Tag: Richard Hofstadter

Many people are worried, rightly, about what the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh means for America in the long term. But Donald Trump quickly made it much worse, attributing protests against Kavanaugh to George Soros and declaring, falsely (and with no evidence), that the protesters were being paid. Senator John Cornyn declared, “We will not be bullied by the screams of paid protesters.” No, the protesters aren’t being paid to protest, let alone by George Soros. Conspiracy theorizing has been a part of American politics from the beginning. When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing, their fantasizing isn’t a delusion, it’s a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions. And now senior figures in the Republican Party, which controls all three branches of the federal government — if you had any questions about whether the Supreme Court was a partisan institution, they should be gone now — are sounding just like the white nationalists in Hungary and Poland. is an authoritarian regime in waiting. The senators parroting conspiracy theories about Soros-paid protesters? What we’ve learned in the past few weeks is that there is no gap between Trump and his party, nobody who will say stop in the name of American values. is an authoritarian regime in waiting, not yet one in practice.

Many people are worried, rightly, about what the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh means for America in the long term. But Donald Trump quickly made it much worse, attributing protests against Kavanaugh to George Soros and declaring, falsely (and with no evidence), that the protesters were being paid. Senator John Cornyn declared, “We will not be bullied by the screams of paid protesters.” No, the protesters aren’t being paid to protest, let alone by George Soros. Conspiracy theorizing has been a part of American politics from the beginning. When people who hold most of the levers of power do the same thing, their fantasizing isn’t a delusion, it’s a tool: a way to delegitimize opposition, to create excuses not just for disregarding but for punishing anyone who dares to criticize their actions. And now senior figures in the Republican Party, which controls all three branches of the federal government — if you had any questions about whether the Supreme Court was a partisan institution, they should be gone now — are sounding just like the white nationalists in Hungary and Poland. is an authoritarian regime in waiting. The senators parroting conspiracy theories about Soros-paid protesters? What we’ve learned in the past few weeks is that there is no gap between Trump and his party, nobody who will say stop in the name of American values. is an authoritarian regime in waiting, not yet one in practice.

Far-right political groupings are a constant feature on the fringes of Australian politics. In the 1950s and 1960s, they included the League of Rights and minuscule neo-Nazi parties. In the 1980s, there was National Action, the Australian Nationalist Movement, Australians Against Further Immigration and the Citizens Electoral Council. The 1997 book The Truth, issued in Pauline Hanson’s name by a group of her followers, revealed “the internationalist elite of The New World Order” that was plotting the destruction of Anglo-Saxon Australia through “immigrationism, multiculturalism, Asianisation and Aboriginalism”. In contemporary Australia, far-right movements focus on Islam. Hostility to immigration The distinctive mindset that characterises supporters of minor political parties of the right is evident in public opinion surveys, but findings on members of fringe political groupings are less reliable because their numbers in national surveys are very small. When asked for their view of the level of immigration, 86% of One Nation supporters indicated that the intake was too high, compared with just of 37% of the national sample. Heightened concern over immigration links to nationalist values. An overwhelming 92% of One Nation voters strongly agree that “in the modern world, maintaining the Australian way of life is important.” Expanding reach While there is consistency over time in far-right values, in one respect there has been change. The emphasis on the perceived threat of Islam has been a crystallising issue for the far-right in recent years, helping it to grab headlines and recruit followers.