MAGA Right Has Told Us Who They Are
Maya Angelou reminds us, “When someone shows you who they are, believe the first time.” So how many times is enough before we can believe that the nationalist Right wingers are who they say? Have we reached the point where we are willing to accept that many on the Right today would prefer the rule of an autocrat who might serve their interests over actual liberty and justice for all people? According to Emily Tamkin in her recent article for the New York Times, this appears to be what the Trump-wing wants.
Tamkin traces how the rise of Trump has also led to an increase of pro-authority and anti-liberty sentiments in the American Right. Trump is critical here because Trump and his infatuation and friendships with leaders like Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary have reshaped the Republican Party. Tamkin notes, “Those amicable relationships trickled down to the Republican voting population, which shifted its views on Mr. Putin’s favorability, which soared from a mere 10 percent in July 2014 to 37 percent in December 2016. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll from January of this year found that 62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider Vladimir Putin, a stronger leader than Joe Biden.”
But this infatuation, which some might even call an obsession, goes beyond just Trump. On Tuesday, February 22, Tucker Carlson was on his show saying that America had been trained to hate Putin for no reason, “What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” Carlson tried to lump Putin as not just a good guy but some kind of savior. Even J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, was on Steve Bannon’s podcast last month saying that the reason why we’re fighting Putin is that he does not believe in transgender rights. Tamkin reports that Bannon “hailed Mr. Putin as ‘anti-woke’ hours before Russia’s assault on Ukraine on that same podcast.”
You could argue that all of this was said before Putin invaded Ukraine. But that would require pretending there was no intelligence saying Putin was preparing to invade Ukraine. And instead of walking back his statements or apologizing, Carlson is acting as if he was never for Russia or Putin.
This is certainly not a new development, even though it is a shift for a party that was, during the Cold War at least, aware of the threat Russia could pose to America and the world. Instead of facing that threat, many on the Right would prefer to cozy up to Russia and Putin, hoping that something good would come from it. Once again, Trump and his followers have told us who they are; when will we believe them?
5 More Things
While the subject of Ukraine and Russia are still fresh in everyone’s minds, it is worth mentioning David French’s latest “French Press” on the courage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. French notes, “In these circumstances, it is breathtaking to witness actual courage. It’s even more breathtaking when that courage is both moral and physical. He’s not just speaking against evil, he’s quite literally standing against evil–when evil seems to possess all the power, and virtue feels so weak.” Since the Russian invasion, many have remarked on the power of Zelensky’s videos and presence, both online and in Kyiv. Still, French gets to the heart of why he resonates with so many people at this precise moment in history.
While many of us were glued to the news about Russia and Ukraine over the weekend, Rep. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene were speaking at the white supremacist America First Political Action Conference. Based on Politico’s reporting, it appears that this may finally be the move that gets Greene and Gosar in trouble with the Republican brass. But it’s also worth asking why now? This is hardly the first time either Representative has done something worthy of being called out. Meanwhile, Rep.’s Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were censured for seeking the truth behind the January 6 riot.
People who live near “third places,” such as libraries, bars and coffee shops, have a more diverse set of friends, concludes Daniel A. Cox, Beatrice Lee, Dana Popky and the Survey Center on American Life. “More than four in ten (44 percent) Americans living in areas with very low concentrations of amenities do not have any friends who are of a different race or religion. In contrast, only 19 percent of Americans living in areas with a very high concentration of amenities have no friends whose race or religion differs from their own,” the study found. This is important because, “research shows that people with diverse networks are more tolerant and are better positioned to cope with hardship.”
A new PRRI report reveals that one in five Americans still believes in QAnon. The number is even higher among Republicans, where one out of every four party members still believes in QAnon. “While these believers are racially, religiously, and politically diverse, the unifying beliefs are that their way of life is under attack and that they might be willing to resort to violence to defend their vision of the country,” said Natalie Jackson, director of research at PRRI. As long as people feel their way of life is under attack, Q appears here to stay.
Popular Information has an exciting story about how an obscure far-right website with almost no online presence dominates Facebook. It appears that the site, Conservative Brief, could be paying conservative pages, like Dinesh D’Souza’s, to run their articles. This is a blatant violation of Facebook rules, something Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has already faced trouble for.