The historical origins of Trumpism (4)

What happened to the Republican party from 1964 onwards ? It would not be an exaggeration to claim that it was an orchestrated takeover by an extremely well organised and extremely ideologically motivated group.

To make a long and complicated story too short: In 1955, Willam F. Buckley, heir to a considerable fortune, decided to found the conservative magazine, 'National Review', with a view to making the American Right a homogeneous force. Such a movement had to be formed from contradictory elements, including hawkish anti-communism ; isolationism ; libertarianism ; fiscal conservatism ; and Christian evangelical Protestantism. It had the express purpose of capturing the Republican Party. (see Jerome Himmelstein, 'To the Right' (1990) ; Godfrey Hodgson, 'The world turned Rightside up.' (1996) ; Donald Critchlow, 'The conservative ascendancy (2007), et al). Although Buckley never explicitly repudiated McCarthyism (indeed, he co-authored a book which defended the Senator), he wanted to dissociate the Right from McCarthyism's aura of paranoia and conspiracy theory. He was not entirely successful in that aim, however.

Although Buckley attempted to exclude undesirable elements, such as antisemites, from conservative ranks, the need to attract Southern support meant that at first Buckley and the 'National Review' opposed desegregation. Racism, manifested not only by Trump, but by Goldwater's opposition to civil rights, by Nixon's casual asides, and by George H. W. Bush in the 1988 Presidential election drawing attention to the Democrat Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's freeing a convicted African American criminal, could not be divorced from the American Right. Neither could conspiracy theories: they did not start with Trump, the birthers et al. Phyllis Schlafly, a very prominent activist on the american right from the 1950s onwards, spun elaborate conspiracy theories encompassing the United Nations and East Coast bankers, apparently conspiring to form a world government (see Michael Lind, 'Up from conservatism' (1996), Gregory L. Schneider (ed.) 'Conservatism in America since 1930: a reader (2003)). This notion of a 'globalist' conspiracy has become a favoured trope of far right movements and figures, including Timothy McVeigh (see David Neiwert, 'Alt America' (2017)).

The first step was the capture of the Presidential nomination by Barry Goldwater in 1964, which reflected, in part, the shifting demographic composition of Republican Party support toward conservative constituencies in the south and south-west. This was a long and complicated process, and depended not just on capturing the Republican Party (for details see Heather Cox Richardson, 'To make men free' (2014) ; Geoffrey Kabaservice, 'Rule and ruin' (2012) ; E. J. Dionne, 'Why the right went wrong' (2017) ), but also on the Right building its own infrastructure of direct mail, think tanks, publishing and broadcasting.

As regards the Right's activities in broadcasting, it is important to emphasise that they did not start with the advent of the recently deceased talk radio 'shock jock' Rush Limbaugh (who started his political broadcasting in 1988) or Fox News (which commenced in 1996). The phenomenon which David Frum, George W. Bush's former speechwriter, has called the 'conservative entertainment complex' existed long before Reagan aboloshed the Fairness Doctrine in 1986, which inhibited the growth of biased broadcasting. There have been right wing, often conservative evangelical broadcasters, in the United States since at least the 1950s.

The postwar American Right, from its very inception by William F Buckley, took an uncompromising attitude to its opponents: liberalism, as exemplified by FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society, had to be vanquished. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Republicans, from Newt Gingrich and the 'Contract with America' in 1994 onwards, through the Tea Party, to Trump, took an increasingly obstructive attitude to Democrats in the White House.

Biden has to assume that the Republicans, in their extremely dysfunctional and dangerous condition, will not assist him in any way. He has to win support by governing effectively, and by reminding Americans of the value of good government and of respect for the rule of law through his words and deeds. Tackling the pandemic effectively might persuade the Republicans that it exists (although even that might be an unrealistic hope). From this point of view, his task is immeasurably harder than FDR's. A political party which has become a deranged cult, devoted to paramilitary mob violence, which is in thrall to demagoguery may well be dysfunctional ; but it can still win elections.