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This is a good time to do a quick look back at a long read that was really valuable to me, @DavidNeiwert's "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism:An Exegesis" from 2003. In short, yes, I think it's fair describe Rush as "the largest driving factor of Nazism". https://twitter.com/CelticAnarchy/status/1362146676870422532
I'd first like to acknowledge that some people, even some good ones, may feel the parasocial loss that comes with any celebrity death. I think here of the 12-year-old version of @valariekaur, for example: https://www.salon.com/2005/05/28/harvard_abu_ghraib_play/
If you're feeling that loss today, this thread is not for you. Sometimes people love monsters, and I know from experience that loss, however complicated, still hurts. But I'm not going to soften anything here because today's situation demands we see some things clearly.
Ok, back to the article. It was the single most valuable thing in preparing me for the Trump era. I got 3 big things out of it. https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf
Big Thing 1: Fascism looks very different in its larval stage than it does when it takes over.
From history, I thought I knew what fascism looked like: massively regimented society, obviously oppressive power structure, extreme ideals openly stated. Movie Nazis, basically.
From history, I thought I knew what fascism looked like: massively regimented society, obviously oppressive power structure, extreme ideals openly stated. Movie Nazis, basically.
So I saw the modern version as basically like the Blues Brothers take on Illinois Nazis. Potentially dangerous, but mainly risible in the contrast between their actual power and the trappings of power they clung to:
I was very wrong. In the early chapters, Neiwert looks at a number of examinations of fascism. Here, he annotates Umberto Eco's list of "Ur-Fascist" characteristics with examples from the modern American context.
With that, I started to see what a non-WWII fascism might look like. That list is chilling now. Note "contempt for the weak." As we come up on 500,000 Covid deaths, it puts some right wing takes and behaviors in context.
He also looks at the 1991 work of a British professor. His definition, "palingenetic ultranationalist populism", is a fancy way of describing "make America great again".
Valuable to me was the notion that fascism wasn't so much a collection of ideas as an assembly of channeled feelings. Here, Neiwert quotes Robert O. Paxton in a 1998 article “The Five Stages of Fascism". Again, there are clear parallels today.
That brings me to Thing 2 that I learned: proto-fascism is already here in the US.
The author had reported extensively on the "Patriot" movement, his work culminating in a 1999 book, "God's Country". In chapter 5 of the Rush article, he starts bringing in that work:
The author had reported extensively on the "Patriot" movement, his work culminating in a 1999 book, "God's Country". In chapter 5 of the Rush article, he starts bringing in that work:
As a Michigander who grew up partly in the small-town north, this made real sense to me. Some will recall the Michigan Militia. More will recall the armed loons who were plotting to kidnap Michigan's governor. This stuff is endemic.
As a side note, I feel a bit "there but for the grace of god go I" about this. I was pretty handy with a 9-mm pistol by the time I started middle school. My mom would take us to visit friends who had enough property and we'd spend the afternoon target shooting.
Long after I left the state, I know she ended up spending time around local militia types. And I remember many hours of cassette-tape Evangelical sermons that would often turn in a prepare-for-the-coming-apocalypse direction. [shudder] Who knows where life could have taken me.
Anyhow, back to the article. My big Thing 3 that I took away from this was the intellectual connections between those far-right extremists and the mainstream Conservative movement.
Although really "intellectual" is the wrong word here. Fascism is more about feelings than ideas. A better term is probably "memetic connections" in the original sense of "meme" as "a unit of cultural transmission" (from The Selfish Gene):
In the later chapters Neiwert maps out the patterns of memetic flow, how far-right crazy gets polished into ideas acceptable to the center right and then normalized.
With benefit of hindsight, I now recognize this as a radicalization pipeline. You can't just take a normal person and say, "the police should be able to beat black people with impunity" or "we should let disease kill a million grandparents". You have to work them up to it.
As Neiwert lays out, Rush Limbaugh was key to this radicalization pipeline for many years.
It has moved beyond him, of course. Now Fox News is losing out to much wilder competitors as the crazier-than-thou dynamic they fed has outstripped them.
It has moved beyond him, of course. Now Fox News is losing out to much wilder competitors as the crazier-than-thou dynamic they fed has outstripped them.
So in sum, I think it's totally fair to call Limbaugh, "the largest driving factor of Nazism in the entire western world for the better part of three decades".
(Anybody who wants to disagree, which I don't encourage, should list their top 3 contenders and explain why they're higher than Limbaugh.)
With that, I have to get to work. Again, I recommend taking the time to read @DavidNeiwert's long but rewarding article. It's prophetic. https://dneiwert.blogspot.com/Rush%20Newspeak%20%20Fascism.pdf
His books are also great. His Alt-America looks at how endemic American awfulness has adapted to the age of the Internet and metastasized: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MT2KCB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Please do post useful related material. For example, this good thread on what Limbaugh was like back when it was just him: https://twitter.com/The_Law_Boy/status/1362097184129318918
And if you're insist on arguing in my mentions, please untag me. Thanks!
