Thread by @JYSexton

Okay.

We have to get into Trump's unhinged claim that Biden will "hurt the Bible, hurt God," the GOP and NRA's history of using white paranoia for profit and power, and why fascism is on the rise.

Here's what I learned writing AMERICAN RULE.

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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…

The first thing we have to understand is that Trump's bizarre rant yesterday was an amalgamation of all the Right's scaremongering, conspiracy theory tactics.

It's a total mishmash, but an effective guide for just how twisted and dangerous the Right has become.

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What Trump is doing, claiming Joe Biden, a center/center-left lifelong politician, is a radical liberal looking to steal away people's religion and guns is just another scare tactic in a long, long, LONG line of Right-wing scare tactics.

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themuckrake.com/main/godandguns

It's not coincidence, of course, that Trump's rant coincided with news that Letitia James, NY AG, is looking to dissolve the NRA after years and years of crimes and fraud.

The GOP and NRA are inextricably linked based on their shared interest in power via white paranoia.

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The National Rifle Association is a twisted group that has sewn dissent for decades, profited off unfounded fear, and turned up white paranoia to the point where it has led to terrorism, mass slaughter, and senseless tragedies.

What it has done is disgusting.

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What the NRA has done is bad enough, but it's the relationship with the GOP that is truly disturbing and has shaped modern history.

We have to unwind Right Wing, white paranoia, see its effect, and understand how it has led to our current political crisis.

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After all, we're living in a twisted reality where well-to-do white people are running into the streets, brandishing guns and threatening to murder protesters and neighbors.

How did we get here? What history has been hidden from us that explains this madness?

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The history of white supremacist paranoia in America goes all the way back to our Founding and through the Civil War and to today, but for this deep-dive, let's go to 1917 with the Russian Revolution.

This upheaval gave American capitalists an enemy to fear and use.

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With the rise of communism, American white supremacists and capitalists began claiming that any social movements, be it civil rights or labor, could be blamed on outside communist manipulation.

Suddenly, anyone complaining about America was a traitor and a foreign agent.

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There were multiple red scares, including the Red Summer of 1919, where whites brutalized and slaughtered African Americans.

For generations white supremacists have used fear of outside manipulation as a reason to oppress people of color with impunity.

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With the Civil Rights Movement, the fear of communism was infused with white-identity evangelicalism as Jerry Falwell, a Neo-Confederate preacher, claimed the Civil Rights Movement was an affront to his racist God.

The Right began weaving a supernatural conspiracy theory.

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Of course, the Right continued to claim protesters and African Americans were secret traitors, framing individuals like MLK as communist agents seeking to destroy the white, capitalistic, evangelical order of the country.

They became enemies and terrorists.

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The scenes of bloodshed and brutality we see from the Civil Rights Movement is a state "protecting itself" from "communist agitators, terrorists, and traitors."

This mindset gave police and white supremacists a reason for their violence. They were "defending" themselves.

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The fall of the USSR presented a new problem to the Right, however, as the major antagonist and scapegoat was no more.

Now, the GOP would need to construct a new enemy, an internal enemy, a traitor who was working from within to destroy the United States.

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That new enemy had to be the Left, Bill and Hillary Clinton, to be more precise.

The idea was that anyone claiming to want to improve America was a traitor and acting in bad faith. They took a center/center-right president and turned him into a raging socialist dictator.

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The tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco in 1992 and 1993 opened the door for a new paranoid narrative. Clinton mishandled these situations terribly, but the Right claimed it was proof of an iron-fisted dictatorship, and cast themselves as the heroes in this new narrative.

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The men who took advantage of these tragedies were Newt Gingrich and Wayne LaPierre.

The GOP and NRA effectively merged, gaining power and profit by telling a paranoid story that the President was a traitorous dictator looking to destroy American life and freedoms.

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In a new, deregulated media landscape, opportunists like Rush Limbaugh piled on, spending their hours on the airwaves decrying Clinton as a one-world-government plant obsessed with taking away guns, enslaving white people, and ruining the country.

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The story being constructed is what we have come to know as the New World Order conspiracy theory, or the idea that the post-USSR America was being undermined by traitors and people of color being manipulated by outside forces.

More white supremacist paranoia.

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The New World Order was just a reiteration of the bogus Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fake conspiracy theory that Jewish people controlled world events.

The NWO was just a new version taking advantage of white supremacist paranoia that'd been around for ages.

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The New World Order narrative was a simplifying of the globalist system taking shape, a system designed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but finished by Clinton.

The narrative took economics and made it into a sinister, evil plan hatched in smoke-filled rooms.

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In this time, there was a growing paranoid fringe in America that claimed there were supernatural forces, ugly conspiracies, plans to destroy America and enslave all Americans.

All of these were recycled white supremacist paranoid narratives, but they were gaining influence

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As the GOP and NRA profited off the paranoia and won elections and power, a subculture was developing with gun shows, "patriot" groups, preppers, all of them believing they were in an invisible war with the New World Order, a conspiracy meant to undermine white America.

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One of the members of this "Patriot" movement inspired by the GOP and NRA was Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

McVeigh believed he was a soldier in an invisible war with the New World Order and the attack a victory for his cause.

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Then, the Right launched Fox News, a propaganda effort that aired, twenty-four hours a day, New World Order conspiracy narratives that white America was under attack by traitors and dangerous people of color.

They weaved the NWO narrative without mentioning it explicitly.

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Fox News's warped alternate reality presented a twisted view of America where Christianity and white people were under attack, their leaders traitors, their way of life always within a second of being destroyed, their loved ones murdered, their country wiped away.

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Of course, with the rise of Barack Obama, they portrayed him as a secret Muslim obsessed with destroying America.

On Fox and in Right Wing circles, Obama was an antichrist, a planted traitor who would carry out the New World Order's ultimate plan to destroy America.

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Fox continually tiptoed up to the line of calling Obama an antichrist or a New World Order plant, but it was also implicit in their coverage.

This is what the GOP/NRA rely on, the ability to infer the NWO plot while enjoying deniability.

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Unfortunately, the Right's devotees hear the NWO paranoia and believe they are soldiers in the invisible war.

Like McVeigh, these terrorists believe wholeheartedly that they're fighting a battle for the heart and soul of white America.

The propaganda is that strong.

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The New World Order moniker has taken on too many supernatural layers, and so it has been rebranded to "The Deep State."

This rebranding only hides the truth that this is continued white supremacist paranoia that has plagued America for generations now.

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This is why, in this twisted alternate reality, that Donald Trump is treated like a messiah.

It is a literal cult of paranoia and supernatural belief. They truly believe he is a warrior for their white supremacist God and that he is the Christ to Obama's antichrist.

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The twisted reality that the GOP and NRA have promoted in order to profit and win power has infected the white population of America.

People believe, after years of propaganda, that they are engaged in a massive supernatural struggle for the soul and fate of America.

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In this environment, paranoid white Americans lost in that alternate reality are ready to kill lest they be killed, ready to follow Trump no matter what he asks of them, simply because it is about their literal survival

That is the consequence of what the GOP/NRA have done.

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Of course the GOP and NRA are corrupt. They've already shown an explicit willingness to peddle these dangerous, fascistic conspiracy theories for profit and power.

Once you go down that path, there's no turning back. They're terminally infected, irredeemable at this point.

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And what the Right has done is create this paranoid, fascistic, dangerous alternate reality where a cult leader like Trump can dress himself in the myths and religious aspects and lead a radicalized base further into fascism.

This is what the manipulation has wrought.

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