Cults, in general, refer to organizations or groups that often manipulate and exploit members, typically by using unorthodox beliefs and practices. Recognizing cult warning signs can be vital in identifying and understanding the risk before getting involved with a high demand group that may not have your best interests in mind. Recognizing these warning signs […]
The Council for National Policy is a conservative organization founded in 1981 by far-right Republican activists in the U.S. including Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly, and Tim LaHaye to advance a Christian Right agenda in American politics. Today, the CNP is enormously influential on the right and almost unknown on the left. Its secretive […]
Project Lakhta is the internal name for the disinformation operation that Yevgeniy Prigozhin‘s Internet Research Agency is running to interfere in elections across the Western world, according to the Robert Mueller indictments relating to the Russian attacks on the 2016 election. The op included/includes bots on social media, fake influencers, paid crisis actors, massive propaganda, […]
Old Boomers like Donald Trump and Charles Koch just copied their fascist fathers. Donnie inherited racism and eugenics from Old Fred, while Charlie was indoctrinated in the extremist delusions of the John Birch Society and the pseudoscience economics of the Austrian School acolytes. They are men with little imagination, who seek to exalt themselves by […]
Many people around the world were shocked in the aftermath of World War II. How could “polite” society break down so utterly, so swiftly, and so zealously? Why did authoritarian personality traits come to dominate human affairs, seemingly out of nowhere? How thin is this veneer of civilization, really? The authoritarian personality is characterized by […]
We glibly believed it could never happen here even though we’ve been warned again and again. And in some sense, even though it’s been here all along — hiding in plain sight. It could happen here, and it did, because it’s happened here before. This dictionary of American authoritarianism collects definitions and charts the rise […]
The Big Lie about the 2020 Election was hardly the first or even the Biggest of the Big Lies in American history — fomented in vast majority by the right wing. Call it a personality trait, an ideology, or perhaps a financial preference — but Republicans seem to lean towards the disingenuous end of the […]
Who were the early conservatives? They emerged out of the group of former fascists and Nazi sympathizers in the US. 1930s opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal 2 main right-wing factions then: After the Allies won World War II, a number of the early Hitler sympathizers “hid out” in anti-communist circles, allowing them to cloak […]
In a special 6th session of the January 6 Commission Hearings that was not anticipated, former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson revealed bombshell testimony under oath about what the witnessed and heard in the White House leading up to and on the violent January 6 coup event. From her forthright and gripping account, today we […]
Trickle down economics is known by a number of names: supply side economics, Reaganomics, voodoo economics, deregulation, Libertarianism, Mudsill Theory, horse and sparrow theory, and the Trump tax cuts, to name a few. It has been espoused by everyone from Ayn Rand to Milton Friedman to Alan Greenspan to Gordon Gecko. Trickle down economics involves […]
Although the advent of reality TV star Donald Trump as the 45th President threw most of us for a loop, in truth the authoritarian impulse goes back centuries in America. Not the first authoritarian leader, Don the Con surely won’t be the last — but maybe we can prevail against the slide into fascism by […]
The demagogue is the creature the Founders of America most feared: the authoritarian-style leader who would stir the passions of the mob and use them to overthrow the more moderate democratic norms and checks and balances of the republic in order to stay in power. Yet the United States has had a flirtation with demagogues […]
Gaslighting describes the act of professing skepticism, disbelief, or denial of another person’s lived experience, feelings, or perceptions of reality. It’s one thing to disagree respectfully with someone; it’s another thing altogether to deny the validity of their point of view to the point of aggression, and attack them with hostility. Gaslighters are engaging in […]
I’ve been reading Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom and it’s synthesizing a few things together for me in new ways — prime among them the realization that collective narcissism is the shared root ideology of both Christian nationalism and Nazism. First off, I’d recommend it: Next, I’d like to thank it for reminding me about […]
In America we tend to have a view of our politics as exceptional — and specifically, impervious to authoritarian takeover. We think of ourselves as the democratic shining city on a hill (even Reaganites!) that will act as a beacon to other nations, steadily rolling back despotism and dictatorship around the world. It hasn’t quite […]