"You know who's not canceled? The endless parade of conservative pundits and politicians complaining about 'cancel culture.' You know who is canceled? George Floyd is canceled." Turn off the gaslight. #ConservativeCancelCulture is real. 1/12 salon.com/2021/05/01/con…
"Cancel culture" is a meaningless term, @mmfa editor @ParkerMolloy writes. But "For conservatives, that meaninglessness is a feature, not a bug," I note. "Those words mean whatever a right-wing accuser needs them to mean in the moment": 2/12 mediamatters.org/fox-news/woke-…
But there are two constraints on what "cancel culture" means: that it's new & comes only from the left. The truth is exactly the opposite: #ConservativeCancelCulture#gaslighting 3/12
Just a few highlights of #ConservativeCancelCulture in US history (Notice how often Blacks & immigrants the ones being cancelled? Coincidence? Not so much!): 4/12
But the term "cancel culture" is new. And @CAMcGrady explains how the white grievence usage is so tellingly at odds with its black-coined meaning: 5/12 washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/canc…
In bills suppressing voting rights (361 bills/47 states) & BLM-style protests (81 bills/34 states) #ConservativeCancelCulture has gone wild this year. But education attacks date back to William F. Buckley's first book, as @FAIRmediawatch noted: 6/12 fair.org/extra/william-…
The abrupt suspension of 52 class sections at Boise State University in March--affecting 1300 students over a rumored accusation--was a wild over-reaction years in the making. PoliSci prof @donmoyn saw it coming at UW Madison, wrote 2017 NYT warning: 7/12 nytimes.com/2017/01/09/opi…
Here's some of what @donmoyn told me about what led him to write that op-ed: 8/12
"Attacking universities became a staple of the far right, propelled by an entire ecosystem of media funded by donors like the Koch or DeVos families," @donmoyn told me, but worse was the mainstream acceptance: 9/12
Conservative free speech controversies are primarily trolling by a handful of provocateurs: 10/12
“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,” the lying, thieving, covetous adulterer Donald Trump trumpeted in all caps on his Twitter knock-off site. He loved it as branding & the Louisiana's version was a Cecille
B. DeMille Hollywood production. via @Salon 1/22 salon.com/2024/07/07/ten…
In this story you'll learn: 1) The law's text was promoted by Hollywood 2) It edits out blatantly un-American text 3) Gov Landrie's justification contained 3 lies 4) the bible's account of the 10 Commandments is self-contradictory...
and MUCH more. Let's begin! 2/22
The law itself follows from the Project Blitz playbook (first described here in 2018: ), one architect of which, pseudo-historian David Barton, claimed credit for helping to pass it: 3/22 salon.com/2018/04/29/onw…
SCOTUS decisions & the debate got you down? Take a step back with a broadview story of untapped democratic possibility being developed in LA from @RandomLengths 0/21
Democracy's under worldwide threat but there's a answer: an Athenian model of jury-like deliberation, used over 700 times but still little-known in the US. Activists in LA vow to change that: 1/21
"Athens In LA: Working Towards A Rebirth of Democracy" randomlengthsnews.com/archives/2024/…
Known as civic or citizen’s assemblies, they use sortition — jury-like selection by lot — to convene a representative sample of a city, state or nation to engage in factually-based deliberation to achieve consensus on a path of action. 2/21
My latest at Salon: A 3-part glossary provides a guide to the dominionist threat in America. Biden's Gaza policy may be horrific, but these folks think Armageddon is a good thing. We damn sure need to understand them in order to stop them. 1/15 salon.com/2024/05/26/cra…
The glossary's first section, "Preliminary Terms" lays the foundations for understanding dominionism today. White "Christian nationalism" for example (the belief that America was founded as—and was intended by God to be—a Christian nation) has been around much longer: 2/15
"Christian Zionism," around since the 19th century, is key to understanding MAGA "support for Israel" that's actually destructive to both Jews & Palestinians: 3/15
In his new book, "Taking America Back" @DavidAstinWalsh plumbs the prehistory of MAGA, how--contrary to the "never Trump" narrative-- 'mainstream' conservatives never purged the hard right. My author interview explores what he found. 1/19 salon.com/2024/04/20/a-p…
Legendary conservative William F. Buckley Jr. is a central presence in Walsh’s book & it’s undeniable that Buckley tried to purge the American conservative movement of its most extreme elements. Indeed, he did so over and over again, because no clean break was possible, 2/19
The "hard right" & "mainstream conservatives" have co-existed in conflict for centuries, as Edmund Fawcett argued in “Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition” but Walsh gives much more detailed account of how this unfolded in the US ~1930-1990. 3/19 salon.com/2020/10/24/how…
SCOTUS is a threat to democracy — but activists at @LPE_Project & @PeoplesParity are organizing to fight back, with a vision that goes well beyond court expansion: 1/18 salon.com/2024/03/03/tod…
The Supreme Court is a supreme threat to American democracy. That was Abraham Lincoln’s view in light of the Dred Scott decision, expressed in his First Inaugural Address. And the threat continued after his assassination: 2/18
It’s not just abortion. On guns, environmental protection, discrimination, labor rights, affirmative action, student debt relief and mant other issues SCOTUS has squashed majority rule: 3/18
Democracy itself is on the ballot in '24—ONLY IF DEMS PUT IT THERE!!! @RachelBitecofer explains why & how to do it in her new book, "Hit 'Em Where It Hurts: How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game." My author interview 4 @Salon: 1/18 salon.com/2024/02/17/rac…
Bitecofer's most basic point is simple: Democrats as a whole—despite their “reality-based” self-image—have been unable or unwilling “to accept that the American voter is, at best, rough clay,” and to work with it accordingly, as Republicans have been doing for decades: 2/18
Some Dems have begun to make the shift, but to be effective, this needs to be comprehensive, bottom-to-top systemic change. Even with the right-wing media ecosystem, and the think-tank and donor infrastructures that underlie it, a messaging change CAN save us in 2024: 3/18