The Republican National Committee, in perhaps the most stunningly stupid self-own in the history of modern politics certainly in my lifetime, finally said the quietest part out loud: that in their official pronouncement, the events at the Capitol on January 6 constituted “legitimate political discourse.” Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were censured by the RNC in the statement as well, for their role on the January 6 Committee and their investigation into these “legitimate” events involving a murderous attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Yale historian Joanne Freeman had this to say about the RNC statement:
The RNC statement about “legitimate political discourse” is a line in the sand.
Democracy vs. Authoritarianism is on the ballot in 2022
If there’s any upside to the dark situation we’re in, it’s these gifts Republicans keep on giving — further debasing themselves each time you think they can’t possibly stoop any morally lower — that we can use to our advantage to turn out our base in record numbers in these upcoming midterms. We did it in 2018, and there’s no reason to believe we can’t do it now. Trump’s support is waning, not growing — and the fractures within the GOP are widening, not tightening. Plus, we’ll have 8 million new 18-year-old eligible voters we can potentially reach — the vast majority of whom statistically speaking, are going to be progressive Democrats.
None of the other policy questions or culture wars will matter if we cannot solve the most fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: do we still believe in the ideals of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the vision of a self-governing people shared by the Founders? Or do we want to hand over the keys to the nation to the erstwhile billionaires, old money heirs, and trust fund playboys who want to drag us back to some perverted nostalgic fantasyland that’s part Leave It To Beaver, part wild west, and part Silence of the Lambs?
Meanwhile Bob has made The Authoritarians available free of charge here, and I absolutely encourage you to read it — it’s fascinating stuff and he’s an entertaining as well as informative writer. In this post I’ll do my best to summarize the main points of the book, because I know people are busy and not everyone has time to read a whole book much less scrape together hours to volunteer and do activist work.
Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians
Dr. Altemeyer defines authoritarianism as “something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves.” Followers submit blindly to the leaders and give them too much free rein to do anti-democratic, brutal, and tyrannical things. Power corrupts absolutely, and power seems to corrupt authoritarians most of all.
He classifies the authoritarians into three primary groups:
Authoritarian followers — typically this group follows the established authorities in their society, including government officials, clergy and traditional religious leaders, business leaders, and self-appointed gurus of all stripes. They tend to have a “Daddy and Mommy know best” approach to the government, believing that authorities are above the law. Psychologically, authoritarian followers exhibit a high degree of submission to authorities they accept as legitimate, high levels of aggression in the name of those authorities (if so called upon), and a high degree of conventionalism and conformity. They tend to be bigots, with prejudices against many types of groups.
Authoritarian leaders — tend to be Social Dominators, who long to control people and affect others’ lives. They are overall highly prejudiced and bigoted, do not believe in the American value of equality, and feel justified in wielding great power over society with little qualification and even less self-reflection. They believe the world is divided into wolves and sheep, and they have no qualms fooling the sheep into opening the pasture gate so they can eat. “Might makes right” is their personal motto.
Double Highs — about 10% of any given sample score highly on both the social dominance test and the right-wing authoritarian scale, which is odd given the social dominator’s otherwise reluctance to be submissive. They exhibit extra prejudice and extra hostility — beyond either the social dominators or the RWAs. They tend to be the “religious” social dominators, who had a fundamentalist upbringing, or had a conversion experience as an adult (George W. Bush, e.g.) and now tend to believe in some form of Strict Father Morality.
More traits of authoritarian followers
They tend to feel more endangered in potentially threatening situations that most people do (think: Dick Cheney‘s descent into bunker mentality after 9/11)
More afraid than most people; they tend to have overactive amygdalas
Were raised by their parents to be afraid of others — both parents and children have told researchers so
More likely to issue threats than low authoritarians
Most orthodox — were raised fundamentalist and are highly repressed
Most hardline
Believe “whatever I want is right”
Paradoxically, want to “be normal” very badly — they tend to get tugged by the people around them
Authoritarian aggression
Authoritarians prefer not to have fair fights out in the open — they tend to aggress when they believe their hostility is welcomed by established authority, or supports established authority. They also often aggress when they have an obvious physical advantage over the target — making women, children, and others unable to defend themselves as ideal targets. These cowards have the gall to feel morally superior to the innocent victims they assault in an ongoing asymmetrical warfare between supremacists and marginalized groups.
To make matters worse, authoritarians do their dirty deeds in the shadows and scream bloody murder at anyone who dares try and expose their dark secrets to the light. Their theatrical and performative self-righteousness is just an act to avoid accountability and responsibility for what they do — even unto themselves.
Moreover, authoritarians are extra punitive against lawbreakers they don’t like (though exceedingly permissive for lawbreakers they *do* like, which is infuriatingly hypocritical), because they believe fervently in the value of punishment. Many advocate child corporal punishment — spanking and worse — for children as young as 1 year old. Authoritarian followers tended to report feelings of “secret pleasure” when hearing of the misfortunes of high school classmates who had misbehaved, believing they got what they deserved in life.
It would be accurate to think of authoritarians as “little volcanoes of hostility,” almost heat-seeking their way into authority-approved ways to erupt and release their pent-up anger. Many of them do not, and will not ever realize that their fundamentalist upbringing has sadly left their brains underdeveloped, and ill-equipped to navigate the modern world with its rapid changes, accelerating inequality, advancing climate change, and political instability.
Lethal Union
When a social dominator becomes an authoritarian leader, and leads his authoritarian followers down malevolent roads from informing to threatening to vigilanteism, researchers refer to this state of affairs as a “lethal union.” It’s a highly dangerous and volatile time for a democracy, one warranting caution and vigilance from concerned citizens.
Throughout history, these are the situations that tend to devolve further into aggression, political violence, civil war, genocide, and worse. We need to be very damn careful about who we elect as our leaders — we cannot allow our government to be captured by special interests and the narrow, quixotic delusions of old billionaires outshining daddy and staving off death.
More books about authoritarians
If you’ve already read Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians, or you’re just looking for more resources on authoritarianism — here’s a list to get started:
Motivated reasoning is a common daily phenomenon for all of us, assuming we’re human and/or interact with other humans. It’s a cognitive science term that refers to a type of emotional bias in which we have a tendency to prefer decisions or justifications based on their personal desirability vs. an unbiased examination of the facts.
Thinking and feeling aren’t anywhere near as “separate” in the brain as is commonly believed — they are very intertwined, and it’s also incredibly difficult for us to understand or detect from moment to moment which parts of our stream of consciousness are “thinking” and which are “feeling.”
What’s worse, we have other biases that exacerbate the motivated reasoning bias — like the “Lake Wobegon Effect” wherein we tend to overestimate our own abilities vs. others. So, we’re overconfident — at the same that we are less rational than we think we are. That can be a volatile combination — especially when found in individuals who hold a lot of power, and make decisions that affect people’s lives.
For we know not what we do
It can be infuriating to deal with people who are using motivated reasoning to make decisions instead of critical thinking: they tend to work backwards from the conclusion they wish to reach, and ignore evidence that contradicts their pre-existing beliefs. The way they deal with the cognitive dissonance of conflicting information is simply to toss the new information out, instead of evaluating it. Generally, though, they are unaware that their brain is in the habit of making that easier choice, and tend to get angry when this is pointed out.
President Biden and Vice President Harris commemorated the 1 year anniversary of the January 6 attack on our democracy with morning speeches and a day of remembrance inside the Capitol rotunda with Representatives and Senators giving a number of moving speeches in their respective chambers. The tone on TV news and blue check Twitter was somber and reflective. The President referred to the violent events of Jan 6, 2021 as a terrorist attack on our democracy, and said that the threat was not yet over — that the perpetrators of that event still hold a “dagger at the throat of America.”
Only two Republicans were present in chambers when the moment of silence was held for the nation’s traumatic experience one year ago — Representative Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, the former VP and evil villain of the George W. Bush years. That this man — a cartoonish devil from my formative years as a young activist — was, along with his steel-spined force of nature daughter, one half of the lone pair that remained of the pathetic tatters of the once great party of Lincoln.
What do you do if you’re in a 2-party system and one of the parties is just sitting on the sidelines, heckling (and worse!?)? How do you restore confidence in a system that so many people love to hate, to the point of obsession? Will we be able to re-establish a sense of fair play, as Biden called on us to do today in his speech?
The Big Lie is about rewriting history
We don’t need to spend a ton of time peering deeply into discerning motive with seditionists — we can instead understand that for all of them, serving the Big Lie serves a function for them in their lives. It binds them to their tribe, it signals a piece of their “identity,” and it signals loyalty within a tight hierarchy that rewards it — all while managing to serve their highest goal of all: to annoy and intimidate liberals. Like all bullies, their primary animating drive is a self-righteous conviction that “I am RIGHT!” at all times and about all things, and that disagreement is largely punishable by death or, in lieu of that, dark twisted fantasies of death passed off lamely and pathetically as “just joking, coworker!”
Research has shown that emotional repression causes authoritarianism (Altemeyer, Adorno, Stenner et al). Fundamentalist religious groups favor the most repression, culturally — ergo, fundamentalist groups are at the highest risk for nurturing authoritarian traits.
Emotional repression is the keystone of fundamentalist parenting. The strict application of “Biblical law” as cherry-picked by extremists is inherently contradictory & hypocritical, stunting emotional and psychological growth through corporal punishment and capricious applications of anger for sometimes opaque reasons.
When trusted caregivers apply physical violence to a developing mind, seeds of deep distrust and paranoia are planted. Children learn to “obey” by repressing negative parts of themselves so deeply they fall out of conscious awareness altogether & rule the personality “from below.”
Never being given the required emotional support to transcend the paradoxical human project of reconciling the positive & negative aspects inherent in all people, they become “arrested” at a moment of obsession with punishment as the only solution to every problem. They see the world in very black and white terms — the classic “you’re either with us or against us” zero-sum worldview in which everybody who doesn’t agree with you must be delegitimized and eradicated completely.
I’ll be continuing to work on this as information comes out of the various investigations and inquiries into the attempted coup to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, from the January 6 Committee to Merrick’s DOJ, the GA district attorney, NY district attorney, various civil suits, and probably more we don’t even know about yet. You can navigate the full mind map as it grows here:
Head onward into “Continue Reading” to see the same mind map through a geographic perspective:
Or capital vs. labor, oligarchs vs. plebes, plutocrats vs. proles, rich vs. poor — however you want to narrate it, the property vs. people struggle continues on in new and old ways, each and ere day.
Here in America, the plutocrats have devised many clever methods of hiding the class struggle behind a race war smokescreen, that is both real and manufactured — instigated, exacerbated, agitated by the likes of schlubby wife abusers like Sloppy Steve Bannon, wrinkly old Palpatines like Rupert Murdoch, and shady kleptocrats like Trump and Putin.
The United States has nursed an underground Confederacy slow burning for centuries, for sociopathic demagogues to tap into and rekindle for cheap and dangerous political power. Like The Terminator, racist and supremacist troglodytes seem always to reconstitute themselves into strange and twisted new forms, from slavery to the Black Codes to sharecropping to convict leasing to Jim Crow to Jim Crow 2.0 — the psychopaths want their homeland.
Ds need to start framing this as an oligarch's game in which a global class war is repeatedly laundered and diverted into a provincial race war. https://t.co/9a0KikBuGo
The political left loves people, and our extremists for the most part destroy capital or property that insurance companies will pay to make shiny and new again — unlike the right wing extremists who bomb federal buildings, killing hundreds of people and costing taxpayers’ money to replace.
Meanwhile, the right wing claims to be the righteous party for its extreme fixation on life before birth, yet its regulation-allergic capitalists destroy people and the natural world more broadly, from factory farming to deforestation, the destruction of habitats, strip-mining and other toxic extraction practices, and on into climate change itself. Being in fact the chief architects of manmade atmospheric devastation, they have managed to make themselves invisible from the deed by simply (wink wink!) denying it exists.
WWJD?!
Certainly, not anything the Republican Party is up to. Jesus would be sad.
Freedom means the right to make choices. When you have a large population, that means many different kinds of people are making many kinds of different choices for different reasons. That means, mathematically speaking, a broad distribution graph of options chosen over time. Freedom produces diversity, as a direct consequence of its own laissez-faire philosophy.
The Founders knew this. James Madison was an intellectual of his day, and a polymathic student of the great ideas of his time. It is hard not to see the influence of exposure to Condorcet’s theory about decision-making in Madison’s later ideas about diffusing the flames of factions by essentially dousing them in the large numbers of people spreading out within the growing nation. He believed that ideas and interests that were actively opposing each other would be a good way to preserve enough vigor to sustain an active self-governing democracy.
Regardless of the origin, Madison clearly himself was advocating for the power of diversity to preserve the very republic. He believed that this diversity of views in fact provided the structure that would help prevent singular demagogues from rising up too far and destroying democracy forever in their quest for unlimited power. The founders shared this foresight — that giving Americans the freedom to live as they may would lead to a healthy democracy, through the promulgation of different ideas and knowledge as well as through vigorous debate.
You can’t have freedom without diversity
Many who cite Freedom as their patriotic raison d’être do not seem to tolerate well the exercise of freedom by others, particularly others they disagree with or do not like. But as the great Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer once said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” She had the insight that if her civil rights could be taken away from her, then no one else’s rights would be safe in this nation either.
America has always struggled to live up to its founding ideals — but it seems like if we want to truly honor their memories, we would continue to take that vision at face value and continue to carry the light of the torch of equality, perhaps upwards to the crest of a hill from whence we may shine once again.
Elder wisdom, Thinkers, and Creators Since Antiquity
Some say there’s nothing new under the sun. Maybe we don’t need to go that far — but we should definitely appreciate the voluminous contributions of the ancient thinkers and great philosophers of antiquity, who figured out a dizzying array of complicated concepts long before the modern era.
We have much to learn from our ancestral teachers. Here’s a place to start — which shall grow over time as the knowledge is passed down yet again, age unto age. Things that stand the test of time are valuable, no matter what the currency of the day.
The Great Philosophers
Name
Known for
Born
Died
Where lived
Influenced
St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologiae
1225
1274
Italy
Anaxagoras
Early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who moved forward ideas about the nature of existence
c. 500 BC
c. 428 BC
Greece, Persia
Diogenes, Plutarch
Hannah Arendt
A politically progressive Jewish philosopher, Arendt fled the Nazi regime for America, where she wrote the foundational text on the political psychology of authoritarianism, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)
1906
1975
Germany, America
Aristotle
Student of Plato and founder of the Lyceum, he is widely known for his Socratic Method of questioning as a basis for philosophical discussion
384 BC
322 BC
Greece
The Enlightenment, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante
Marcus Aurelius
Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher who advocated for cultivating an ethos of impermanence and doing one's duty.
121
180
Roman Empire
Avicenna
Persian polymath, father of early medicine, and a key figure during the Islamic Golden Age
980
1037
Persia
Francis Bacon
declaring that human intellect and reason are means of discovering the truth: "Knowledge is power“
1561
1626
England
Roger Bacon
Most celebrated European scientist of the Middle Ages.
1220
1292
England
Pierre Bourdieu
The French sociologist's work focuses on how upper social classes preserve their social privileges through generations despite the persistent myth of social mobility in post-industrial liberal societies
1930
2002
France
Jeremy Bentham
father of Utilitarianism
1748
1832
England
Daniel Bernoulli
Swiss mathematician widely credited for pioneering the field of statistics
1700
1782
Switzerland
Jacob Bernoulli
1655
1705
Switzerland
Jean Boudin
French political philosopher known for his theory of sovereignty
1530
1596
France
Louis Braille
French educator and inventor of the Braille system of reading and writing for the blind
1809
1852
France
Brunelleschi
Italian architect, sculptor, and designer
1377
1446
Italy
Joseph Campbell
Literature professor most known for his work in world mythologies, and the widely observed narrative of the archetypal hero
1904
1987
White Plains, NY
George Lucas and Star Wars
Andrew Carnegie
Gilded Age tycoon who made a fortune leading the steel industry in the late 19th century, becoming one of the richest Americans in history
1835
1919
Scotland, America
Cicero
Roman statesman, orator, philosopher, scholar, lawyer, and skeptic who championed a return to republican government during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar.
106 BC
43 BC
Rome
John Locke, David Hume, Motesquieu, Edmund Burke
Marquis de Condorcet
French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who played a key role in transforming European society from feudalism to modern secular democracy.
1743
1794
France
Thomas Jefferson
Confucius
Confucianism -- a system of ethics and morals to guide "right" behavior
551 BC
479 BC
China
Marie Curie
Chemist and physicist whose work on radioactivity earned her a Nobel Prize -- the first woman ever to win the award.
1867
1934
Poland, France
Leonardo da Vinci
The Italian polymath, painter, engineer, inventor, scientist et al was a giant of the Renaissance. He is often credited as being the greatest painter in th history of art.
1452
1519
Italy
Charles Darwin
English naturalist most famous for the knowledge of evolution
1809
1882
England
Democritus
basic theory of the atom: a fundamental building block unit of all things that itself is not divisible (although later we would discover even smaller particles, the atom is still essentially the most basic building block)
460 BC
371 BC
Greece
René Descartes
cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am
1596
1650
France
Alexis de Tocqueville
French diplomat, philosopher, historian, and aristocrat best known for his two volume Democracy in America (1835 & 1840), now considered one of the earliest works of sociology.
1805
1859
France
Diogenes
The most famous of the Cynics, a school of philosophy founded in Athens c. 400 BC, advocating the pursuit of happiness through avoiding the unnecessary temptations of material goods
412 BC
323 BC
Greece
Zeno
Emilé Durkheim
anomie — concept of lack of a shared moral order. Normlessness.
1858
1917
France
Albert Einstein
Known for his theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, Einstein is widely agreed to be one of the greatest physicist of all time.
1879
1955
Germany, America
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writer, philosopher, poet, and abolitionist who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and became a key figure in the American romantic movement
1803
1882
America
Henry David Thoreau
Empedocles
Greek philosopher best known for his cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements.
494 BC
434 BC
Greece
Epicurus
Greek philosopher and founder of the highly influential school of philosophy bearing his name, Epicureanism
341 BC
270 BC
Greece
John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx
Erasmus
A Dutch philosopher and Catholic theologian, Erasmus is acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of the northern Renaissance
1466
1536
Netherlands
Euclid
Greek mathematician and founder of geometry
c. 325 BC
c. 270 BC
Alexandria, Egypt
Michael Faraday
Hugely influential English scientist who made numerous contributions to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry
1791
1867
England
Enrico Fermi
Italian physicist who emigrated to America with his Jewish wife in 1938 and worked on the Manhattan Project, creating the world's first nuclear reactor and becoming dubbed the "architect of the atomic bomb."
1901
1954
Italy, America
Michel Foucault
Widely influential philosopher, literary critic, historian, and activist best known for his theories on the relationship between power and knowledge.
1926
1984
France
Sigmund Freud
Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis
1856
1939
Austria, UK
John Kenneth Galbraith
Concept of countervailing power — that collective worker power is needed to balance against growing corporatism in the economy
1908
2006
Canada, America
Galen
Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher credited with developing the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, neurology, and logic
130
200
Greece, Rome
Galileo
The Italian polymath is considered the father of modern science, making groundbreaking contributions to the fields of modern physics, observational astronomy, and the scientific method itself.
1564
1642
Italy
Siddharta Gautama
The Buddha; achieving enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in India
563 BC
483 BC
India
Ghiberti
Sculptor most famous for his creation of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry
1378
1455
Italy
Johann Gutenberg
Invented the printing press, democratizing the dissemination of information for the first time.
1394
1468
Germany
Jürgen Habermas
German philosopher and member of the Frankfurt School, his work addresses public opinion and the public sphere through the lens of critical theory
1929
Germany
Friedrich Hegel
One of the most important figures in German idealism and a founding figure in Western philosophy
1770
1831
Germany
Martin Heidigger
German philosopher and member of the Nazi Party
1889
1976
Germany
Heraclitus
posited that change or flow is the most basic character of nature; that the world is characterized by opposites; and that God or "logos" is the essence of nature's constant flux and source of all things
535 BC
475 BC
Greece
Herodotus
first historian; first journalist; first foreign correspondent
480 BC
425 BC
Greece
Hippocrates
Greek physician who is considered the Father of Medicine and known for the Hippocratic oath still in use today
c. 460 BC
c. 370 BC
Greece
Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher and founder of modern political philosophy
1588
1679
England
Homer
Ancient Greek poet and author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey
c. 750 BC
Greece
David Hume
Key Enlightenment philosopher who championed empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism
1711
1776
Scotland
William James
The father of American psychology
1842
1910
America
Thomas Jefferson
Founding Father and third president of the U.S., Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence
1743
1826
America
Carl Jung
Founder of analytical psychology
1875
1961
Switzerland
Immanuel Kant
A central Enlightenment thinker who made contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics among other fields.
1724
1804
Prussia
John Maynard Keynes
English economist whose ideas profoundly changed the field of macroeconomics and economic policy, now known as Keynesian economics
1883
1946
England
Søren Kierkegaard
Danish poet and polymath regarded as the first existentialist philosopher
1813
1855
Denmark
Thomas Kuhn
Philosopher of science known for his theory of scientific paradigms and paradigm shifts
1922
1996
America
Lao Tzu
the Dao de Ching and philosophy of Daoism
6th c. BC
6th c. BC
China
Lamark
A botanist, naturalist, and taxonomist, the French academic was an early proponent of the idea of evolution
1744
1829
France
Gottfried Liebniz
The German polymath is a key figure in the history of philosophy and mathematics both
1646
1716
Prussia
Vladimir Lenin
Fomented the Russian Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the tsarist regime
1870
1924
Russia
Joseph Stalin
Carolus Linnaeus
The father of modern taxonomy and inventor of binomial nomenclature for the modern system of naming organisms
1707
1778
Sweden
John Locke
philosophy of liberty and natural rights
1632
1704
England
Martin Luther
Kicked off the Protestant Reformation when he broke with the Catholic Church over the practice of indulgences
1483
1546
Germany
James Madison
Founding Father and fourth president of the U.S., Madison is known as the father of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights, as well as a co-author of the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay
1751
1836
America
Karl Marx
His political theories were so revolutionary he lived in exile much of his life, with his works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital exerting enormous influence on subsequent intellectual thought and world history
1818
1883
Germany, England
John Stuart Mill
A key thinker in the pantheon of classical liberalism, Mill contributed to political theory, political economy, and social theory among others
1806
1873
England
Mozi
An ethical philosophy advocating the caring for everyone equally
470 BC
391 BC
China
Legalism
Mohammad
Arab social and political leader who founded the religion of Islam
570
632
Mecca
Isaac Newton
One of the greatest scientists of all time, Newton discovered gravity and the laws of motion among much else
1642
1727
England
Friedrich Nietzsche
Key figure in modern intellectual history
1844
1900
Germany
Alfred Nobel
Inventor and philanthropist who gave his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize
1833
1896
Sweden
Georgia O'Keeffe
Painter known as the Mother of American modernism
1887
1986
America
Thomas Paine
Political theorist and revolutionary whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis helped persuade the colonists to declare independence from Great Britain
1737
1809
Britain; America
Parmenides
early Rationalist; believed our perceptions are an illusion shielding us from true reality, which is only discernable via human reason
515 BC
445 BC
Greece
Plato
Louis Pasteur
A French chemist and microbiologist who discovered vaccination and pasteurization, Pasteur is considered the father of bacteriology and the father of microbiology
1822
1895
France
Petrarch
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters helped spark the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century
1304
1374
Italy
Philo of Alexandria
Philosopher and theologist who entwined Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy
c. 20 BC
c. 50 AD
Alexandria, Egypt
Plato
Platonic Forms
427 BC
347 BC
Greece
Aristotle
Pliny the Elder
Author, naturalist, and navy commander who wrote encyclopedic works on natural philosophy
23
79
Rome
Marco Polo
The first European to create a detailed history of his voyage to Asia via the Silk Road, including China, Japan, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
1254
1324
Italy
Neil Postman
The professor and cultural critic warned against the ill effects of tchnology and is best known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
1931
2003
America
Protagoras
Father of relativism; coined the phrase "man is the measure of all things"
490 BC
420 BC
Greece
Pythagoras
The Pythagorean theorem
570 BC
495 BC
Greece
Parmenides
François Rabelais
A writer, physician, Greek scholar, Renaissance thinker, Rabelais is infamous for his satirical and bawdy humor
1483
1553
France
John Rawls
Moral and political philosopher known for the thought experiment known as the "veil of ignorance," in which participants make decisions about the society they will live in without knowing a priori which class or social position they themselves would occupy.
1921
2002
American
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Political philosopher whose concept of the Social Contract inspired the French and American Revolutions, and underpins all modern liberal democracies
1712
1778
France
The Enlightenment, French Revolution
Jean-Paul Sartre
A key thinker in the philosophy of existentialism
1905
1980
France
Arthur Schopenhauer
The German philosopher was one of the first in the west to embrace Indian philosophy, including asceticism, self-denial, and the concept of worldly illusion. He influenced many other important thinkers and creators of the 19th and 20th centuries
1788
1860
Poland
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Richard Wagner, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler
Joseph Schumpeter
An Austrian emigree to the US, Schumpeter taught at Harvard and popularized the economic term "creative destruction"
1883
1950
Hungary, United States
Seneca
Rhetoric teacher and Stoic philosopher
55 BC
37 AD
Roman Empire
Adam Smith
This Scottish philosopher was a pioneer of political economy, and is widely regarded as the father of economics and the father of capitalism.
1723
1790
Scotland
David Hume
Socrates
Widely considered a founder of philosophy; the dialectic method, among much else
469 BC
399 BC
Greece
Plato
Spinoza
An early Enlightenment thinker inspired by Descartes to go on to lead the Dutch Golden Age
1632
1677
The Netherlands
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
The author, mathematical statistician, and former options trader has written several influential books on probability, uncertainty, and randomness.
1960
Lebanon, America
Thales
Posited water as being the basic material of the cosmos
624 BC
546 BC
Miletus, Greece
Theocritus
Creator of ancient Greek pastoral poetry
c. 300 BC
c. 260 BC
Greece
Thucydides
Athenian historian and general who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War about the conflict between Sparta and Athens
460 BC
400 BC
Greece
Edward Tufte
Professor of computer science at Yale and a pioneer in the field of data visualization
1942
America
Virgil
Regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets, Virgil penned the Aeneid, the national epic of ancient Rome
70 BC
19 BC
Rome
Dante and the Divine Comedy
Vitruvius
Roman author, architect, and army engineer known for his significant contributions to architecture and design
c. 80 BC
c. 15 BC
Rome
The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci
Voltaire
Key figure in the Enlightenment, Voltaire was famous for his criticism of the Catholic Church and advocacy of civil liberties including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state
1694
1778
France
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
James Watson
Credited with discovering the double helix structure of the DNA molecule
1928
America
Max Weber
German historian and political economist widely regarded as one of the most important theorists of modern Western society
1864
1920
Germany
Critical theory, the Frankfurt School
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Considered one of the greatest modern philosophers, Wittgenstein made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind.
1889
1951
Austria, England
Zeno
Founder of the Stoic school of philosophy in 4th c. BCE Greece and Parmenides's most famous student.
Or: How Milton Friedman destroyed Western civilization, the neolliberalism story.
An economic ideology first theorized in the 40s and 50s by scholars, it was brought to popular attention in the 1970s by the works of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand among others. It grew in popularity and became widely adopted in U.S. economic policy beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 80s.
The essential heart of neoliberalism is the idea of the rich as top performers and job creators, driving the economy forward through their achievements and innovations; and that societies work best with little government regulation and where citizens are shaped to work according to market principles. Its adoption as a major driver of policy effectively undid many of the gains to middle class opportunity created by the New Deal, FDR‘s ambitious public works project that pulled the nation out from the grips of the Great Depression following the 1929 crash on Wall Street.
Neoliberalism is the dominant economic orthodoxy in the modern era. It is both a political and a financial ideology, with the following extremist beliefs:
Antigovernment sentiment — Their pitch is that all governments, including democratic ones, threaten individual liberty and must be stopped (or “drowned in the bathtub,” in the words of anti-tax zealots and movement conservatives).
Free markets should conquer governments — They claim, absurdly, that the toppling of self-governance would improve both economies and individual liberties.
The victory of markets is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it — The fall of the Soviet Union and Cold War Communism was deemed the “end of history” by neoliberals, who believed that laissez-faire free market capitalism would inevitably triumph over all other forms of economic and political systems.
Economies work best when governments don’t intervene — Neoliberals want to prevent the powers of government from interfering with their ability to cut corners, dump industrial waste, pay fair wages, offer benefits, adhere to safety standards, engage in deceptive advertising, commit tax evasion, and so on — while continuing to supply them a steady stream of the public’s money via unpaid for tax cuts that balloon holes in the deficit. They fight against regulation tooth and nail, and try to claim that markets operate “naturally” as if under something akin to laws of physics — while failing to mention that there are no markets without regulation, without standards of fairness, without a justice system to enforce contracts and do its best to ensure a relatively equal business playing field.
The alchemy of neoliberalism will transmute greed into gold for everyone — The neoliberal promise is about spreading wealth, freedom, and democracy around the world — at the barrel of a gun, missile, or drone if necessary. Neoliberals consider greed to be the essence of human nature, and have modeled an entire societal system around this most base of human instincts. They claim, improbably — and surely many are True Believers — that narcissism and the aggressive pursuit of power and wealth will somehow magically create peace, happiness, and riches for everyone.
The insistence that governments and self-rule should be subordinated to the ultra-rich, to the oligarchs — that, to me, is the core essence of why this framework is evil. The staggeringly dissonant conviction about transforming sociopathy into global peace is a very close second.
Since the 1970s and accelerating with Reagan years, wealthy elites in the right wing have been spending gobs of their ill-earned wealth on creating a conservative movement echo chamber of think tanks, talk radio, literature, televangelists, YouTube streamers, and more — it is the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton warned us about. It most certainly exists, and it most certainly is aggressively pursuing its political aims to disenfranchise the American people as fully as possible, so as to better walk away with an absurdly unjust share of the mutually created wealth by the wealth of intelligent and diligent labor here in the United States.
Common whites
It appeals to the MAGA crowd because it allows them to vicariously tag along with the rich and powerful right-wing bigots who flaunt and dangle their wealth in front of the plebes by which to entice them to open up their wallets and send in a meagre donation for this or that white victimhood fund that does nothing but enrich the scam artists who run it as a hollow shell. It validates their hardcore white supremacy and casual racism alike, provides the sadistic satisfaction of attacking their enemies (symbolically and/or literally), gives them something to do and believe in, and keeps them entertained while their pockets are being fleeced in broad daylight.
Neoliberalism has succeeded in undermining some of the last shreds of democratic infrastructure and civic goodwill in society at this point in American political history. The defenses brilliantly architected by the Founders to ensure checks and balances would manage the power games in Washington to within workable levels have frayed even further under 4 years of Trump, and the vitriol of the January 6 coup attempt and insurrection that’s fueled further right-wing Big Lie entrenchment and domestic terrorist extremism.
Democracy is in crisis, and neoliberalism the culprit of this hostage story.
At least Joe Biden is correct in his analysis of the solution: we should tax the rich.
For all their angry rhetoric and now, overtly political violence, I maintain that it is the right wing that is profoundly insecure, anxious, and in need of soothing. They are panicking at the idea that the world can possibly change without their approval, and deprive them of their stolen superiority — they do not want the party to end for white male dominance of this entire planet.
Right-wing authoritarian adults latch on to symbols and ideologies and demagogues as “surrogates” for the childhood safety blanket they once needed — these are the “adult-acceptable” pablum substitutes.
Moral Flat Earthers characteristically lack discernment between very good and very bad on the moral spectrum — it is as if they see the “absolute value” of the moral impact and judge very evil to be “good” because of its sheer bigness. They are overwhelmed by the size and power of forces beyond their control, and become gobsmacked easily at the sight of muscle being flexed. Many want to be on the side of the flexer.
Behold, the inverted morality system of evil. They compete with each other to be the Biggest Bad, because moral flat earthers cannot see positive or negative — only magnitude. Evil is taking the "absolute value" of terrible things to magically transmute them into "good"
Moreover, they see the interest in discernment as a waste of time — as inefficient. Which, in the religio-capitalist worldview, is extremely sinful. When the money keeps rolling in, you don’t ask how — just Give it to God and let Jesus take the wheel. Because God loves people with money, and Jesus must have hung out with the poors by mistake, that quirky guy!
Inability to grasp ethics = hallmark trait of sociopaths. Or as I like to call them, Moral Flat Earthers.
Moral Flat Earthers are bad at analogies, because they have no proper sense of the weight or gravity of things relative to each other. They spend very little time turning concepts over in their mind to understand them — their wisdom is largely received, and often sort of cut and pasted there by others. They pastiche their guiding philosophy from random sampling the authorities throughout their lives.
That she unironically compared mask-wearing to the Holocaust speaks volumes about the psychopathology of people who lack a functional conscience: they have zero ability to make moral distinctions. I call them "Moral Flat Earthers" — they are extremely dangerous, esp. in groups.
This is an attempt (bear with me!) to encapsulate a framework of the major events of importance since our curious species came down from the trees. Human History Timeline is going to be a work in progress… forever! Be sure to check back as time unfolds.
Year
Event
Region
Theme
Domain
-250000
Modern humans emerge in Africa.
Africa
Ancient History
Science
-120000
Earliest cave paintings we know of are located in a South African cave.
Africa
Ancient History
Arts
-100000
Modern humans migrate to the Middle East.
Middle East
Ancient History
Human History
-75000
Modern humans arrive in Southeast Asia and China.
Asia
Ancient History
Human History
-40000
Modern humans had now spread around the globe as we arrived in Europe, living alongside Neanderthals. The earliest European cave paintings are from around this time in Spain.
Europe
Ancient History
Human History
-28000
The Neanderthals go extinct.
Europe
Ancient History
Human History
-16000
Humans cross the Bering Strait to Alaska over a land bridge exposed by the warming planet
North America
Ancient History
Human History
-15000
The ice age ends, and global temperatures rise by 15 degrees C.
Global
Ancient History
Science
-14000
Modern humans reach South America
South America
Ancient History
Human History
-10000
First human settlements begin in the North American Great Plains, modern-day Syria, and in the Yellow River Valley region of China.
Global
Ancient History
Human History
-7000
Invention of textiles in Egypt
Africa, Middle East
Man vs. Nature
Technology
-5000
Cultivation of tin as a metal resource
Ancient History
Technology
-4241
The Egyptians begin using the 365 day calendar
Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
-3800
Bronze Age begins
Global
Ancient History
Technology
-3500
Mesopotamian cities Ur, Uruk, and others have emerged in and around modern-day Iraq
Middle East
Ancient History
Politics
-2980
The Great Pyramid of Zoser is built in Egypt
Africa, Middle East
Ancient History
Architecture
-2000
The last woolly mammoths die out and the species go extinct
Global
Man vs. Nature
Science
-2000
Epic of Gilgamesh composed
Middle East, Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
-1792
Hammurabi's Code of Laws
Middle East
Democracy's Story
Politics
-1200
The Iron Age begins almost simultaneously around the world, in the Middle East, Europe, and India
Middle East, Europe, Global
Man vs. Nature
Technology
-800
The city of Rome is founded by Romulus and Remus
Europe
Ancient History
Politics
-560
Siddharta Gautama born in India, later to become the Buddha; founder of Buddhism
Asia
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
-530
Greek tragedy is in full swing with contributions from Aeschylus, Thespis, soon Sophocles, and others
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
-510
Roman Republic formed when the citizens overthrew king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, aka Tarquin the Proud
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
-49
Republic of Rome becomes the Roman Empire when Julius Caesar overthrows the Republic
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
-27
Julius Caesar Augustus becomes the first emperor of Rome, ruling for 45 years
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
79
eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Science
312
New self-made Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity — at least nominally; he makes the empire safe and welcoming to Christianity, while maintaining many of his old Roman beliefs
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
325
Council of Nicaea called by Emperor Constantine; the adoption of the Nicene Creed establishes the empire's stance on the divinity of Jesus and establishes Christianity as the state religion
Europe
476
The last western Roman emperor , Romulus Augustinius, is deposed — beginning the era of the Holy Roman Empire and marking the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages
Europe
Age of Empires
Technology
632
Death of Muhammad leads much of the Middle East and North Africa to convert to Islam
Middle East, Africa, Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Politics
656
The first battle between the Shia (followers of Ali) and the Sunnis (followers of Aisha) over the fate of Islam — a war still raging to this day
Middle East
900-1200
the golden age of North African science
Africa
Our Place in the Universe
Science
1000
an Indian mathematician recognizes the power of zero
Central Asia, Asia
Our Place in the Universe
Science
1040
Movable type is invented in China
Asia
Knowing Things
Technology
1066
Battle of Hastings — France's William the Conqueror defeats the other claimant to the English throne Harold and is crowned the first Norman king of England.
Europe
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1073
China invents an elaborate incense seal clock
Asia
Knowing Things
Technology
1149
Founding of Oxford University in England
Europe
Knowing Things
Knowledge
1200
Cambridge University founded in England
Europe
Knowing Things
Knowledge
1265
first Parliament elected in England, consisting mostly of feudal lords, knights, and wealthy aristocrats
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1271
Venetian Marco Polo travels to China with his father at the age of 17; having been the first Europeans to visit the court of Kublai Khan over a 9-year stretch, the elder Nicolò Polo brings his son with him on the return journey — it will take them a trek of three and a half years
Europe, Asia
Age of Empires
Knowledge
1328
The sawmill is invented
Europe
Business of the World
Technology
1330
the hour becomes essentially our modern concept of hour
Global
Man vs. Nature
Technology
1347-1351
Approximately 75 million people die from the Bubonic Plague
Europe, Africa, Middle East
Man vs. Nature
Science
1399
English poet Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
1431
Joan of Arc is burned at the stake
Europe
Age of Empires
Politics
1445
Gutenberg invents the printing press
Europe
Attention Must be Paid
Technology
1492
Christopher Columbus lands in the Americas, ushering in the age of Spanish Conquistadores and the colonial period — first in the Bahamas, then Cuba, then Hispaniola before heading home
North America
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Knowledge
1517
Martin Luther, a German monk, becomes disillusioned with the church's selling of indulgences to fund construction projects (and with Calvinism more generally). Submits his 95 theses to papal authority, and after various machinations is excommunicated for challenging the authority of the Pope
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1583
Galileo dedicates himself to the study of mathematics and physics
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1585
Founding of the first American colony at Roanoke, in modern-day North Carolina
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1607
Founding of the second American colony at Jamestown, in modern-day Virginia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1636
Harvard University founded
North America
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1637
the first American slave ship sets out on her maiden voyage
North America, Africa
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1665
Plague arrives in London
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Science
1688
Glorious Revolution in England: Parliament invited Dutch William of Orange & his wife Mary, James's Protestant daughter, to replace James
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1701
Yale College founded
North America
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1760
invention of the steam engine in England (James Watt)
Europe
Man vs. Nature
Technology
1776
U.S. Declaration of Independence is written in Philadelphia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1787
U.S. Constitution written in Philadelphia
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1789
U.S. Constitution is ratified
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1799
~10-year French Revolution overthrows the monarchy
Europe
Democracy's Story
Politics
1839
Louis Daguerre demonstrates the photographic technique he's developed: the camera
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Arts
1844
The Associated Press founded
North America
Attention Must be Paid
Knowledge
1859
Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species
Europe
Our Place in the Universe
Knowledge
1865
U.S. Civil War ends
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1914
WWI begins
1921
Tulsa massacre
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1942
Pearl Harbor
North America
Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism
Politics
1945
WWII ends
1949
Formation of NATO
Europe, North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1953
Korean War ends
1954
Brown v. the Board of Education
North America
Democracy's Story
Politics
1961
Stanley Milgram conducts his famous obedience studies showing how willing students are to give electric shocks to their peers if ordered to by authority figures
Science
1964
Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
Democracy's Story
Politics
1975
The Vietnam War ends
1980
Election of former actor and PR agent Ronald Reagan as President of the United States
1984
Breakup of the Bell system monopoly
1986
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine
1987
Iran-Contra scandal wherein Reagan trades arms for hostages and lies about it
1989
Berlin Wall falls
1990
Tim Berners-Lee puts up the first web page
1991
Soviet Union collapses
1998
Microsoft monopoly broken up
2000
Vladimir Putin becomes Russian President following Yeltsin's resignation
2007
Apple announces the first iPhone; Google announces Android
2008
Bitcoin and the blockchain invented
2010
Citizens Unied ushers in the era of dark money in politics
Somewhere deep in the bowels of conservative think tanks a casual priesthood of suits is milling about and intoning the scripted liturgy about how "under a close TEXTUAL reading of the Constitution one can clearly see this emerge as the core vision of the Founders…" https://t.co/XrEOZOb3Q3
.@GovRonDeSantis has no problem killing children from a pandemic despite science showing masks save lives but suddenly uses science as a defense for the Texas draconian law. They are such dangerous corrupt hypocrites https://t.co/gmP0B9o0Lg
Why don’t we get tougher on this + other issues? Where warranted and legal:
How about a 6-week mandatory waiting period per gun purchase?
How about a $10k bounty fee if you turn in someone with a ghost gun, or the guy who sold it to him, or the friend who drove him across state lines, or put him up so he could go rampaging randomly at a peaceful rally? https://t.co/0JnvR28Lph
It feels like the 1930s all over again — and with good reason. The rise of American fascists and right-wing extremism around the world has been a known trend for decades, and America’s past flirtations with fascism had been largely swept under the rug by the then anti-semites who tried to put a stop to FDR‘s New Deal and prevent the U.S. from getting into World War II.
Those fascists, butthurt over America’s overwhelmingly popular decision to enter the war and stop Hitler from exterminating the Jews, seethed with jealousy at the post-war “liberal consensus” that flourished alongside the booming US economy, propelled first by the war effort and later by the peacetime success of the New Deal‘s long shadow and the burgeoning of the American middle class.
The American fascists turned into the John Birch Society, and the McCarthyites, and the Libertarians, and the Moral Majority, and the Gingrich Revolution, and the Tea Party, and the MAGA / QAnon stew sloshing around mass media. The kooks on the far right — the kind of ilk so cray cray that even William F. Buckley excommunicates you from the Republican Party — have taken over the hen house now. Outrage sells, as Facebook well knows — and as two-bit dictators around the world have bribed Mark Zuckerberg to brainwash the masses using the most inanely illogical propaganda prolefeed, the world tilts dangerously towards authoritarianism and the end of our democracy as we know it. And with it, all hope for truth and light into the future for some time to come — the equivalent of a political meteor hitting the Earth.
The American fascists are still around, and now they have tools of propaganda that Goebbels could never have even wet dreamed of. They’re more powerful and more well-connected — to other sociopaths, malignant narcissists, and other pathological cult-leader types who might be of transactional service to each other from time to time. Many of them cling to ideas of Christian nationalism and Strict Father Morality. We’d be wise to keep an eye on these folks.
Name
Type
Location
Known for
Greg Abbott
Politician
Texas
The 48th governor of Texas since 2015 who has presided over multiple energy grid disasters, a self-induced economic fiasco at the border, and ghoulish vigilante legislation designed to terrorize women seeking abortion services, and a perversion of the child sex trafficking apparatus to instead target and tyrannize trans youth
Roman Abramovich
Foreign agent
Russian oligarch close to both Putin and Trump
ACU Strategic Partners
Foreign agent
A company seeking to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East in partnership with a sanctioned Russia company; Mike Flynn was working for them without having disclosed it to the US government as required.
Sheldon Adelson
Businessperson
Las Vegas, NV
CEO billionaire of the Sands Corp casino empire (died, 2021)
AggregateIQ
Corporation
Canadian data firm connected to Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL Group that played a role in spreading Brexit propaganda
Roger Ailes
Media personality
Deceased
Primogenitor of Fox News whose downfall came over dozens of women testified to his decades of sexual assault and blackmail behaviors
Todd Akin
Politician
Missouri
Politician who lost his Senate race to Clairse McCaskill in 2012 when he made the comment on TV about women having a way to "shut the whole thing down" to avoid becoming pregnant if raped.
Nelson W. Aldrich
Ali Alexander
Extremist
One of the primary organizers of the Stop the Steal rally on January 6 that turned into and/or attempted to mask a coup attempt
Samuel Alito
Judge
Washington, DC
Supreme Court Justice who penned a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, riddled with Christian nationalist tropes and arbitrary Originalist interpretations
American Energy Alliance
Non-profit
A tax-exempt nonprofit that advocated for corporate-friendly energy policies. Koch's Freedom Partners donated $1.5 million in 2012.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
Non-profit
Corporate-funded nonprofit that writes legislation for Republican legislatures, including spearheading the efforts to wrest partisan control over election results in 49 states.
Americans for Prosperity
PAC
The Koch Brothers' Libertarian political advocacy arm
Philip Anschutz
Businessperson
Colorado
CO oil and entertainment billionaire and founder of Qwest Communications
Michael Anton
Lee Atwater
Political Operative
Infamously brutal Republican strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who promoted the "abstraction" of racism via Southern Strategy and ran the infamous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Michele Bachman
Politician
MN
Minnosota Republican politician who was the first woman in her state to be elected to the House of Representatives, she is known for her extremist Dominionist views
Steve Bannon
Media personality
Houseboats
Former Breitbart provocateur who joined the Trump administration as a key advisor and dark propagandist for Trump intent on sowing chaos
Ross Barnett
William Barr
Public Sector
Donald Trump's Attorney General who shielded him from public awareness of his crimes, corruptions, and compromises during the 45th presidency.
Maurice Barres
Author
France
French nationalist author in the early 20th century who introduced Great Replacement theory
Louis Beam
White Supremacist
Roy Beck
White Supremacist
Executive Director of NumbersUSA, member of the white supremacist Tanton Network
Andy Biggs
Politician
AZ
House Republican subpoena'd by the January 6 Commission for his role in the attempted coup
Black Legion
Extremist
Michigan
Secret society of black-hooded terrorists working in MI against labor unions and labor organizers in the 1930s. Legionnaires talked of staging a coup to oust FDR and imposing a fascist regime in the United States
David Bogatin
Oligarch
NYC
A top figure in the Russian mafia who bought 5 luxury condos in Trump Tower to launder money, he admitted in 1987.
Jacob Bogatin
Oligarch
David Bogatin's brother, and a partner of notorious Russian mob moss Semion Mogilevich
John Wilkes Booth
Criminal
Deceased
Stage actor and Confederate sympathizer who shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head in April 1865, a few months after his re-election in 1864.
L. Brent Bozell
Extremist
BFF of William F. Buckley and author of Conscience of a Conservative to support Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1960.
Harry and Lynde Bradley
Kochtopus
Midwesterners who built their wealth on defense contracts
Andrew Breitbart
Media personality
Founded both Brietbart and the Huffington Post
Anders Breivik
Extremist
Oslo, Norway
Mass murderer who killed 77 people in Oslo, Norway as inspired by the white supremacist ideology of Great Replacement theory
Mo Brooks
Politician
Huntsville, AL
House Republican from Alabama subpoena'd by the January 6 Committee for his role in the attempted coup
Brother's Circle
Criminal
Organized crime gang pursued by then-FBI head Robert Mueller circa 2011
Michael Brown
Ferguson, MO
Unarmed black man killed by the police in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a series of riots in the city.
Pat Buchanan
Politician
Washington, DC
Politician and paleoconservative who worked for presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan before running against incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1992; widely considered a bigot, racist, and antisemite.
William F. Buckley Jr
Media personality
Doug Burley
Political Operative
Founding and leading both The Family and the National Prayer Breakfast of right-wing power brokers
Cambridge Analytica
Corporation
London, UK
Data firm implicated in the propaganda campaigns of both Brexit in 2015 and Donald Trump in 2016 that stole hundreds of millions of Facebook profiles and mined the treasure trove of information for weaknesses to manipulate in attempts to persuade
Renaud Camus
Author
France
French writer and critic who created the recent 2011 formulation of the Great Replacement Theory
Tucker Carlson
Media personality
NYC
Fox News evening opinion anchor and fish stick heir who promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory to his primetime audience of older white men.
Doug Casey
Businessperson
Ayn Rand devotee and "anarcho-capitalist" who specializes in how to profit from turmoil
Michael Catanzaro
Lobbyist
Partner at the CGCN Group lobbying firm who headed "energy independence" for the Trump transition team.
Cato Institute
Think Tank
Madison Cawthorn
Politician
NC
Center to Protect Patient Rights
Kochtopus
Dark money group funded by the Kochs to attack the ACA with fearmongering and vitriol
Mike Cernovich
Media personality
CGCN Group
Lobbyist
Lobbyist for the Koch brothers
James Chaney
Activist
Neshoba County, MS
One of 3 civil rights activists murdered by local white supremacists when engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, along with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
Jeremy Joseph Christian
Extremist
Portland, OR
stabbed 3 people who tried to intervene while he was hurling anti-Muslim slurs at 2 young women in Portland, OR
Chris Christie
Politician
Former governor of NJ and former Trump supporter and transition team lead who became a Trump critic
Michael Cohen
Businessperson
NYC
Donald Trump's personal lawyer, sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for felony crimes, including campaign finance crimes
Steven A. Cohen
Businessperson
Finance (SAC Capital Advisors)
Roy Cohn
Political Operative
Deceased
Lawyer who represented Senator Joseph McCarthy in the infamous televised 1954 hearings, and later went on to become a mafia-connected fixer in NYC and mentor to budding real estate developer Donald Trump
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Think Tank
Washington, DC
A Washington think tank that had been bankrolled by fossil fuel industries, particularly the Kochs.
Continental Resources
Corporation
Oklahoma
OK-based shale oil company with a large and profitable fracking operation
Coors brewing family
Koch Investor
Colorado
The Coors gave money to Oliver North to fund the Iran-Contra operation
Council of Conservative Citizens (CoC)
Ted Cruz
Politician
Texas
Jefferson Davis
Kim Davis
Public Sector
Kentucky
Former county clerk of Rowan County, KY who defied a US federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015
Devos family
Koch Investor
Founders of the Amway marketing empire; Betsy DuVos was the Secretary of Education under Trump
Amadou Diallo
New York
a West African immigrant mowed down by 41 shots from police when leaving his apartment on February 4, 1999.
James Dobson
Media personality
conservative talk-show host and fundamentalist Christian who strongly advocated spanking and corporal punishment be applied liberally to children
Chester Doles
Former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. Nearly beat a Black man to death in 1993. Marched in 2017 in Charlottesville.
Rod Dreher
Extremist
Benedict Option author and traditionalist
Dinesh D'Souza
Media personality
Conservative gadly who alleged that Obama was "African" in outlook rather than American, absorbing his "radical" views from his Kenyan father
Doug Ducey
Politician
AZ
Governor of Arizona
Aleksandr Dugin
Extremist
Russia
Russia's primary fascist political philosopher and originator of Eurasianism conspiracy theory
David Duke
White Supremacist
John Eastman
Political Operative
Ran against Kamala Harris in 2010 for California AG, then showed back up in 2020 to write an outrageous op-ed that Newsweek for some reason actually published, that claimed that she was "secretly" not a US resident and therefore not eligible to be the VP! Now the Kamala Harris birther
Myron Ebell
Political Operative
Outspoken climate change skeptic, who headed the Trump transition team for the EPA
Election Integrity Project California
Extremist
Election fraud group working with Leonard Leo
Larry Ellison
Businessperson
Gave $5 million to Marco Rubio
Cassandra Fairbanks
Jerry Falwell, Jr
Televangelist
The Family
Lobbyist
Shadowy DC group with tremendous sway in Congress and around the world, following a distorted "strongman Jesus" version of Christianity.
The Federalist Society
Extremist
Scott Fitzgerald
Politician
WI
House Republican
Michael Flynn
Cult Leader
For America
PAC
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Fox News
Corporation
Free Congress Foundation
Freedom Caucus
Politician
Freedom Partners
Kochtopus
The Koch Brothers' secretive donor club.
FreedomWorks
Extremist
Matt Gaetz
Politician
Kevin Gentry
Kochtopus
VP of Special Projects and VP of the Koch Foundation
Greg Gianforte
Politician
body-slamming Guardian reported Ben Jacobs while running for a GOP House seat in Montana
Newt Gingrich
Media personality
Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet
White Supremacist
Rudy Giuliani
Politician
NYC
GiveSendGo
"Christian" donation platform
Barry Goldwater
Politician
AZ
Seb Gorka
Political Operative
Billy Graham
Madison Grant
Political Operative
Close personal friend of Herbert Hoover who helped draft the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924 -- the Stephen Miller of his day. His "Passing of the Great Race" was beloved by Hitler as "his bible."
Chuck Grassley
Politician
Senator
The Great Awakening
Marjorie Taylor Greene
QAnon
GA
Eric Greitens
Politician
MO
Harold Hamm
Kochtopus
Billionaire founder of Continental Resources, an OK-based shale company with large fracking business & one of the charter members of the Kochs' donor circle.
James Henry Hammond
Extremist
Warren G. Harding
Politician
Enthusiastically supported the white-supremacist work of Lothrop Stoddard et al
Billy James Hargis
Extremist
Orrin Hatch
Politician
Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.
Josh Hawley
Politician
MO
Missouri Senator funded by Peter Thiel who gave the January 6 mob a fist bump on his way in to object to certifying the electoral count
Matthew Heimbach
Extremist
White nationalist and one of the founders of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Jesse Helms
Politician
Leona Helmsley
Diane Hendricks
WI
The wealthiest woman in Wisconsin at $3.6 billion
Heritage Foundation
Think Tank
Washington, DC
Honest Elections Project
Extremist
A conservative legal organization connected to Leonard Leo that files legal briefs to SCOTUS opposing mail-in ballots and other voting reforms that help more people to vote,
Herbert Hoover
Politician
Washington, DC
White supremacist and wealth supremacist, he was adamant about doing nothing to help people during the Great Depression.
Mike Huckabee
Politician
Laura Ingraham
Media personality
Fox News host
Andrew Jackson
Politician
Deceased
US President
John Birch Society
Extremist
Andrew Johnson
Politician
Deceased
US President
Chuck Johnson
Media personality
Alt-right super troll
Ron Johnson
Politician
Wisconsin Republican Senator who supported Donald Trump, promoted ivermectin for covid, and said he wasn't afraid of the January 6 mob because they were white people
Alex Jones
Media personality
Host of InfoWars, the 9/11 conspiracy show that put the genre on the map
Jim Jordan
Politician
OH
A long-time Tea Party hyena, the Congressman known as Gym once helped his buddy cover up decades of sexual abuse of young wrestlers in their care.
Judicial Education Project
Extremist
A legal group tied to Leonard Leo, working to advance conservative takeover of the judiciary.
Islam Karimov
Oligarch
Uzbekistan
Former Communist official who became the first president of Uzbekistan in 1991, and remained the country's dictator until his death in 2016.
Alex Kaschuta
Media personality
Right-wing podcaster
Brett Kavanaugh
Judge
DC
Dr. D. James Kennedy
creating a Dominionist "conversion" playbook
John F. Kennedy
Politician
Deceased
Robert F. Kennedy
Politician
Deceased
Anna Khachiyan
Martin Luther King
Activist
Deceased
Civil Rights leader in the 1960s, and enemy of Southern politicians
Charlie Kirk
Media personality
Walter Kirn
Author
MT
Up in the Air author and disaffected former member of the American intellectual class
KKK
White Supremacist
Bill Koch
Businessperson
Charles Koch
Kochtopus
Kansas
industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc.
David Koch
Kochtopus
Deceased
industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc. (now deceased)
Fred Koch
Kochtopus
Kansas
Father of Charles and David, Fred Koch was an early and fervent acolyte in the ultra-conservative John Birch Society
Frederick Koch
Businessperson
New York
David Koresh
Cult Leader
Waco, TX
Ku Klux Klan (see KKK)
White Supremacist
Kylie Jane Kremer
David Lane
White Supremacist
Member of the white supremacist group The Order who coined the 14-word slogan popular with Great Replacement adherents: "We must secure the exisatence of our people and a future for white children"
Ken Langone
Businessperson
Founder of Home Depot
Lyndon LaRouche
Cult Leader
Robert LeFevre
Kochtopus
Charles Koch's mentor, a quasi-anarchist, who said, "government is a disease masquerading as its own cure"
Leonard Leo
Extremist
Chairman of the Federalist Society, a legal organization working to pack the courts with conservative judges.
Marine Le Pen
Politician
France
Honor Levy
Liberty Counsel
Christian special rights group
The Liminal Order
William S. Lind
Political Operative
Kelly Loeffler
Politician
Georgia
Insider trading immediately upon arriving at her unelected Senate seat when her husband, President of the NYSE, found a way to have some money arrive at Brian Kemp, the Governor, who appointed her.
Dana Loesch
Media personality
NRA spokeswoman
Sen. Huey Long
Politician
Deceased
Thomas Mair
Extremist
Assassin of British MP Jo Cox, who was outspoken against the UK's Brexit campaign
Paul Manafort
Lobbyist
Clarence Manion
Blake Masters
Politician
AZ
John McAfee
Businessperson
Deceased
Sen. Joseph McCarthy
Politician
Deceased
Senator best known for his demagoguery against alleged Communist agents in the US government during the Cold War in the early 1950s
Kevin McCarthy
Politician
CA
Michael McKenna
Kochtopus
Lobbyist and President of MWR Strategies lobbying firm, who have the Koch brothers as clients
Timothy McVeigh
Extremist
Oklahoma City, OK
White supremacist McVeigh was a disgruntled former military guy who took up with the white power movement and executed the Oklahoma City bombing -- as inspired, he said, by enacting "revenge" for Waco.
Andrew Mellon
Businessperson
Rebekah Mercer
Oligarch
Daughter of NY hedge fund manager Robert Mercer; she helped guide the Trump transition team following the 2016 election, and funded right-wing social network Parler
Robert Mercer
Oligarch
Father of Rebekah Mercer and longtime right-wing donor
MicroChip
Pro-Trump bot-king
Stephen Miller
Extremist
Michael Milken
Cleta Mitchell
Extremist
OK
Lawyer who represented various right-wing entities including the NRA, and was considered the "fringe of the fringe" -- at age 70 she "represented" Trump during his telephone call to Brad Raffensperger asking him to find ~11,000 votes
Semion Mogilevich
Criminal
Notorious Russian mob boss
Stefan Molyneux
Media personality
Alt-right troll
Sun Myung Moon
Cult Leader
Leader of the Moonie cult and self-proclaimed deity, Mr Moon served time in federal prison for tax fraud, among other charges.
Roy Moore
Politician
AL
Trump-backed politician and pedophile who narrowly lost the Alabama Senate race to Doug Jones in 2018.
JP Morgan
Businessperson
Rupert Murdoch
Oligarch
Fox News owner famous for his amoral media
Jack Murphy
Benito Mussolini
MWR Strategies
Kochtopus
Lobbying firm for the Koch brothers
Dasha Nekrasova
neo-Nazis
Extremist
Terry Nichols
Extremist
Blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building with Timothy McVeigh
Richard Nixon
Politician
Ralph Norman
Politician
House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
NRA
Extremist
National Rifle Association
NYPD
Public Sector
New York Police Department
Barack Obama
Politician
Chicago, DC, Los Angeles
The 44th President of the United States, and the first black person to hold the job. He was widely loathed by the Right despite his positive record.
John M. Olin
Kochtopus
Chemical and munitions company titan
Viktor Orban
Politician
Radical right president of Hungary and Putin supporter
The Order
White supremacist group
Candace Owens
Extremist
Matt Parrott
Extremist
Co-founder with Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Laszlo Pasztor
Norman Vincent Peale
Businessperson
Christianity as a business man's religion
Mike Pence
Media personality
Donald Trump's VP
Rick Perry
Politician
Scott Perry
Politician
House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
Jordan B Peterson
Academic
A sort of hero figure to the incel crowd
William Pierce
Pioneer Fund
A white supremacist group set up for "race betterment" in 1997 at a private club.
Jeanine Pirro
Media personality
Fox News host known for having a bit of a drinking problem and a brash on-air personality
Mike Pompeo
Public Sector
Sec of State after the firing of Rex Tillerson; former CIA Director; former Republican congressman from KS and largest recipient of Koch campaign funds in all of Congress
Jack Posobiec
Media personality
Lewis Powell
Businessperson
Wrote a 1971 memo that rallied the largely white and male business community around a plan to dismantle the New Deal and the liberal consensus
Sydney Powell
Political Operative
Also Associates with UFO believers and anti-vaxxers
Proud Boys
Extremist
Militia group involved in the January 6 coup attempt
Thomas Pyle
Businessperson
president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and the Kochs
QAnon
QAnon
Conspiracy theory about Democratic pedophiles that recycles Nazi ideology
Jean Raspail
Author
France
French author of the 1973 Camp of the Saints novel about migrants organizing to take over France; the racist fiction inspired the white power movement of the 1980s, Steve Bannon, and a host of other fascist movements in Europe, America, and around the world
Nancy Reagan
Media personality
Deceased
Ronald Reagan
Politician
Deceased
Actor and Republican who became the 40th President from 1981 through 1989
Kyle Rittenhouse
Pat Robertson
Televangelist
Dylann Roof
George Romney
Mitt Romney
Politician
UT
Murray Rothbard
Extremist
Dave Rubin
Richard Mellon Scaife
Koch Investor
Heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes, and Koch donor
David Schnare
Political Operative
"Free-market environmentalist" who accused the EPA of having blood on its hands, who joined climate change denier Myron Ebell on the Trump transition team for the EPA
Stephen Schwarzman
Finance
Rick Scott
Politician
Jeff Sessions
Politician
AL
Marc Short
Political Operative
Ran the Koch Brothers' secretive donor club, Freedom Partners, before becoming Mike Pence's senior advisor during the 2016 presidential transition
A racist publishing company, part of the Tanton Network, that published the white nationalist novel Camp of the Saints
Richard Spencer
White Supremacist
Balaji Srinivasan
Businessperson
State Policy Network
Kochtopus
Funded in part by the Kochs
Dan Stein
White Supremacist
President of Tanton Network organization FAIR
Lothrop Stoddard
White Supremacist
Author of the 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Roger Stone
Lobbyist
Richard Strong
Businessperson
Strong Capital Management Mutual Fund
Sen. Robert Taft
Politician
John H. Tanton
White Supremacist
Michigan
White nationalist who organized The Tanton Network of 13 anti-immigrant organizations
Tea Party
PAC
Intensely antitax group
Peter Thiel
Businessperson
Los Angeles, CA
Eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire and pocketbook for the New Right project
Clarence Thomas
Judge
Washington, DC
Ginni Thomas
Political Operative
Washington, DC
Three Percenters
Extremist
Militia group who had a heavy presence at the January 6 attempted coup
Traditionalist Workers Party
Extremist
Turning Point USA
Extremist
Charlie Kirk's right-wing PR organization
Unabomber
Criminal
Unification Church
Cult Leader
Unite the Right
Activist
Charlottesville, NC
Charlottesville, NC event in 2018 where white supremecist groups marched with tiki torches, and activist Heather Hyer was killed by a right-wing extremist who drove his car through the crowd.
University of Texas at Austin
Academic
Austin, TX
JD Vance
Politician
OH
Venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte running for Senate in Ohio
Ricky Vaughn
Ruben Verastigui
Criminal
DC
Former RNC and other GOP offices staffer who made social media ads for the Trump campaign and was later arrested with child porn on his phone after a DHS sting.
John Vinson
Extremist
Head of the Tanton Network-backed anti-immigrant hate group American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF)
George Wallace
Politician
Alabama
Joe Walsh
Media personality
Kelli Ward
Politician
AZ
GOP Chair
Ron Watkins
Extremist
Identified as the most likely suspect to be Q of QAnon
Randy Weaver
White Supremacist
Naples, ID
Vicki Weaver
White Supremacist
Naples, ID
Weev
White Supremacist
Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer
Paul Weyrich
White Supremacist
Arch-deacon of the New Right ultraconservative movement and hugely influential figure who founded the Heritage Foundation, Council for National Policy, and ALEC.
White Citizens Councils
White Supremacist
Geert Wilders
Darren Wilson
Public Sector
Police officer who brutally killed a Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO in 2014.
