GOP becoming a cult of know-nothings
The Republican Party is becoming a cult. Its leaders are in thrall to Donald Trump, a defeated former president who refuses to acknowledge defeat. Its ideology is MAGA, Trump's deeply divisive take on what Republicans assume to be unifying American values.
The party is now in the process of carrying out purges of heretics who do not worship Trump or accept all the tenets of MAGA. Conformity is enforced by social media, a relatively new institution with the power to marshal populist energy against critics and opponents.
What's happening on the right in American politics is not exactly new. To understand it, you need to read a book published 50 years ago by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970. Right-wing extremism, now embodied in Trump's MAGA movement, dates back to the earliest days of the country.
The title of Lipset and Raab's book was chosen carefully. Right-wing extremism is not about the rational calculation of interests. It's about irrational impulses, which the authors identify as "status frustrations." They write that "the political movements which have successfully appealed to status resentments have been irrational in character. [The movements] focus on attacking a scapegoat, which conveniently symbolizes the threat perceived by their supporters."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-becoming-cult-know-nothings-150011271.html
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