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Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
@tzimmer_history
Aug 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
To elaborate on this excellent point: America has always been dominated by one group - conservative white Christians. And a political system that threatened their privileged status - true democracy - has always been anathema to them.
What’s changed is that until recently, conservative white Christians were dominant in both parties, so they regarded both Republican and Democratic rule as legitimate.
That’s no longer the case though: Only one party, the GOP, has pledged to preserve and defend white conservative Christian rule by whatever means necessary, while the other is pursuing a more pluralistic, (small-d) democratic vision.
Under these circumstances, the quest to perpetuate conservative rule has morphed into a quest for one-party rule. White conservative Christians have been very consistent: They were never committed to anything other than herrenvolk democracy.

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More from @tzimmer_history

Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 28
This is the type of comment I’ve been getting a lot for this piece: Always from self-regarding liberals who never want to grapple with the fact that the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 60s – the legacy of which they surely want to claim – clearly violated those principles.
Image
The polite mainstream widely rejected them with precisely those arguments: too radical, too loud, too disruptive, too divisive. Protests demanding justice, student protests, protests carried by a multiracial coalition are almost always unpopular as they are happening.
And they just keep coming:

“If you engage in civil disobedience you will get arrested.”

Easy! And this from someone who had “Democrat” in their bio and started their previous comment by claiming they - of course! - would have supported the 1960s civil rights movement. Perfect. Image
Read 4 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 23
What an absolute disaster that Republicans are still successfully playing their cynical game of exploiting fears over antisemitism in order to advance their reactionary crusade – and mainstream institutions keep willfully playing along.
 
I wrote about this here (link in bio): 1/ Screenshot of my “Democracy Americana” newsletter from Dec. 14: “We Are Falling Apart: The Right is successfully exploiting fears over rising antisemitism for its reactionary crusade while the Israel-Hamas war is tearing the democratic popular front to pieces”
We have reached a truly bizarre place in our political discourse when supposedly serious people want us to believe that the party of Trump, QAnon, and “Great Replacement” is the bulwark against antisemitism in America. 2/ Image
After pretending to be really upset about campus antisemitism during the congressional hearings in December, Stefanik ran off to meet “her friend,” the leader of a fascistic movement, the guy who is raging against immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” 3/ Image
Read 20 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 13
Weekend reading: I wrote about the disingenuous and dangerous folly of anti-anti-Trump conservatism.
 
How “respectable” conservatives normalize Trump, rage against a caricature of “the Left,” and accommodate rightwing extremism:

🧵1/

thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/anti-anti-tr…
Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism: Highbrow conservative commentators are giving themselves and their readers permission to support Trump by portraying “liberal hysteria” as the real threat: A case study of National Review”
I dove into how leading conservative commentators in National Review are imagining a second Trump presidency. What they offer isn’t analysis. It is sophistry in defense of the premise that the actual threat isn’t Trump, it’s hysterical Libs and the radical Left. 2/
The goal is evidently not to provide National Review readers with an understanding of what’s been happening on the Right, but to portray Trump and his political project as so mundane and unremarkable that the liberal reaction to Trump must seem unhinged and dangerous. 3/
Read 15 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 10
Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatism Is a Disingenuous and Dangerous Game
 
A case study of how National Review normalizes Trump, rages against a bizarre caricature of “the Left,” and thereby accommodates rightwing extremism.
 
A thread, based on my new piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism: Highbrow conservative commentators are giving themselves and their readers permission to support Trump by portraying “liberal hysteria” as the real threat: A case study of National Review”
I dissect two recent pieces written by National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry and senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty - who represent that “respectable” spectrum of the American Right the mainstream political discourse consistently asks us to take seriously. 2/
Whether or not rightwing extremists manage to take power depends largely on how much support they get from mainstream conservative circles – it depends on the extent to which the rightwing establishment is willing to make common cause with extremism. 3/
Read 10 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 10
Anti-anti-Trumpism in National Review stands in a long tradition of modern conservative leaders accommodating and providing cover for anti-democratic extremism – going all the way back to the conservative godfather William F. Buckley himself.
 
New piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Anti-Anti-Trump Conservatives Are Paving the Way for Authoritarianism: Highbrow conservative commentators are giving themselves and their readers permission to support Trump by portraying “liberal hysteria” as the real threat: A case study of National Review”
In early 2016, National Review – to much fanfare and mainstream praise – published a special issue titled “Against Trump.” No more. An increasingly untethered anti-anti-Trumpism is the game these “serious” conservatives are playing. 2/
When editor-in-chief Rich Lowry organized the “Against Trump” special issue of National Review, he was widely hailed for continuing the noble conservative tradition of holding the line against fringe extremism – just like magazine founder Willian F. Buckley had supposedly done.3/
Read 16 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Apr 7
There is also an element of Volkish ideology here - the assumption that rural white people with reactionary sensibilities represent “real America” and therefore command deference - while the groups that make up the pluralistic Democratic coalition constitute a deviation.

1/ Bluesky post from @ositanwanevu.bsky.social “The critical thing about this entire episode is the contrast with how GOP rhetoric is treated by the press. Slandering Democrats and city dwellers is normal, but the reverse can't happen. Implicitly it's because of the power rural areas hold federally, but it's been laundered into a moral principle.”
This ideology of “real Americanism” is crucial: It provides the foundation for the Right’s anti-democratic radicalization, forms the basis of its normalization in mainstream political discourse, and helps explain why the response to the authoritarian threat has been lacking.

2/
The idea that Trump and his base deserve special deference from mainstream political and media institutions is based on the assumption that Trump embodies and gives voice to an uprising of “regular folks” who had supposedly been unfairly ignored by arrogant elites in 2016. 3/
Read 13 tweets

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