Unfortunately, this keeps happening. Why? Because media executives and editors for NY and DC outlets hold very antiquated views of politics, wrongly supposing that ideas flow from elected officials down to the grassroots. But this is untrue and has been for some time.
I can't tell you how many times people have remarked to me in recent months that they're astonished how quickly the Christian supremacist political insurgency that's unavoidably obvious now was able to assemble.
My response is that this story has been out there for years.
Secular urban journalists who live among non-religious or progressive faithful mostly have no personal exposure to right-wing religious radicalism.
Thus, they myopically think it's insignificant. That the Religious Right collapsed along with the Christian Coalition in the 1990s.
Talk to literally any journalist, scholar, or historian who writes about this movement for more than a few minutes and they will all say the same thing: Editors at elite publications *even now* don't think this stuff is important.
Many editors would rather be slinging gossip with shady campaign consultants than doing some real work learning history and sociology about religious cults.
This dereliction needs to end. Right-wing politics is activist-driven and it must be covered as such.
DC Republican politicians do not actively pursue policy agendas. They are perpetually trying to manage the anger and rage of their voter base and their extremist donors.
Thus, to cover the right based on a "here's what's going on in Congress today" model is grossly inaccurate
Unfortunately, when the national press has covered extremist organizing, it has done so poorly. When the "alt-right" was being nurtured by Steve Bannon, instead of covering the connections he was encouraging, most outlets did profiles of the Nazi Next Door.
Even now, very well-sourced Capitol Hill reporters are not investigating the numerous connections between extremist Republicans like Paul Gosar & Marjorie Taylor Greene & outright white nationalists.
We'll soon be in for another "surprise" in this regard soon, I'm sure. /end
PS: If you liked this thread, please follow @DiscoverFlux and @HollarJulie the author of the article in the first post. Thanks!
1/x: Polls keep showing that Republicans believe objectively false ideas, but have conservatives really lost their grasp on reality or have they decided to just lie about it to pollsters?
American conservatism is based on a modern Christian fundamentalism which believes the Bible is literally and completely true.
This is something everyone, including them, knows to be nonsense. But this realization has psychically damaged conservatives flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
As a result, the far-right is in "epistemic collapse," they know that their arguments are unprovable but they still want to believe.
Michael Flynn's Covid election conspiracy below is a great illustration. He refers to "my truth," not the truth
Just as an FYI, the "Conservative Review" site mentioned in the original tweet is a vehemently anti-government publication that hates almost all Republicans for not being crazy enough.
But the site has a very curious history. It was started by a Democratic donor.
The man in question, Cary Katz, operated a massive student loan business that made him a billionaire. He worked to make student loans so that they couldn't be discharged in bankruptcy.
But his business evaporated thanks to an obscure provision in the Affordable Care Act.
While there has been a lot of attention in recent years devoted to white nationalist and fake news websites, their audiences are dwarfed by Christian fundamentalist media companies.
Almost all of them are linked to a secretive group called the Council for National Policy
These media outlets, which are covered in even greater detail in @anelsona's book "Shadow Network," are constantly promoting a message of Christian supremacism and die-hard Trump fandom to tens of millions of Americans daily bookshop.org/books/shadow-n…
Thread: Liz Cheney, Trump, and the epistemic collapse of fundamentalism
Liz Cheney was expelled today by House Republicans from their leadership. The defenestration has been rightfully construed as a byproduct of Trumpism in the GOP, which is true, but there's much more to it.
People have observed that Cheney was defrocked for the supposed crime of questioning Trump's election lies, but this is untrue.
Mitch McConnell has repeatedly said as much while also working to block Trump. Cheney's real crime was repeatedly speaking against Trump.
You won't get expelled in Trump's Republican party for disagreeing with him. You'll only get expelled if you do so publicly.
Big Lies are incredibly powerful but they're also incredibly fragile. They crumble at the slightest challenge.
Thread: Republicans' willingness to brazenly repeat obvious falsehoods is almost never called out in the access-obsessed mainstream media like @jaketapper does in this segment about "made up convoluted crap."
Keys point from Tapper: "The incentive structure in the Republican Party and its media, does not punish those who spread bad medical advice or lies. In fact, quite the opposite. Telling the truth as a Republican official can be hazardous to your political health."
Instead of trying to show how mis-informers on the right are punished, the right-wing media reaction has been defensive and laughable.
Here's BizPacReview citing congenital liar Donald Trump as proof that Tapper was wrong and saying CNN was mean to the former guy: