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| How rightwing pundits are grappling with disappointment in their leaders | How rightwing pundits are grappling with disappointment in their leaders |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| This week, a brutal crime unfolded in my town, which seems to have something to do with the way in which newer rightwing currents are organizing. But no one on the right seems willing to take stock of that. | |
| Some are preoccupied with saving their jobs, and others with the future of conservatism. Some are fronting up in Brooklyn to debate socialists; others – in an era of burgeoning white terror – are moaning about border controls. Those who have acknowledged the murders in Portland, Oregon, have tried to obscure the prominence of far-right thought in Jeremy Christian’s rhetoric by drawing false equivalences. | |
| Some weeks, stepping out of the bubble is unpleasant. But for better or worse, we share a country. It’s better to know. | Some weeks, stepping out of the bubble is unpleasant. But for better or worse, we share a country. It’s better to know. |
| Hannity: What has been happening to me is a kill shot | Hannity: What has been happening to me is a kill shot |
| PUBLICATION: Fox News (YouTube Channel) | PUBLICATION: Fox News (YouTube Channel) |
| AUTHOR: Sean Hannity is a star of Fox News and conservative talk radio, whose television career has seemed perilously close to the brink over the last week. | AUTHOR: Sean Hannity is a star of Fox News and conservative talk radio, whose television career has seemed perilously close to the brink over the last week. |
| WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH: Sean Hannity is at a crossroads. As one of Donald Trump’s original media tribunes, he has become increasingly desperate in his attempts to defend the floundering president. Recently, this has led him into endorsing and promoting conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who recently died. When Rich’s family begged him, and others, to stop pursuing the idea that their son’s death had something to do with emails published by WikiLeaks, Hannity was targeted by liberal activists who tried to get advertisers to desert him, and thus get him off the air. Similar tactics have worked with Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, as Hannity points out in the video. He seems to have weathered the storm for now, but he’s not backing down. Is this where the Trump train terminates? | WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH: Sean Hannity is at a crossroads. As one of Donald Trump’s original media tribunes, he has become increasingly desperate in his attempts to defend the floundering president. Recently, this has led him into endorsing and promoting conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who recently died. When Rich’s family begged him, and others, to stop pursuing the idea that their son’s death had something to do with emails published by WikiLeaks, Hannity was targeted by liberal activists who tried to get advertisers to desert him, and thus get him off the air. Similar tactics have worked with Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, as Hannity points out in the video. He seems to have weathered the storm for now, but he’s not backing down. Is this where the Trump train terminates? |
| EXTRACT: Take it from 6:13 to hear Hannity blame “Soros-funded” Media Matters for depicting him as a conspiracy theorist. | EXTRACT: Take it from 6:13 to hear Hannity blame “Soros-funded” Media Matters for depicting him as a conspiracy theorist. |
| Fusionism Once and Future | Fusionism Once and Future |
| PUBLICATION: Modern Age: A Conservative Review | PUBLICATION: Modern Age: A Conservative Review |
| AUTHOR: Samuel Goldman has an academic job in political science at the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom at George Washington University. He also writes for a range of conservative publications, including the American Conservative and the Wall Street Journal. Also, weirdly, the punk zine Maximum Rocknroll. | |
| WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This piece is long, but it offers insight as to how conservatives are looking to pick up the pieces as the Trump administration continues to unspool all over the White House floor. “Fusionism” was the basis of the conservative ascendancy over the latter half of the 20th century – Bill Buckley and others worked to combine elements of libertarianism and the traditionalist right in order to stop the feuding that had kept the right in the wilderness from the New Deal onward. Trumpian populism looks to have snuffed movement conservatism out, but itself seems unsustainable. Goldman wants to reinvent fusionism for a changed world. But he knows it won’t be easy. | WHY YOU SHOULD READ: This piece is long, but it offers insight as to how conservatives are looking to pick up the pieces as the Trump administration continues to unspool all over the White House floor. “Fusionism” was the basis of the conservative ascendancy over the latter half of the 20th century – Bill Buckley and others worked to combine elements of libertarianism and the traditionalist right in order to stop the feuding that had kept the right in the wilderness from the New Deal onward. Trumpian populism looks to have snuffed movement conservatism out, but itself seems unsustainable. Goldman wants to reinvent fusionism for a changed world. But he knows it won’t be easy. |
| EXTRACT: “We also have no idea how to restore a ‘thick’ national identity without employing unacceptably coercive means. It is easy to forget that the common culture of fond memory was made possible by policies that included the legal suppression of America’s largest immigrant culture (the German-speaking midwest) during the first world war, and mass conscription and a virtual takeover of the economy and media during the second world war. The comfortable sense of belonging many Americans enjoyed half a century ago was also buttressed by the formal and informal exclusion of black people from the mainstream of American life. These were bad measures that no one seriously proposes to revive.” | |
| On Extremism, Left and White | On Extremism, Left and White |
| PUBLICATION: National Review | PUBLICATION: National Review |
| AUTHOR: David French is pretty familiar around these parts. Never forget that he coulda been a contender. | AUTHOR: David French is pretty familiar around these parts. Never forget that he coulda been a contender. |
| WHY YOU SHOULD READ: The days since the Portland attack, a racially charged double murder, have been a frenzy of blame-shifting and misdirection on the right. The right’s dimmer bulbs (step forward Mike Cernovich) have lit on the fact that Christian expressed support for Bernie Sanders, and ignored the fact that in the last weeks of his life, he harped ceaselessly on “alt-right” themes and his hatred of antifascists. David French would never be so crude. Instead, he embeds the events in a leisurely post on political extremism. He poses as even-handed, but winds up putting Black Lives Matter supporters in the same category as Christian. He doesn’t fault the political system for the growing anger in America, but the citizens it has failed. | WHY YOU SHOULD READ: The days since the Portland attack, a racially charged double murder, have been a frenzy of blame-shifting and misdirection on the right. The right’s dimmer bulbs (step forward Mike Cernovich) have lit on the fact that Christian expressed support for Bernie Sanders, and ignored the fact that in the last weeks of his life, he harped ceaselessly on “alt-right” themes and his hatred of antifascists. David French would never be so crude. Instead, he embeds the events in a leisurely post on political extremism. He poses as even-handed, but winds up putting Black Lives Matter supporters in the same category as Christian. He doesn’t fault the political system for the growing anger in America, but the citizens it has failed. |
| EXTRACT: “It’s easy and comforting to blame politicians for violence, for creating ‘climates of hate’. It’s much harder to look in the national mirror and realize that the political market is embracing the fight. When anger grows, extremism grows. And when extremism grows, anger grows all the more. Our national and cultural unraveling continues, and the American people – not politicians – shoulder the lion’s share of the blame.” | EXTRACT: “It’s easy and comforting to blame politicians for violence, for creating ‘climates of hate’. It’s much harder to look in the national mirror and realize that the political market is embracing the fight. When anger grows, extremism grows. And when extremism grows, anger grows all the more. Our national and cultural unraveling continues, and the American people – not politicians – shoulder the lion’s share of the blame.” |
| Trump Quietly Continues Obama’s ‘Catch and Release’ at Border | Trump Quietly Continues Obama’s ‘Catch and Release’ at Border |
| PUBLICATION: Breitbart | PUBLICATION: Breitbart |
| AUTHOR: Brandon Darby is Breitbart’s Texas correspondent. In practice this means a lot of cosying up to the National Border Patrol Council (The Laredo chapter gave him an award) and arguing for them to be let off an already long leash. | AUTHOR: Brandon Darby is Breitbart’s Texas correspondent. In practice this means a lot of cosying up to the National Border Patrol Council (The Laredo chapter gave him an award) and arguing for them to be let off an already long leash. |
| WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Darby, Breitbart, and, by extension, the “alt-light” that Breitbart represents are getting impatient with Trump on immigration and border issues. This article criticises the administration for not reversing the so-called “catch and release” policy, whereby people arrested on immigration offences are allowed to await their trial in the community. No matter that Ice raids are off the charts. No matter that if anything, this is just one small symptom of the administration’s dysfunction. Still, it’s interesting to watch Trumpist media start to process the fact that he can’t really deliver the stuff he promised. | WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Darby, Breitbart, and, by extension, the “alt-light” that Breitbart represents are getting impatient with Trump on immigration and border issues. This article criticises the administration for not reversing the so-called “catch and release” policy, whereby people arrested on immigration offences are allowed to await their trial in the community. No matter that Ice raids are off the charts. No matter that if anything, this is just one small symptom of the administration’s dysfunction. Still, it’s interesting to watch Trumpist media start to process the fact that he can’t really deliver the stuff he promised. |
| EXTRACT: “Though Trump’s interior enforcement of US immigration laws has resulted in far fewer illegal crossings at the border, agents say that low numbers will not be sustained because the Trump administration has not actually made substantial changes within border security as a whole.” | EXTRACT: “Though Trump’s interior enforcement of US immigration laws has resulted in far fewer illegal crossings at the border, agents say that low numbers will not be sustained because the Trump administration has not actually made substantial changes within border security as a whole.” |
| Populism in the Age of Trump: A Debate | Populism in the Age of Trump: A Debate |
| PUBLICATION: Verso Books (YouTube Channel) | PUBLICATION: Verso Books (YouTube Channel) |
| AUTHOR: This was a debate between the editors of the leftist Dissent magazine (Sarah Leonard and Timothy Shenk) and the new “intellectual” Trumpist journal American Affairs (Julius Krein and Gladden Pappin). | |
| WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Why burst your bubble, anyway? Why debate those you are never likely to convince, or share a platform with those you abhor? Anything to produce a spectacle like this. Nationalists quoting Baudrillard, then getting dunked on. Socialists sounding more certain then conservatives. The American Affairs guys are only here because they need the audience, and like the rest of the far right, their main strategy is to try to convince the left that their heretical place in conservatism means that they and the left have common ground. | WHY YOU SHOULD READ: Why burst your bubble, anyway? Why debate those you are never likely to convince, or share a platform with those you abhor? Anything to produce a spectacle like this. Nationalists quoting Baudrillard, then getting dunked on. Socialists sounding more certain then conservatives. The American Affairs guys are only here because they need the audience, and like the rest of the far right, their main strategy is to try to convince the left that their heretical place in conservatism means that they and the left have common ground. |
| EXTRACT: We wouldn’t normally recommend nearly two hours of video, but it’s interesting to see two insurgent forces – the Trumpian right and the radical left – try to have a conversation at length. Take in as much as you can spare time for. | EXTRACT: We wouldn’t normally recommend nearly two hours of video, but it’s interesting to see two insurgent forces – the Trumpian right and the radical left – try to have a conversation at length. Take in as much as you can spare time for. |
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