The New Hate

[KingOrfeo]

I just finished The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right, by Arthur Goldwag (Jew). A fascinating study that covers the whole history of paranoid irrationality in American politics and culture, mostly RW, but not sparing black separatism, etc. Despite the title, his point is that the New Hate is not all that "new" after all. He sees a lot of common memes and themes in all past forms of it, mostly the ones Richard Hosftadter identified, regardless of whether the demonized all-powerful Other is the Jews, Freemasons, Catholics, Illuminati, atheists/secularists, intellectuals, Communists, capitalists, bankers, whites, nonwhites, immigrants, or (as is not seldom the case) some combination of the foregoing.

He concludes:

Writing in The Washington Post, Karen Tumulty noted that all these recent conservative disquisitions on [American] exceptionalism . . . have "a more intellectual sheen than the false assertions that Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya." Then she quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institution, who said that writing about exceptionalism provides "a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us."

And there you have it -- the core proposition of the not-so-New Hate: that there are those of us who are really "us" and those of us who are essentially "other" -- aliens, interlopers, pretenders, and culture distorters, parasites and freeloaders, who bear the blame for the fact that being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American no longer suffices to make one the cynosure of the world.

Back on November 19, 1955, in the mission statement he prepared for the first issue of the National Review, William F. Buckley derided the presiding liberal orthodoxy of his day, which, he said, had as much as ceded the field to "the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to history. The National Review, Buckley vowed, would stand "athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." Patron saint of conservatives as he might have been, in John Judis's memorable phrase, Buckley was much more of a pragmatist than that. He knew that the wheels of history never do stop turning, no matter how devoutly one might wish they did; he recognized that ideological purity (or any other kind of purity, for that matter) was not to be found in our fallen world. "No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest," he replied, when an interviewer asked whom he was supporting for president in 1967. "I'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win."

The New Hate is at once an expression of a quixotic desire to turn back the clock to a mythical golden age when women and minorities and gays and foreigners were less troublesome than they are today, when the government only gave and never took, and a cynical ploy to up the turnout of Republican voters. Most of the time it's reflexive and vindictive to its core. And the vast majority of its proponents, even in the heat of the moment -- dressed up in colonial costume, with powdered wigs on their heads and "Say No to Socialism" placards in their hands -- know better, too.

No one in New England in 1798 really believed that Jefferson was plotting to bring Jacobinism to the United States, any more than Maria Monk's readers thought that the convent down the street was a nest of debauchery. Senator Joseph McCarthy never really believed that George Marshall was a Communist or even a Communist tool. For all the prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes, even the most vicious of Jew haters are more likely to deny that the Holocaust really happened than they are to defend it. Though millions of Americans claim to believe that Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner, and some of them hate him merely because of the color of his skin, most of them know that the real issue isn't what Obama is but what they increasingly fear they're not.

And thus it has always been.

 

[koalabear]

At least it's not another one of your Palin threads.

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

interesting..

 

[KRCummings]

Somebody had to write a book for everyone to figure out that hate in politics isn't new?

Yay for stupid people.

 

[koalabear]

interesting..

So is watching grass grow, with the proper drugs off course.

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

So is watching grass grow, with the proper drugs off course.

exactly lol

http://t1.***********/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSTvh2w23pJpOvhMAJzGwY_JMuCok-g_19Y9roJpAjxM4UReeHz

 

[KingOrfeo]

Somebody had to write a book for everyone to figure out that hate in politics isn't new?

This particular kind does look new. It takes an insightful analyst to spot the almost tedious similarities to previous iterations.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I'm currently reading The Backlash by Will Bunch, which has individual chapters on the various fringe elements of the looney-tunes right.

I recognize a lot of individual posters here on Lit interviewed in this book, particularly the foaming-at-the-mouth gun nuts and the Palinistas.

 

[KingOrfeo]

This particular kind does look new. It takes an insightful analyst to spot the almost tedious similarities to previous iterations.

And, following on that, there is one more important point, which all of the Lit's conspiracy theorists and Tea Partisans should take to heart:

All of the previous iterations, without exception, were completely worthless.

The Jefferson=Jacobin crowd, the Know-Nothings, Anti-Masons, anti-Catholics, Free Silverites, bank-hating economic producerists, anti-Semites, Klansmen, American Nazis and White Nationalists, John Birchers, Pat Buchanan paleocon-populists -- all of them were always utterly, entirely wrong in every single thing that distinguished their worldviews from the mainstream. None were ever of any good use whatsoever to the American polity or society. None brought anything of value to the table ever. None ever did anything but to make irritable gestures resembling thoughts, stir up hatred, and make things worse for America.

And your New Hate is eeriely similar.

Think about that long and hard.

 

[Kiss_me_gently]

I think the article is a bunch of intellectual bullshit. Rationalization of xenophobes. I'm not fast to play the race card but I suspect the birthers are mostly racist and just can't stand that a black man is president.

I do not think that racism will ever die out. Ignorance, fear and intolerance will never go away. I'm just not pointing a finger at whites because my own race is just as prejudiced.

Blacks need to stop calling themselves African-American. I was born in America not Africa therefore I am an American. If I immigrated here that would be different. I am partly of African descent. If we as blacks wish to bridge the racial divide we need to stop referring to ourselves as something different. I do not mean to say we forget our heritage but we need to embrace what makes us the same. Same goes for the "Black History" separation. My history is American history not black history thank you very much.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I think the article is a bunch of intellectual bullshit. Rationalization of xenophobes.

It is not bullshit, because the author is pointing that out, not defending it.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I think the article is a bunch of intellectual bullshit. Rationalization of xenophobes. I'm not fast to play the race card but I suspect the birthers are mostly racist and just can't stand that a black man is president.

I do not think that racism will ever die out. Ignorance, fear and intolerance will never go away. I'm just not pointing a finger at whites because my own race is just as prejudiced.

Blacks need to stop calling themselves African-American. I was born in America not Africa therefore I am an American. If I immigrated here that would be different. I am partly of African descent. If we as blacks wish to bridge the racial divide we need to stop referring to ourselves as something different. I do not mean to say we forget our heritage but we need to embrace what makes us the same. Same goes for the "Black History" separation. My history is American history not black history thank you very much.

You are something other than American. You are African American and you should embrace it. There is NO good reason not to. The racial divide doesn't exist because we call ourselves African American. That has virtually nothing to do with it. Notice nobody says anything absurd like that the Irish shouldn't be proud of being Irish Americans and getting a holiday. Sure there are people who pitch a shitfit about Cinco De Mayo but they are without exception racist fuckwits. If there is a shame it's that too few of us know what our African heritage actually is so we can't be more specific like our Asian and European brethren. More to the point we're in America DUH you're fucking American. There is no need to call yourself ANYTHING by that logic and I've traveled plenty and never heard anybody black, hispanic, anything refer to themselves anything but American when OUTSIDE America where the distinguishing factor was that they weren't German, Japanese what not.

When black historical figures start getting a fair shake in regular history we can do away with Black History month (maybe) it's not like everybody else doesn't get a month. However when say Crispus Attucks is a house hold name and not a trivia question you'll have a point. As it stands, sorry no you really don't. Unless your point is that history is decided by the victors and clearly that wasn't us.

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

I had a professor in college who opined that celebrating or embracing ones ancestral roots is not harmful as long as it doesn't impede the process of assimilation. I agree.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I had a professor in college who opined that celebrating or embracing ones ancestral roots is not harmful as long as it doesn't impede the process of assimilation. I agree.

That's a rather nuanced approach and as such has no place on this board.

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

That's a rather nuanced approach and as such has no place on this board.

Are you calling me out for my opinion on the term African Americans?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Are you calling me out for my opinion on the term African Americans?

Of course not. I was singling you out for your attempt to introduce rational discussion into a Literotica thread.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Of course not. I was singling you out for your attempt to introduce rational discussion into a Literotica thread.

I know, I know . . . but it's such a hard temptation to resist, sometimes . . .

 

[Sean Renaud]

Wait? We can't have rational discussions? So far the crazies seem to be steering clear of this thread.

 

[Joeybagadonuts]

Of course not. I was singling you out for your attempt to introduce rational discussion into a Literotica thread.

yeah...well ya know...sometimes I just get crazy.

 

[RobDownSouth]

yeah...well ya know...sometimes I just get crazy.

S'okay...just don't let it happen too often. These wingnuts got feelings...

 

[Kiss_me_gently]

You are something other than American. You are African American and you should embrace it. There is NO good reason not to. The racial divide doesn't exist because we call ourselves African American. That has virtually nothing to do with it. Notice nobody says anything absurd like that the Irish shouldn't be proud of being Irish Americans and getting a holiday. Sure there are people who pitch a shitfit about Cinco De Mayo but they are without exception racist fuckwits. If there is a shame it's that too few of us know what our African heritage actually is so we can't be more specific like our Asian and European brethren. More to the point we're in America DUH you're fucking American. There is no need to call yourself ANYTHING by that logic and I've traveled plenty and never heard anybody black, hispanic, anything refer to themselves anything but American when OUTSIDE America where the distinguishing factor was that they weren't German, Japanese what not.

When black historical figures start getting a fair shake in regular history we can do away with Black History month (maybe) it's not like everybody else doesn't get a month. However when say Crispus Attucks is a house hold name and not a trivia question you'll have a point. As it stands, sorry no you really don't. Unless your point is that history is decided by the victors and clearly that wasn't us.

I'm not from Africa. I was born in the USA and several generations of my family. So I am an American and nothing else.

Scientist have broken the DNA code and all non-Africans are Neanderthal hybrids so do you call yourselves Neanderthal-Americans? Just how far back into history or pre-history should we go for our classification?

I am an American. Yes my ancestry is from Africa but that is as far as the connection goes.

 

[jeninflorida]

I think Clinton was the master of the NEW HAtE

 

[jeninflorida]

Are you calling me out for my opinion on the term African Americans?

there is no such thing as an African American. you are African or American

 

[bronzeage]

there is no such thing as an African American. you are African or American

What about Cuban Americans?

 

[jeninflorida]

What about Cuban Americans?

they are cuban or american