Roots of Right-Wing Populist Rage -- Reds to Beds by Chip Berlet

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/9/24/134056/732/Front_Page/Roots_of_Right_Wing_Populist_Rage_Reds_to_Beds

Teabaggers and Townhallers come from several pre-existing constituencies:

* Economic Libertarians
* Christian Right activists
* Nebulous Anti-Elite Conspiracists
* White Nationalists (xenophobic & anti-immigrant)
* Organized White Supremacists

Sometimes there is overlap, sometimes there is feuding, some groups denounce other groups—but they all can push the same public agenda in the form of parallel projects. Hobbling the Obama Administraion is their shared goal, but it is based on different worldviews with different storylines that motivate action

At last weekend’s Values Voter Summit in the nation’s seat of power, the closing banquet keynote speaker Phyllis Schlafly praised the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC) and its founder, Dr. Fred Schwarz. CACC came to life in 1953 at the height of anti-communism during the Cold War and its witch hunts. Recent Christian Right crusades, however, have largely been based on rolling back gay marriage and undermining gay rights, outlawing abortion, replacing comprehensive sexuality education in schools with abstinence-only curricula, and other gender-related issues.

One of the core ideas of the US right in the 1960s was that that modern liberalism was an ally of freedom-strangling collectivism and a handmaiden for totalitarian “Godless Communism.” Yet even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a shift in the Christian Right to a broader more encompassing conspiracy theory based on the looming threat of secular humanism, a Godless “theology” in their minds. Understanding how the shift took place helps us understand the militancy and framing of the Christian Right contingent in the current right-wing populist revolt.

Among the most influential leaders of the countersubversion movement against the global communist conspiracy following the McCarthy period was Dr. Fred Schwarz and his California-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC). A tireless lecturer, Schwarz in 1960 authored You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists) which sold over one million copies. The incessant assault on America by forces of godless communism were central themes in several other widely distributed books used to mobilize support for Goldwater’s Presidential campaign in 1964.

Schwarz signaled the shift toward a secular humanist boogeyman (constructed as a scapegoat) in an essay written in 1981 where he explained to his audience the sinister plan to corrupt America’s youth through abortion, sex education, and homosexuality. When populated by fully depraved, decadent, and disarmed Americans, the country would fall like a rotting plum into the patiently–waiting outstretched hands of communist agents at home and abroad. A collectivist totalitarian state would follow.

Thus the current focus on gender issues is rooted in an anti-communist conspiracy theory, but also serves to defend traditional patriarchal and heterosexual societal norms. This defense of traditional heteropatriarchy is often a subtext masked by pseudoscientific claims, alarmist conclusions, and the invocation of God’s name in defense of “traditional family values.”

read the entire article here: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/9/24/134056/732/Front_Page/Roots_of_Right_Wing_Populist_Rage_Reds_to_Beds

Previous articles in this series:

Roots of Right-Wing Populism--Christian Right
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/roots-of-right-wing-popul_b_294015.html

Roots of Right-Wing Populism--Realignment
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/roots-of-right-wing-popul_b_294506.html

cross posted at HuffPost http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/roots-of-right-wing-popul_b_298306.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet

[starroute]

1. And it was always on behalf of Wall Street

Groups like the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade came into being around 1953 in part because it was being noticed that American soldiers captured during the Korean War was awfully vulnerable to being brainwashed into believing they have no purpose for fighting except to preserve Wall Street's profits.

The only alternative to acknowledging the truth of that assertion was to claim that Americans were "weak" because of a lack of rugged individualism and old-time religion.

The alliance which continues to this day between the libertarians, the fundamentalists, and the conspiracy theorists started right there in the attempt to shift blame for US wars away from Wall Street.