Thread by @JYSexton

After the loss in Virginia we have to talk about how the "CRT panic" is a fascistic, white supremacist conspiracy theory weaponized by an authoritarian movement.

The Democratic Party needs to get serious about this RIGHT NOW. There's no time to spare

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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-completely…

Coverage today of the VA results is a predictable fingerpointing contest, but what's getting lost is that the Democrats are losing the battle over reality and this "CRT" conspiracy theory is proving incredibly dangerous and useful.

It's time to recognize the threat.

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To be clear, the "CRT" issue isn't about Critical Race Theory. It's about ensuring that actual history and information are censored.

The GOP knows if people understand real history they can't win elections. Instead, an alternate, weaponized reality needs constructed.

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For the status quo to continue in America, it requires a censoring of actual history and a replacement by a mythology that hides white supremacy and blatant exploitation.

This isn't just about school boards. This is about control over reality itself.

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At the heart of the CRT narrative is so-called "Jewish Bolshevism," or the conspiracy theory that Jews and Communists are secretly eroding civil society in order to overthrow nations like America.

This racist, baseless idea has been active for a long, long time.

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Since the very moment the Bolsheviks took control of Russia, American conservatives have decried every call for reform or progress as a Soviet plot, relying on old antisemitic tropes to bolster their opposition.

It's a racket. A really, really effective racket.

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Most troubling, even mainstreams publications like the New York Times have fallen for Right Wing conspiracy theories, even blaming protests movements by Black Americans on Communist plots.

This framing holds sway in America, where citizens are desperate to live in denial.

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The narrative is quite simple. Everything has to stay the same because any call for reform or progress is a Soviet (the antisemitic aspect often goes unsaid) plot to destroy the country.

This isn't just effective, it's been passed down through generations.

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American framing of the so-called "Red Scare" positions post-war paranoia as legitimately motivated.

But it was actually the GOP undermining and destroying the New Deal and setting the stage for the modern era of corporate domination.

A weapon. Like "CRT"

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The roots of this "cultural Bolshevism" conspiracy theory are explicitly fascistic.

Authoritarians like the Nazis pinpointed anything that threatened their dominance as a conspiracy, meaning the scare of things like CRT is soon mobilized for use beyond schoolboards.

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The GOP is THRILLED today. CRT is a perfect weapon for them to mobilize their conspiracy theory addled base and the three letters will basically stand-in for anything they want to destroy.

This isn't going to just go away. It's going to escalate. Quickly.

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People dismiss QAnon, saying it's gone, but what it did was set the stage and prepare GOP voters for this paranoid mindset.

Now, teachers are conspirators. Liberals. Everyone could be a traitor and the only solution is to take control of society through force and purge.

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But to understand this moment, with its conspiracy theories and the problem with the Democratic Party, we have to go to the 1980's and the rise of neoliberalism, which all these conspiracy theories attempt to explain without getting into the power and economic specifics.

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What actually happened was that the New Deal was destroyed by that Red Scare, creating an opportunity for the wealthy to take over the economic system and turn our govt into an engine for redistributing wealth from the bottom up.

This is how we arrived here.

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Very quickly, Reaganism/hypercapitalism became so popular that even Democrats came to believe they had to get on board and leave behind unions, people of color, and the working poor.

A "consensus" developed that we're still living with today.

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Because neoliberalism won out, the Democratic Party became dependent on polls and strategists, always in pursuit of "independent voters" who were white and quietly terrified of racial progress.

It became a party directive to tiptoe around these ideas and avoid if possible.

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Senators like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema represent the survival of neoliberalism within the Democratic Party, and there is a war brewing within it over the future.

Because neoliberalism still holds sway, the charge of CRT basically immobilizes the party in totality.

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The divide between the neoliberal base of the Democratic Party and its voting base is dramatic, and highlights that at the moment they can't address CRT criticisms without wading into territory that has been deemed off-limits by strategists, pollsters, and the status quo.

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The answer is simple. Democrats need to face the CRT conspiracy theory and GOP authoritarianism head-on, and continuing to hold to neoliberal/strategist ideals will only gift the rhetorical/ideological space to Republicans.

Ensuring this mess will only get worse.

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And it will get worse. Unless Democrats face the threat of the GOP head on, unless they ditch the same tired approaches and speeches and means tested strategies everyone hates, the GOP will solidify control.

And they wont stop. Because history shows it will only escalate.

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It's go big or go home territory. Democrats have an easy choice to make: deconstruct neoliberalism and actually offer an alternative.

Continuing to fight these same battles with the same old tactics is just going to surrender the nation to Republicans.

That's the sad truth

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If you want more of this history and the story of how we've reached this dangerous moment of crisis, AMERICAN RULE gets into it in-depth.

But make no mistake. We're in bad territory here, and it's time to do something about it.

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penguinrandomhouse.com/books/611439/a…