Also vital to the story was the role of money. I've often implicated industrial managers as an important, influential class; not the engineers or foremen, but the cadre of professional administrators and their lobbyists, industrial managers are important because they are truly ubiquitous, and because they occupy such a vital role. They are respected, and usually with good reason; but they are usually very pernicious political actors. In order to mobilize popular opposition to environmental regulations, industrial managers have long organized propaganda of their own. Neiwert spells out the most dangerous variety:

Chapter VI: As Matthew Lyons of Political Research Associates has often argued (especially in the book he co-wrote with Chip Berlet, the excellent Right Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort), the extremist right has long been a very useful tool of the corporatist right deployed purposely for precisely this function, as well as to drive wedge issues such as race between labor unions and working-class people.

The transmission mechanism was partly opportunistic: both cult leaders (such as those of organizations like Christian [sic] Identity) and Calvinist clergy are businessmen at heart, and this is both their dream and their livelihood. It was a matter of time and tatonnement before suitable link-ups were found. And organizations like the John Birch Society were well-known to have been founded by manufacturers and rentiers. A vast pool of anarcho-capitalist rhetoric has accompanied all of the waves of crank-monetarist theories.¹

For sundry reasons, the Clinton Administration was the cue for the transmitters to really close their circuits. From the very beginning, the most outlandish conspiracy theories circulated.

Chapter VII: Indeed, the militia movement provided most of the early audience for The Clinton Chronicles; large stacks of the books and videos sold well at Patriot gatherings, and the Mena tales continue to be regarded as articles of faith. The wild and bizarre accusations — easily refuted both in mainstream media and by a congressional investigation — gained an extended half-life in a milieu where counter-evidence is only considered further proof of a conspiracy. This echo effect resonated long enough that the claims were certain to regain currency in the mainstream — and eventually, they did.

This is how the Patriot movement pulls the national debate towards its own agenda. Regardless of how far-fetched or provably false their claims or ideas might be, they stay alive in the everything-fits conspiracist mindset of the far right. The ideas that have a long-term resonance are transmitted to the mainstream, stripped of their racial or religious origins — which often is the swamps of supremacist Christian Identity belief — by being presented as purely "political" claims or conjecture. As the ideas gain more traction in the mainstream, the far right's agenda becomes realized incrementally.

Mostly Neiwert's account is an engaging diagram, a cutaway, of how the hard right has gradually made its ideology indistinguishable from that of "conservatives." It's a story that owes a great deal to the quasi-commercial character of US politics, a vast business enterprise driven by innovation and customer satisfaction. The customers are not US voters; they are industrial managers, and they have outsources their political action to results-oriented professionals. The tools include foundations and thinktanks, websites, conventions of enthusiasts, gun shows, and so on. However, the most effective tool has undoubtedly been radio.

The radio program subjects the listener to rapidfire information that may or may not be dominated by innuendo or wild associations. The listener is passive; most listeners are driving and only casually paying attention. The steady stream of verbiage tends to be absorbed in a semi-hypnotic state.

Chapter IX: Limbaugh likes to dress himself up in public as an "entertainer," but what he really is above all, as I've observed, is a propagandist. This is apparent from many aspects of his programs, ranging from his refusal to engage in any kind of open or honest debate to the endless spew of disinformation that flows into his microphone. The latter is perhaps the most telling, because this is the essence of Newspeak: to render the meanings of words empty by assaulting them with falsification.

Just as significant on the airwaves are the horde of Limbaugh imitators who appear willing to say anything outrageous in the hope of garnering higher ratings. Foremost among these is Michael Savage, the obnoxiously xenophobic hatemonger who recently was awarded a slot on MSNBC's Saturday lineup.

Savage is particularly gifted at presenting overtly racial appeals in soft wrapping, so that his listeners know what he means, even if he can't be pinned down for it later. But at times his appeal to racism is nearly naked. When he calls for the deportation of all immigrants, and the internment of Muslim-Americans, it isn't hard to discern a racial purpose to it all.

Perhaps just as disturbing about Savage is the eliminationist tone of much of his rhetoric, much of it aimed not at a racial or ethnic group but at liberals generally: "I say round them up and hang 'em high!" and "When I hear someone's in the civil rights business, I oil up my AR-15!"

However, the combination of all these "comfort foods" are toxic to the American's grasp of reality. It seems clear that they are jeopardizing our ability to reason, also.

(Part 3)

[Fascism] [Totalitarianism]