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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe John Birchers’ Tea Party
My colleague John Cassidy wrote not long ago about his difficulties, shared by the fine historian Jerrold Seigel, in finding an apt historical analogue for the Tea Party caucus as it exists today. Nothing quite like it anywhere else, he musedand then Cassidy won this Francophile heart, at least, by citing as a possible model the Poujadists and Poujadisme, the small shopkeepers revolt in France in the nineteen-fiftiesa movement that seemed to wither away when de Gaulle came to power, though its still alive today in many of the doctrines and practices of the French National Front. (Siegel, being provocative, must have enraged a few others by comparing our shutdown artists to the Islamic Jihad.)
As it happens, Ive been doing some reading about John Kennedy, and what I find startling, and even surprising, is how absolutely consistent and unchanged the ideology of the extreme American right has been over the past fifty years, from father to son and now, presumably, on to son from father again. The real analogue to todays unhinged right wing in America is yesterdays unhinged right wing in America. This really is your grandfathers right, if not, to be sure, your grandfathers Republican Party. Half a century ago, the type was much more evenly distributed between the die-hard, neo-Confederate wing of the Democratic Party and the Goldwater wing of the Republicans, an equitable division of loonies that would begin to end after J.F.K.s death. (A year later, the Civil Rights Act passed, Goldwater ran, Reagan emerged, and we began the permanent sorting out of our factions into what would be called, anywhere but here, a party of the center right and a party of the extreme right.)
<snip>
Medicare then, as Obamacare now, was the key evil. An editorial in the Morning News announced that JFKs support of Medicare sounds suspiciously similar to a pro-Medicare editorial that appeared in the Workerthe official publication of the U.S. Communist Party. At the same time, Minutaglio and Davis write, on the radio, H.L. Hunt (the Dallas millionaire) filled the airwaves with dozens of attacks on Medicare, claiming that it would create government death panels: The plan provides a near little package of sweeping dictatorial power over medicine and the healing artsa package which would literally make the President of the United States a medical czar with potential life or death power over every man woman and child in the country. Stanley Marcus, the owner of the department store Neiman Marcus, heard from angry customers who were cancelling their Neiman Marcus charge cards because of his public support for the United Nations.
The whole thing came to a climax with the famous black-bordered flyer that appeared on the day of J.F.K.s visit to Dallas, which showed him in front face and profile, as in a Wanted poster, with the headline WANTED FOR TREASON. The style of that treason is familiar mix of deliberate subversion and personal depravity. He has been wrong on innumerable issues affecting the security of the United States; He has been caught in fantastic lies to the American people, including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce. Birth certificate, please?
<snip>
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/10/the-john-birchers-tea-party.html
Brilliant piece.
LuvNewcastle
(16,846 posts)yet the liberal media never seems to mention it. All they ever mention is what's happening now; there's never any connection to the past. If Americans had the slightest education about history, we'd all know that everything we're going through now has been gone through before, and more than once.
cali
(114,904 posts)It really makes the connections well.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Paranoid politics has remained the same, only the cast and the labels have changed over time since McCarthyism, the pinko scare, Goldwater, ...
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)A family with a history of activism in the cause of right wing radicalism.
Beowulf
(761 posts)was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.
progressoid
(49,991 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)dorkzilla
(5,141 posts)TomClash
(11,344 posts)I think this may be worse: add the "endtimes" and actual control over the House for starters.
cali
(114,904 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)America."
From the John Birch Society's wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
it is important to realize that the tea party mentality is not a new phenomenon in the US. Neither is it restricted to the US - witness the rise of the "populist" right in Europe.
Excellent find, cali.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)its almost like someone hit the replay buttton.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)The name has changed but the game is the same...control people and the government with fear.
And my saying that comes from experience because I remember the 60s clearly....and knew John Birchers personally.
K&R.
BlueToTheBone
(3,747 posts)doing it again. Yikes. Evil never gets smarter.