A Brief History of Wingnuts in America (US vs THEM", “heated exaggeration & conspiratorial fantasy")
American political history has been marked by periodic eruptions of the “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that Richard Hofstadter famously characterized as “the paranoid style in American politics.” Wingnuts have masqueraded under different names and causes at different times, but they have always been committed to an “us against them” framing of domestic debates while inflaming group hatred in the name of politics and alleged principle. They prey on fear and ignorance.
Survey Wingnut rhetoric through the ages and the usual suspects keep surfacing: appeals to religious suspicion; ethnic and racial divisions; foreign subversion of sovereignty; and perhaps the oldest conspiracy theory of them all—accusing the president of the United States of being a tyrant and a dictator bent on destroying the Constitution.
In the long journey from frontier expansion to landing on the moon, there are clear common undercurrents to the paranoid politics advanced by the Wingnuts during different eras in America.
There is always the divisive drumbeat of ‘us against them’—the demagogue’s favorite formula. There is always an emotional appeal to an idealized past, targeted to people who feel besieged by cultural change, paired with the promise of a well-deserved return to power after years of resentment. And there is always the sale of special knowledge, pulling the curtain back on a monstrous conspiracy that will prove once and for all that your political opponents are not just misguided, but evil. The result is not only vindication, but also the self-serving sense that only you can save the republic.
Today’s unhinged hyper-partisans are not likely to look any better or wiser in the rearview mirror than the Wingnuts of our past. Instead, they will be at best a stale and bitter punchline of our times and then fade, unloved, into obscurity.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/17/a-brief-history-of-wingnuts-in-america-from-george-washington-to-woodstock.html
Just when I think the tea party types are a unique 21st century phenomenon, the author details "tea partiers" of old. "US vs THEM" and "the paranoid style in American politics” goes back to the days of Washington. The opposition to Washington, Adams and Jefferson were 'tea partiers' of their day. Then came the "Know Nothings", the KKK, the anti-evolutionists of the Scopes Monkey Trial in the 1920's, Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society.
There are probably many others in the book which this is an excerpt from. We all know of these examples of the disease of "US vs THEM" and "conspiratorial fantasy" but it is interesting to see them brought together throughout American history.
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