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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
Sep 30
ICYMI on the weekend: I wrote about how Project 2025 broke through the noise and became a toxic brand.
 
There is an important lesson here about how to cover and discuss the radicalizing Right.
 
Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “How Project 2025 Became Toxic and Exposed the Right’s Toxicity: The public history of Project 2025 reveals a lot about how Trump understands power - and how the mainstream discourse (mis-) understands the extreme Right”
Project 2025 not only remains an excellent window into where the Right currently stands ideologically, it also focuses our attention on who the people leading the reactionary authoritarian charge are – a toxic bunch, driven by the desire to dominate others. 2/
Trump has publicly lashed out at Project 2025 – not because they differ on substance, but first of all, as a way or (re-) asserting dominance: a mob boss reminding everyone to stay in line; and secondly, because Project 2025 has become an incredibly toxic brand. 3/
Read 15 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Sep 21
Weekend reading: Mass deportation plans, attempts to incite a pogrom against immigrant communities, and JD Vance gets to decide who is an “illegal alien.”
 
I wrote about the Right’s desire to cleanse the “homeland.”
 
This week’s piece:
 
🧵1/
 
thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/blood-and-so…
Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Blood and Soil: The Right is committed to preserving America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic”
Flashback to the Republican National Convention: While delegates wave hundreds of “Mass Deportation Now!” sign, JD Vance declares that America is not an idea, but a white Christian “homeland,” and those who are bound to it by ancestry and blood decide who belongs. 2/
What we saw at the Republican Convention was a party devoted to an ethno-religious understanding of America as a land defined by white Christian patriarchal dominance – the self-presentation of a political movement committed to blood-and-soil nationalism. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Sep 19
Blood and Soil

The Right is committed to an idea of America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic.

Inciting a pogrom in Ohio is part of that project.

New piece (link in bio):

🧵1/ Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Blood and Soil: The Right is committed to preserving America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic”
I wrote about the Right’s defining political project: A blood-and-soil nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with multiracial, pluralistic democracy. It has come to dominate the Republican Party, and the elevation of J.D. Vance captures this perfectly. 2/
There is a direct line from J.D. Vance’s “homeland” speech at the Republican Convention – an open embrace of blood-and-soil nationalism – to what is happening in Springfield, Ohio, where Trump and Vance are trying to incite a pogrom. 3/
Read 15 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Sep 19
Blood and Soil
 
The Right is committed to preserving America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic.

Inciting a pogrom in Springfield, Ohio is part of that project.

New piece (link in bio): Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Blood and Soil: The Right is committed to preserving America as a white Christian homeland. They are determined to purge the nation and radically redraw the boundaries of the body politic”
I wrote about the Right’s defining political project: A blood-and-soil nationalism that is fundamentally incompatible with multiracial, pluralistic democracy. It has come to dominate the Republican Party, and the elevation of J.D. Vance captures this perfectly.
There is a direct line from J.D. Vance’s “homeland” speech at the Republican Convention – an open embrace of blood-and-soil nationalism – to what is happening in Springfield, Ohio, where Trump and Vance are trying to incite a pogrom.
Read 9 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Sep 10
One reason to be skeptical about anti-Trump Republicans is that they tend to propagate a diagnosis of Trumpism as a mere aberration from an otherwise noble conservative tradition. Such self-serving mythology misleads the political discussion.
 
My new piece (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Liz Cheney and the Problem of the Anti-Trump Republican: Republicans who hold the line against Trump deserve respect. But champions of egalitarian, pluralistic democracy they are not - and that also matters”
If America is to claw its way out of this crisis to something better, it must do so on the basis of an honest assessment of what Trumpism is, what fueled its rise, and where it came from. The anti-Trumpers, however, are offering something very different. 2/
In their standard tale, Trump executed a hostile takeover of the GOP and turned it into something that has nothing to do with the party’s former real self, that supposedly venerable “Reagan Republicanism” anti-Trumpers almost invariably invoke as their ideal. 3/
Read 16 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Aug 13
What is “weird” and what is “normal” in America?

Democrats are, finally, asserting their right to define the boundaries of normalcy – and their claim to be defending the nation’s true ideals against the reactionary assault.

Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):

🧵1/ Screenshot of my latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: What is “weird” and what is “normal” in America? Democrats are, finally, asserting their right to define the boundaries of normalcy – and their claim to be defending the nation’s true ideals against the reactionary assault”
I wrote about why the “These guys are weird” messaging matters: It crystallizes a central fault line – who gets to define “normal” America? – and catalyzes a significant shift in how Democrats handle (and finally reject!) Republican assertions of representing “real America.” 2/
Since the late 1960s, Republicans have successfully weaponized the idea that they represent the norm that should define the nation. This assertion (in)famously crystallized in the “silent majority” notion Richard Nixon popularized early in his presidency. 3/
Read 15 tweets

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