The Populist Left / The Paranoid Right

In recent posts, I've discussed the idea of authoritarian populism, an idea popularized by the sociologist Stuart Hall to describe the rise of Margaret Thatcher in early 1980s England. I argued that the resentment-fueled rhetoric of the current Republican Party could be seen as an updated species of authoritarian populism.

But forget about all that.

I think that a recent op-ed by Thomas Frank nails it. What the GOP has been up to, he observes, is not really populism at all but paranoia. It's the John Birch Society gone mainstream....

Next month will mark the 45th anniversary of the publication by Harper's Magazine of Richard Hofstadter's famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a work that seems to grow more relevant by the day.

I was not always a fan. [...] I thought, who really cared about the strange notions that occurred to members of marginal groups like the John Birch Society? Joe McCarthy's day was long over, and even in the age of high Reaganism, I thought, the type of person Hofstadter described was merely handing out flyers on street corners.

As the historian himself admitted, "in America it has been the preferred style only of minority movements." Why bother with it, then?

How times have changed! Hofstadter's beloved liberal consensus has been in the grave for decades now. Today it would appear that his mistake was underestimating the seductive power of the paranoid style.

The essential element of this mindset, Hofstadter explained, was its predilection for conspiracy theory—for understanding history as a theater in which sinister figures control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and secretly in the direction of communism.

Back in Hofstadter's day this sort of thinking at least had something supremely rational going for it: The existence of the Soviet Union and its desire to bring the West to its knees.

But take that away and the theories become something far more remarkable. Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was forged. What could have been his parents' motives for committing such a bizarre deed, or his home state's motive for colluding in it, or the courts' motives for overlooking it?

Or consider the widespread conservative conviction that we are being marched secretly into communism or fascism. Why would someone bother? It seems equally likely, given today's circumstances, that conspirators would trick us into becoming a colony of Belgium or the imperial seat of the Bonaparte family.

The paranoid pattern persists regardless. It is impervious to world events; a blurting of the American subconscious that has not changed since Hofstadter analyzed it 45 years ago. Consider the recent wave of fear that the hypnotic Mr. Obama was planning to indoctrinate schoolchildren. In "The Paranoid Style," Hofstadter wrote, "Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; . . . he has a new secret for influencing the mind; . . . he is gaining a stranglehold on the educational system."

Conspiracy-mindedness isn't just for fringe political groups anymore; it makes for riveting entertainment. And it is all around us today, a disorder with an entire industry to act as its enabler. [...]

Frank goes on to cite recent examples of this phenomenon, from Glenn Beck's fake news show to a truly bizarre essay penned by Michelle Malkin. These examples always include (1) alarmingly hysterical conspiracy theories and (2) a self-persecution complex, accompanied by massive amounts of self-pity.

What the hell's going on, anyway?

Although Frank's piece isn't about progressive political strategy, I believe that Frank's formulation (or, rather, his appropriation of Hofstadter) might provide a rhetorical framework with which to strengthen the project of Left-populism.

The conundrum that I had been perceiving in all of the Angry Right-Teabagger stuff had not been limited to the damage that violent, racist innuendo and intellectual dishonesty threatens to inflict upon civil discourse. What had been worrying me most of all had been the fact that it appeared that the Deranged Right was -- albeit disingenuously -- threatening to dominate populist-inflected discourse in this country.

But why cede that ground to a bunch of hacks, liars and -- as Frank notes -- producers of mass entertainment?

Glenn Beck doesn't represent a twisted, authoritarian version of populism: He represents many vile, stupid and wrongheaded things. Not one of them has anything to do with populism.

Crib From This Contra Glenn Beck

The diatribe that follows was prompted by having heard an excerpt of a certain very dumb man's radio program, which I encountered courtesy of PhuckPolitics.com:

Now, the fact is that this dude ain't worth it, because unlike, say, Rush Limbaugh -- who, despite having a lot of dumb people in his audience, cannot himself truthfully be said to be dumb, on the basis of his considerable moneymaking acumen alone (and who also isn't worth it) -- Glenn Beck's dumb as a rock. And that's an understatement. I mean, the guy is really, really dumb. Not George-W.-Bush/good-ol'-boy/lacking-intellectual-curiosity dumb. We're talking glaring/conspicuous-cognitive-deficiencies-having dumb. That's how dumb Glenn The Dumb Guy Beck is dumb.

And anyway, I tire of expressing pure outrage (because making normal, intelligent people angry is precisely what Glen Beck is designed to do…to what end is beyond the scope of my comprehension), but what the hell is this guy talking about?

All he does is tell bizarre lies and attack both individuals and large communities in a way that is at once deeply vicious and confoundingly non-specific.

The latter is especially troubling, because when he demonizes others by using insinuations and weird neo-McCarthyist rhetoric — be it cries of “communists” or “fascists” or whatever — he is himself by definition engaging in precisely the rhetorical strategies that are the hallmark of propaganda in radical totalitarian regimes. Surely, even someone as willfully ignorant as Beck realizes this, and that’s part of what makes it so outrageous and mendacious as a provocation.

But what offends me even more than his lies, his slander and even his vulgar and continual celebration of his own ignorance, is the fact that he clearly does not have anyone’s best interests at heart. There is no trace of passion for any human cause — however misguided or illusory — to be found in either his persona or rhetoric.

He does not wish to change the minds of his ill-defined ‘political enemies’: He merely wants to silence them or to destroy them. His attitude toward his own audience (and even, at its core, toward himself) consists of nothing more than contempt.

According to the Weltanschauung he espouses (if I may call it that) the world is a dark, dark place where communication, understanding, consensus and even compromise among people is not only impossible but undesirable, whatever the specific circumstances, period.

In short, he's anti-democratic.

If Thomas Jefferson came back today and saw the things that Glenn Beck says in the name of ‘American patriotism’, he’d never stop throwing up.

You have to see it to believe it.

A couple of items concerning recent antics -- incendiary, despicable and (most of all) surreal antics -- that various portions of the Deranged Right have gotten up to recently. Everything from mean-spiritedness to mendacity to incitements to violence and paramilitary activity to -- last but not least -- calls for presidential assassination.

First, the blog PhuckPolitics shares with us a video clip taken from Fox News that depicts talking heads engaging in what appears at first glance to be their run-of-the-mill, neo-corporightist and/or crypto-racist rhetoric. Whereupon, the viewer realizes that that decrepit Aussie Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour gift to this here land has transcended itself as regards its capacity to produce reckless and shameful innuendo.

The matter-of-fact nonchalance in this instance becomes all the creepier as the viewer ascertains that the correspondent posing as a putative "healthcare expert"  -- naturally, a role delegated to a journalist on staff at the National Review -- is claiming that large-scale reforms to the present US healthcare system (which system is that, exactly?) will increase the threat to the Homeland of terrorist attacks.

And, of course, the anchorman interviewing this National Socialist Review stooge apparently sees no need to challenge -- however cursorily -- his colleague's 'hypothesis'. It's as though this bald-faced tidbit of demagogy were -- well, sir -- just plain old everyday common sense. The footage is about as offensive, twisted, wrong and evil as anything we've heretofore seen from these cynical manipulators of secessionist South fake-populism. I strongly encourage you to watch it.

Second, courtesy of an item posted by the blog DownWithTyranny, I learned a couple of new things. Apparently, the Deranged Right has become cyber-savvy. Who knew? Not many Republicans that I know are particularly skilled in the ways of the Internets, although that's probably because almost all of them are sexagenarians.

"Over the weekend," states the blogger (who I infer is an opponent of Tyranny and not Tyranny's homeboy),

a friend sent me a link for a Facebook polling [sic] asking whether President Obama should be killed. I called a friend of mine who works at the Secret Service. They were already on the case.

Whew. That's pretty damn shocking. Can you remember anybody sending around Internet surveys asking this question about the previous occupant of the Oval Office? I certainly can't. And neither I nor those who were/are inclined to circulate lame Internet surveys were exactly huge fans of that administration.

But if you think that's shocking/disgusting, DownWithTyranny follows it up with something even worse. Initially showcased by a Web site called Right Wing Watch, DWT presents an outcry

more disturbing than Joe Wilson's "You lie" screech at the Joint Session of Congress. This outbreak was from another extreme right wing Republican congressional backbencher looking for some attention, Trent Franks, whose Arizona district stretches from the suburbs west of Phoenix through Glendale and Sun City and up to the northwest corner of the state.  [...]

Franks is an angry and driven man who feels he was dealt a bad hand in life. He's filled with irrational paranoia, bigotry and hatred. And, of course, he's a birther. Normally the Republican leadership keeps him away from the cameras and microphones but this week he escaped from the reservation and found an opportunity to declare President Obama "an enemy of humanity."  [Emphasis mine - cft]

Take a look at the short video and transcript of Congressman Franks's remarks, which DWT points out was likely to have encouraged fanatics to advocate proceeding with the ouster of the current administration through the staging of a military coup:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic... Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

There are some scary people out there. Shouldn't more people be lambasting the Republican Party for encouraging this kind of extremism? There are probably people out there who have never quite gotten over the Civil War. Sure, in important ways, they're marginalizing themselves into their destiny of political irrelevance. But even so, don't these people have guns?

Now you'll have to excuse me as I proceed to retreat into my multi-racial, multi-ethnic Democratic-voting Chicago neighborhood and hope that, if I ignore them, these problems will go away....

Wow.

The blog Phuck Politics has brought to our attention the existence of a shocking but intelligently produced and enlightening video document of the so-called "9/12 Tea Party" protests in Washington DC. The video was created by something called New Left Media, and I'm telling you that it's worth watching.

For one thing, it's not just shocking but really really funny.



And also: infuriating. And also: sad.

One of the things that I think makes this video so excellent and informative is its tone and pacing. It has a distinct and consistent editorial voice, but this voice is not intrusive or partisan. Moreover, although ruthlessly candid, it does not go out of its way to mock or condescend to its subjects. This reflects good editorial judgment in that the subjects do a more than adequate job of hanging themselves with their own noose.

An effect of this good editorial judgment is that this piece manages to do more than simply give the viewer a headache. It actually reveals the confusion and ignorance of the vast majority of the protesters. While this doesn't necessarily make them sympathetic characters, it does leave you with a strong sense of the forces/interests that are misleading them and profiting off of their ignorance, their lack of education and their general superstitiousness.

Sure, these rednecks are dumb as rocks, but that's not what I find most frightening. What I find most frightening is that they lack common sense.

Jon Stewart / George Orwell expose eery similarity between totalitarian 'doublethink' and Republican 'talking points'.

Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, September 3, 2008 (thanks are due to Jennifer Anne for bringing the existence of this video to my attention):





Passages from George Orwell's 1984, describing 'doublethink':

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

His [Winston's] mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink.

Jon Stewart sticks it to the bastards of cable news, scoring one for Michelle Obama, common decency.

I don't have cable, but even the fragments of this show that I catch now and again make me feel better about living in a world populated by dumb, fat, re- and unreconstructed racist fucks, and the TV executives who court their ratings by paying salaries to mouth-breathers like Chris Matthews.

I know, I shouldn't let it bother me. But I just want Obama to win so badly (just picture how colossally fucked this country will be if McCain wins!), and Michelle is such a kind-hearted, genuine, humble, strong, intelligent, graceful and stylish person that the idea of shrill-voiced, hick-talking, inbred AM talk-show host goons calling her mean names just makes me want to smack them in addition to all of the other lying, hateful, Cheetos-eating, fat motherfuckers that serve as brownshirts in the GOP civilian-Gestapo. Where'd they learn their fucking manners from, anyway?

Wow. I should go run a couple of laps or something. Anyway, the point is that Jon Stewart is great and is the funny and is sometimes even my savior. In the meantime, enjoy this fabulous clip...

From The Daily Show, broadcast on August 26, 2008:

A dialogue and two aphorisms:Cable 'news' = MTV for senior citizens.

I. *
John Cage: Human beings need to dream, and to dream always.

Thrasymachus: But it's against company policy to dream.

JC: [momentary silence]... Human beings need to dream, and to dream always.

T: But my employer would have me fired were I to engage in this activity. And yet, you say that human beings need to dream always.

JC: As to the statement about your employer, I can only take your word for it. As to the matter of human beings dreaming, yes. Human beings need to dream always.

T: Would you have me fired from my job?

JC: I would no more have you fired from your job than I would have you receive a promotion and a raise in pay. I would no more have you receive a promotion and raise in pay than I would have you drink your coffee with two lumps of sugar, rather than your usual one lump, during your morning coffee break: the coffee break that you take in the large foyer outside your office, in which you sit facing the same direction as the Rauschenberg painting that hangs in the foyer of the adjoining house .


II.
There's no sense in despair. This isn't to say that there's no sense in your having been led to despair. Quite the opposite! It remains, however, that there's no sense in despair.


III.
Cable news -- all of it: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Whatever Else -- is not news. But don't hate it for what it's not. Hate it instead for what it is: MTV for Senior Citizens.



* These do not represent the words or ideas -- real or imagined -- of the late John Cage. They are instead wholly the creation of our blogger. Same = true as regards the portrayal of Thrasymachus.