far far right. I thought about a Republicans like Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Romney, even Nixon. Trump makes Nixon look like an intellectual giant by contrast. Trump has played footsie with David Duke.
No offense, Diane, but I think that the reason some liberals thought these hate groups had “died off” is because they’re ensconced in the eastern or western coasts in mostly liberal cities. Those of us out in the hinterlands know that it never died. It’s far worse now, but this hate never went away.
TOW,
We don’t have any KKK wizards in Congress. That led me to believe their influence had waned.
You can see this in some of the pundits whose lives are spent in NY and LA. They have trouble understanding some of the references and images that crop up…. “But why do they think that?” Because they go to a church whose pastor assures them that Democrats all hate god. “But why does he say that?” Because he thinks that talk of abortion and contraception offends god and he hears Democrats defend reproductive rights and so they must hate god. (and probably people who don’t capitalize god).
I think I wrote on this blog earlier about the pastor who told me Christianity was under attack and when I asked him how, he said he was getting the word from his national office to cool it on the anti-gay rhetoric from the pulpit and he knew that was pressure from gay rights groups…… attacking Christianity i.e. the right to bring down hellfire on sinners. Coastal people don’t know anyone who thinks like that.
This is an interesting take on the underbelly of our nation’s history.
I am exhausted by efforts to classify political orientations by opposites–liberal conservative, left right, now alt-right and alt-left. The comments were fascinating. One of the comments mentioned some fairly recent and illuminating books on the power of money in forwarding political agendas. Among these, I recommend
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse.
I find it hard to really understand why so many Americans voted for Trump. He is ignorant, biased, hate-filled and spreads his hate rhetoric to the public. Are we really that narrow minded? Why can’t this country see that conservative ‘values’ are degrading us? Billionaires are looking out for themselves, and this includes Trump, his team, and his greedy family members.
Here is a quote from the article;
“Years later, the producers of “The Apprentice” carefully crafted a Trump character who was the quintessence of steely resolve and all-knowing mastery. American voters noticed. Linda Lucchese, a Trump convention delegate from Illinois who had never previously been involved in politics, told me that she watched “The Apprentice” and decided that Trump would make a perfect president. “All those celebrities,” she told me: “They showed him respect.”
…………..
I guess it is an easy short step from the inaccuracies of advertising and reality TV to the short-sighted forms of manipulation. Without any correction, we will all pay.
Carol,
And as president, no other world leader respects him.
I believe I posted a study (in-depth poll ) yesterday from the Washington post that concluded it was the racism .
“Why can’t this country see that conservative ‘values’ are degrading us?
Conservative values are not what these troglodytes espouse. They are reactionary regressives who wish to return to a time that never was and never will be and only exists in their very limited way of thinking/being.
True conservatives believe in preserving the goods of society and modifying practices that are anathema to the good of society. The self-titled “conservatives” are far from that ideal.
Thomas Frank addresses the phenomenon of the winning streak of the GOP/rightwing/libertarians. They just keep winning. In 2016, everyone thought, including me, that the GOP was self-destructing and imploding. I thought that Trump could never win and that he was doing mortal damage to the GOP. I was wrong. Today, the GOP controls the presidency, Congress, SCOTUS, most governorships and state legislatures. One can only hope that things will turn around in 2018.
Thomas Frank is very clear that Republicans are winning in large part because of the Democrats. The Democrats chose to abandon the working class in favor of the moneyed class. So long as they continue on that path, they will continue to hemorrhage voters. Currently the Democrats seem quite hellbent on that course. I suppose there are a few dogcatcher positions around they haven’t lost yet.
Dienne77, that is quite true. T. Frank does blast the Democrats and elite liberals for many of the Democratic failures and GOP ascendancy. He certainly exposes Bill Clinton as GOP lite. Clinton had even made a deal with Gingrich to “reform” Social Security but we were saved by Monica Lewinsky and that whole scandal which side-lined Clinton’s triangulating. All that being said, Frank said that he did vote for Hillary in an interview on the Jimmy Dore show.
Indeed, and I can’t help thinking about the responsibility of the 10%, the professional attendants of the Overclass, who for decades have smugly and complacently talked about their “socially liberal, fiscal conservative” politics, which in practice played out as austerity for the working class combined with vapid, self-caricaturing identity politics.
As Chris hedges has pointed out, the (moral) death of the liberal class helped give us the brutal revanchism that is falsely identified as conservative.
Better find another socialist for the party is bankrupt.
“They are content to go down with the Titanic as long as they have a luxury cabin.”
It’s top versus bottom, not left versus right. When you attach all the problems of environment, energy, health care, infrastructure, defense spending, education, and the systemic corporate welfare for all of them you know Wall Street is completely in charge of our lives. It’s Wall Street v. US, and the evidence Wall St. corruption has won:
The rise of the Alt Right should be considered with the rise of the Evangelical Right. Since there are approximately 70 million of them, we should be concerned. If you live in the northeast or west, you may have underestimated their impact. They are a force, and they generally vote as a conservative block. How they can reconcile their belief system with a crude, vulgar liar is beyond me? This large religious group which includes several billionaire members can afford to buy elections for years to come, if progressives continue to sleep walk through elections. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/zions-christian-soldiers/
But if progressives continue to set themselves on the moral high ground as Dienne does, nobody is going to listen to their cant. We need people who can work with a variety of people without the nose-in-the-air attitude and the constant assigning of guilt. That’s what worries me about the term ‘progressives’. As soon as I can drive again, I’m going to start going to my local indivisible meetings to see how many holier-than-thou types are there manning the barricades to bring down the evils of capitalism and how many people determined to make our government work are there. I have a friend who is in a group with very lofty motives, but they are so busy finding culprits and the ideologically impure that they get nothing done.
Getting things done is what matters. The indivisible meetings are fine, but these occasions for public discussion of politics are not nearly as important as getting people to vote and to know what the heck they are voting for. Knocking on doors, doing the telephone trees, using social media to get some old-fashioned voter turnout is vital, especially with so much dark money in play.
Totally agree. I still have my LD17 Democratic club that’s very active, too. I now have 2 new knees to walk on so I can go door to door.
As a person from the Midwest I also think, the media, the press and politicians tend to pay a bit too much attention to the coasts and they totally ignore the entire middle, top to bottom. There are LOTS of us here, and many of my (somewhat former) friends have felt ignored for too long. They feel ignored by the media, by the politicians, by the laws, by what they see on TV and by what they read on the internet. Many of them were fed up, they had, had enough. Sadly, the political parties, did the rest of us no favors by not taking this into account and offering them someone they could relate to, someone who cared about their issues…instead they got someone they could relate to from TV. I think if the father from Duck Hunter had been running he might have stood a chance against DT., because most of my friends, really like him.
What I found so puzzling about Perlstein’s article is that I had no trouble at all recognizing the ugly mixture of racism, paranoia, and vindictiveness that energizes today’s alt-right. It’s simply a modern reemergence of an old and ugly strain of American thinking. And it was my familiarity with Rick Perlstein’s writing that made it so easy for me to recognize these people for what they are
“Overrun with others who do not belong here” is the message accompanied by, “They’re not flying the plane… community organizers in leadership,…never again on our watch” spat out in the drawing rooms of the richest 0.1%, while they condemn the nation to oligarchy.
In a recent interview with Fox Business Network, Trump described the “beautiful” chocolate cake he was eating with the Chinese president when he launched an airstrike in Syria – which he said was Iraq.
Good grief. Our ‘great’ leader doesn’t know what is happening and yet we are supposed to put some belief in his abilities?
What can we expect from a president who gets his news briefings from watching Fox news? What can we expect from a man who Tweets his foreign policy? I’d at least like someone who can speak in complete sentences.
Yes, you did Joel, and thanks for that. But polls have been showing for years now that X% of Republicans/conservatives/evangelicals/White Southerners/ believe Y (Obama is foreign born/ White people’s tax money goes to Blacks who won’t work/ Chinese submarines have been spotted in the Gulf of California/ ISIS fighters have reached Gila Bend). But no matter how many polls show that most Republicans believe this crazy Alex Jones stuff, we are still asked to take them seriously, My son’s landlords are very nice people who believe this stuff. They are from Kentucky. Maybe this is cultural. My wife’s family is Pentecostal and believe amazing things. Very nice people. But it’s like Obama said, you love your crazy Uncle Harry but you don’t put him in charge of anything. But they have the vote. What do we do now?
I just read this and loved it. We all need some humor.
Jimmy Fallon made this comment about the White House Easter Egg Roll: “That bunny took a look at Trump and said, ‘Oh my God, a talking carrot!’”
Thanks for calling attention to this article. It is an important addition to the discussion of American political forces. Conservative tendencies to accept hostile philosophies are indeed deeply rooted in the distant past, back to the know-nothing party of post Jacksonian America, back to the settlers who looked the other way as Europeans took land and life from a people who were not people in their eyes.
The point is that conservative thought is natural. Humans all over the globe have had to unlearn xenophobia with philosophy. Liberalism is one of one philosophies. It is the idea that the most blessed Ina society are indebted to the least of them, their brethren. When liberalism is indistinguishable from conservatism, people naturally gravitate to this latter, natural way of thinking.
If liberals want to win the philosophical battle, they need to offer a new and hopeful vision of a common future. Otherwise we will continue to elect those who frighten us with a fable and use us to do whatever their cynical hearts desire.
Laura Chapman at 8:09 PM–you are so right–that’s it in a nutshell–GO. DO. Knock on doors, make phone calls, work with people to protect the vote, look up candidates’ voting records &–most importantly–donations (still able to find donations made to candidates from Stand on Children–after they went bad {Rethinking Education has a great article on
S.o.C.’s history in a nutshell})–so you, yourself, vote for the best candidate.
“Getting things done is what matters.” Indeed.
Stay focused, everyone.
(&–pbarret–congratulations on your new knees! {Your help is greatly [k]needed!}
Ouch! Sorry for that one.)
I presume Georgia is one of the two state systems of higher ed. that have joined Gates’ Frontier Set. Gates isn’t masking his agenda, in his attack on higher ed. “Georgia will implement business models for collaborative course development and delivery”.
George Lakoff’s work helps to explain the conservative phenomena and trump. It’s a good read.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/15/dont-think-of-a-rampaging-elephant-linguist-george-lakoff-explains-how-the-democrats-helped-elect-trump/