The Radicalizing of the Right

IT HAS COME TO THE ATTENTION of astute observiers of political history that in recent times the Reppublican party, in which the American conservative movement is embedded, has "taken a hard turn to the right", has become what amounts to an extremist organization. This phenomenon has not escacped the attention of historian Matthew Dalleck, whose seminal new monogrpah: "Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right", clearly elucidates the genesis of this transformation. The post World War Two period in America was a time of conservatism, socially and politically, a return to what the right wing deemed "normalcy". Although the period immediately prior to the war was far from "normal". Roosevelt's "New Deal" had radically transformed the nation, where under his Democratic Socialist leadership and agenda the traditional neo-liberal economy was supplanted by an unapologetically socialist set of programs, including Social Security, among others. For the right, "normal" meant pre-New Deal. Unable to revoke FDR's agenda, conservatives became content to merely resent and oppose it. Eisenhower, a moderately conservative president, was from the beginning of his adinistration insufficiently conservative for those who would have had us return to the days of Herbert Hoover and before. founded by a small group of ultra right wing industrialists in secret in 1958, named after an American Baptist missionary and war hero in china, The John birch society was founded in 1958, and although it never consisted of more than between sixty thousand an d ahundred thousand members nationwide, endure, according to the author, untio the early nineteen seventies, when, as Dalleck describes it, it "burned itself out". In turth, it still exists today, but im much weaker form, it having for the most part blended in with other far right wing organizations, such as the Republican party itself. The groups consisted in local chapters of no more than twenty people each, and its agenda included strong opposition to the civil rights movement, to gay culture, and, most of all, oppostion to communism. Conspiracy theories were its stock in trade, much as they are in today's ultra conservative culture. Perhaps the most blatantly ridiculous such theory was that President Eisenhower was a member of and an agent of the American communist party. So transparently false was this crazy concept that even the Birch leaders quietly attempted to squelch it, with some degree of success. Dalleck traces this narrative directly to today's renewed reactionary radicalization of the conservative movement, spearheaded by the rise to power of Donald Trump. Dalleck predicts the ultimate decline of the current incarnation, but warns us that a series of election losses will be required for this to happen, losses which, while some have already occured, have only succeeded to a small extent of bringing the far right back into the mainstream American political fold.