Kevin M. Kruse Profile picture
Feb 20, 2019 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Again, @LarryGlickman has covered this extensively, so dive into this thread for a nice detailed take on it all. (And follow Larry, if you're not already!)
Because he's covered the finer points well, I'll just do a quick tour of a few popular things that were denounced by the right as "socialist" when they were proposed.

(This was common in the New Deal and before - here's Al Smith in 1928 - so I'll focus on the 1950s and 1960s.)
THE POLIO VACCINE

In 1955, Eisenhower's HEW Secretary, millionaire publisher Oveta Culp Hobby, denounced a proposed free polio vaccine as "socialized medicine by the back door."
THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM

Meanwhile, Eisenhower's administration was accused of promoting socialism by the far right. Here's conservative radio host Clarence Manion denouncing the interstate highway system, among other things, as "creeping socialism."
MEDICARE

In 1961, Ronald Reagan warned that if the proposals for "socialized medicine" passed, "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

In 1963, when the Civil Rights Act was still stuck in Congress, conservative opponents denounced it as "the Socialists' Omnibus Bill of 1963."
AID TO EDUCATION & SOCIAL SECURITY

In 1965, conservative journalist Walter Trohan denounced all of the Great Society -- Medicare as passed, plus federal aid to education and expansions of Social Security -- as steps to socialism.
We could go on and on here -- and again @LarryGlickman's threads carry this theme across the 20th century, so check them out -- but the pattern is pretty clear.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Kevin M. Kruse

Kevin M. Kruse Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @KevinMKruse

Oct 10, 2023
Well, I think my time here is done.
This site has gotten steadily worse with every "improvement" Elon has made, but this weekend made it clear that it's no longer a place to get and discuss breaking news.
It's just a cesspool for the worst people on social media and it's getting worse every week.

I've been telling myself for months that the good here outweighs the bad, but I don't believe that anymore.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 23, 2023
There's no better way to announce that you've read literally nothing on the party realignment over civil rights than to ask about congressional delegations.

That's not how realignment happened, and anyone pushing this "rebuttal" is either an idiot or a liar.

But let's dig in!
Again, as I've discussed many times before, the power of sitting congressmen depended entirely on their seniority in the Democratic Party, which held dominant majorities in Congress. That's why they're the lagging indicator in this process.
So let's look at a state, but all the politics of a state, not just the senior southern Democrats determined to hang on to their perks in Congress.

How about Mississippi?
Read 16 tweets
Sep 13, 2023
@CheesedHammer @ericjorgenson8 @flakingbaking @quiltsbypagan @Katb4animals @RickLaManna1 @RepJasonCrow I'm a historian who's worked on this for 25 years, so I could point you to a lot of my published work, starting with my chapter in MYTH AMERICA:

hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kevin-m…
@CheesedHammer @ericjorgenson8 @flakingbaking @quiltsbypagan @Katb4animals @RickLaManna1 @RepJasonCrow But I'm happy to provide some primary sources as well.

Here's some news coverage of Prentiss Walker, the segregationist Republican whose first appearance after winning the election was to speak before Americans for Preservation of the White Race: Image
@CheesedHammer @ericjorgenson8 @flakingbaking @quiltsbypagan @Katb4animals @RickLaManna1 @RepJasonCrow As I've noted here before, Prentiss Walker was an outspoken opponent of civil rights, voted against the Voting Rights Act, and insisted civil rights activists were worse than the Klan:

Read 7 tweets
Aug 29, 2023
This strikes me as a fair diagnosis of a problem, but a wholly impractical solution.
The problem of historical falsehoods that get repeated in the literature is certainly real.

We all have our own stories of learning this the hard way, I'd imagine.
For instance, I long accepted that Ike's 1952 campaign strategy was a "formula" they called K1C2, for "Korea, Corruption, and Communism"

Then I wrote an essay on it & tried to trace the claim to its source, only to find it was all based on one wild distortion that took off.
Read 8 tweets
Aug 10, 2023
The House GOP has been riling up its base by repeatedly insisting it has the goods to get Joe Biden.

This works fine in the short term, but repeatedly overpromising and underdelivering is only going to make the base mad at them, more than anyone else.
You can see this with today's tweets from the Oversight Committee.

It's framed as a huge hit on Biden but once you read it, it's clear the "Biden FAMILY AND ASSOCIATES" framing is a load-bearing beam.

It's a showy announcement meant to suggest much more than is actually there.
But the base doesn't get that -- they're riled up and they expect action.

Action that Republican politicians can't *actually* deliver because they (or at least their very patient legal counsel) understand there's really no there there.
Read 6 tweets
Jul 29, 2023
Any discussion of Florida's effort to replace the original AP standards for African American history with the state's own version should directly compare and contrast the two.

Here's the AP:

Here's Florida: https://t.co/Ygf0RWsNBYapcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-a…
fldoe.org/core/fileparse…
One thing is readily apparent from even a quick comparison between the two standards -- the claims that Florida's standards are "robust" quickly fall apart when you line them up next to the much more substantial program the AP has put together with specific sources and plans.
A lot of attention has been given to the slavery section -- which in Florida is strongly focused on discussing abolitionism while the AP standards are much more direct on the lived experiences for the enslaved -- but for me the 20th century material is more of an issue.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(