Brane Space: True- Nearly 70 Years Ago An Unheard Of Sociology Prof Predicted Rise Of 'The New American Right'

“The triumphal Right has taken the gloves off and is pursuing a scorched-earth campaign against women’s most fundamental rights. No more faux hand-wringing about saving women from spinsterhood or ‘post-abortion syndrome.’ This is just ‘Lock her up!’”- Author Susan Faludi in interview with NY Times Michelle Goldberg today

Incredibly, it appears the emergence of the radical Right was predicted almost 70 years ago in a book by a little known Columbia University sociologist, Daniel Bell. Entitled “The Radical Right. (in its 1963 re-release, originally 'The New American Right') e.g.

The book forecast the rise of a new, much more aggressive Right in its pages - as noted in a recent WaPo piece. Thus, the civil fractures we're seeing today were seeded back in the 50s by the Right's loonies and extremists (such as Sen. Joe McCarthy) leading to such abominations as the January 6th insurrection. Bell's team included historian Richard Hofstadter already with some degree of fame for his must-read book,

Anti- intellectualism in american life pdf

Bell's book in its earliest 1955 iteration, as “The New American Right” , argued that Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s "conspiratorial anti-communism was here to stay. But nearly 70 years later, as a congressional committee investigates the far-right attack on the U.S. government on Jan. 6, 2021, the forgotten text has never looked more prescient."

The authors wrote that far-right activists who wrapped themselves in the American flag "actually posed a grave threat to the country’s core principles. In the name of protecting U.S. democracy, they warned, the radical right would employ the language and methods of authoritarianism".

Of course, the American Right has always leaned authoritarian from the time of the late 30s and into the 1940s with the "America First" nuts, whom I'd written about in a post 4 years ago, e.g.

The Dark Underbelly Of "America First"

Hofstadter in his own book exposed the voracious yen to control fellow citizens' choices promulgated by many on the Right, including the notorious evangelical fruitcake Rev. Josiah Strong. As Hofstadter wrote in terms of the Right's reactions to issues such as removing prayer in schools as well as racial integration etc. (op. cit., p. 135):

"The fundamentalist mind will have nothing to do with all this: it is essentially Manichean, it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan) and can tolerate no ambiguities."

Then there is the John Birch Society, an enclave of paranoid crackpots if there ever was one. In 1962 it counted about 59,000 members and an estimated 9.5 million sympathizers. Its founder was a tycoon named Robert Welch who thought “traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country’s sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a ‘one-world socialist government.’” And let us note that from the 1930s when the New Deal came into being, these cranks have been determined to kneecap its programs - especially Social Security- deemed a major attempt at collectivist society. Though many weak and gullible minds gobbled this bunkum, the Right was nevertheless relegated in the early and mid 1960s to the margins of electoral politics. The radical Right never found its Trump, the closest one being Barry Goldwater - famous for his quote: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." Goldwater was crushed in a landslide in the 1964 election, after LBJ circulated the infamous "daisy ad", i.e.

Daisy Ad (LBJ 1964 Presidential campaign commercial) - YouTube

Hofstadter called these extremists “pseudo-conservatives” (a term borrowed from philosopher Theodor W. Adorno). They posed as conservatives but in truth were authoritarians with a nihilistic urge to watch the world burn. As he wrote: “Followers of a movement like the John Birch Society are in our world but not exactly of it.” By which he meant exaggerating any policies or issues that threatened their authoritarian world view. Paving the way for the acceptance of “alternative facts.”

Bell himself argued that pseudo-conservatives were driven by a fear of modernity. The United States was starting to shift to a knowledge economy dominated by a “technical and professional intelligentsia.” This rattled pseudo-conservatives, who felt, in Bell’s words, the “disquiet of the dispossessed.” In fact, it embodied the nascent dread of the Right for the "elites" to which it more and more ascribed near demonic powers and motives. It reached its apotheosis with the arrival of JFK, in whom all the Right's fears and hatreds could be focused.

Thus when the radical right first gained strength, it fell to a Democratic president (JFK) to formulate a counterattack — just as President Biden and his allies in Congress are now attempting. In 1961, John F. Kennedy deplored those who “call for a ‘man on horseback’ because they do not trust the people.” This was in response to Ted Dealey, then extremist publisher for The Dallas Morning News who had said:

"We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle."

JFK also had fired back: "Wars are easier to talk about than they are to fight. I’m just as tough as you are, and I didn’t get elected president by arriving at soft judgments."

Kennedy quickly came into the crosshairs of the Right's extremists, setting himself up to be taken out by them in Dallas- then a hotbed of the radical Right in November, 1963. It began when the Kennedys had the IRS audit extremist groups and the Federal Communications Commission regulate right-wing radio.

These initial efforts failed to make a dent in the groups’ appeal. But it did put a target on Kennedy's back especially after he refused the extremist general Curtis LeMay's demand to bomb and invade Cuba in October, 1962, and then made bold moves against segregation by federalizing the Alabama National Guard in the fall of 1963- this after signing a Nuclear Test ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev in August 1963. The last straws were JFK's efforts at rapprochement with Fidel Castro - only revealed late in 1963, e.g.

What Maddow Left Out In Her Segment On The Kennedy- Castro Rapprochement

Followed by his National Security Action Memorandum 263 to pull out all U.S. troops from Vietnam by 1965, e.g.

The Facts About JFK, NSAM 263 And The Pentagon Papers

All that was left was for the Right's planners to have the assigned mechanics in the right place (Dallas) to take Kennedy out. A scenario depicted very well in the film 'Executive Action' - especially the scene in which the planners use low tech methods to frame Oswald in the infamous backyard rifle photo, e.g.

Clip from Executive Action (1973) - YouTube

There is perhaps no better concise video depiction of how the assassination itself occurred than in this scene from the movie JFK - centered in a New Orleans' courtroom - with the first public showing of the Zapruder film by New Orleans DA Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner):

The Zapruder Film - JFK (6/7) Movie CLIP (1991) HD - YouTube

Let's bear in mind no one with a grain of sense bought the codswallop - circulated in the wake of the assassination - that a Marxist (alleged), would take out a liberal president in a bastion of the extreme Right. After all, Dealey's newspaper greeted Kennedy on his visit to Big D with a black bordered advertisement in the front which read:

"Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. A city so disgraced by a recent Liberal smear attempt that its citizens have just elected two more Conservative Americans to public office….A city that will continue to grow and prosper despite efforts by you and your administration to penalize it for its non-conformity to ‘New Frontierism.’”

Oh, and then there were the 'Wanted for Treason' posters visible all over the city, e.g.

With JFK slain, then successively brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the entire core of the then liberal establishment had been eliminated within 5 years setting the stage for the unencumbered expansion of the Right. And bringing us to the precipice we're at today, when millions - like the 'good' Germans (in 1932)- may lose their minds over inflation and vote into power those who would destroy our democracy. Don't think it can happen? It's already begun - check out this news right off the transom:

As Biden Polling Hits New Lows More Americans Say They'd Vote For Trump'

"The survey of 1,541 U.S. adults, which was conducted from June 10-13, found that if another presidential election were held today, more registered voters say they would cast ballots for Donald Trump (44%) than for Biden (42%) — even though the House Jan. 6 committee has spent the last week linking Trump to what it called a “seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for possible criminal prosecution. "

And:

Republicans