This is a thread on the 2022 right-wing documentary UNCLE TOM II, a film based entirely on the worldview and source material of the John Birch Society.

It has been promoted by Charlie Kirk & Jack Posobiec as proof that MLK & the civil rights movement were secretly Communist. 🧵 1. Leading up to MLK Day this year, Kirk & Posobiec decided they were going to abandon the standard Republican ritual (quoting King out of context, depicting the civil rights hero as a colorblind conservative).

Instead, they wanted to vilify MLK and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Because everyone is talking about Ibram Kendi: it is so deeply upsetting to me that when reading groups and book lists were popping up after George Floyd was murdered it was always the work of people like Kendi & DiAngelo. Imagine if everybody read Charles Mills instead 🥲 Robin DiAngelo made a shit ton of money telling other white people that white people are basically incurably racist and Ibram Kendi made a shit ton of money basically claiming to be the sole arbiter of what racism truly is and refused to acknowledge any critiques of his views

Chris Rufo took a break from suing college students for "political violence" (read: getting spit on his shoes) to argue that conservatives should turn to Nixon "as our guide" in mobilizing a "counterrevolution" against things like CRT and DEI.

A quick thread on Nixon & Rufo 🧵 It is interesting that Rufo venerates Nixon, because Rufo likes to talk about how he is deeply opposed to racism, often pointing to the fact that he is in an interracial marriage and has biracial children.

Nixon was deeply racist. Ex 1: Nixon & Reagan discuss African diplomats

The YouTube channel for Larry Elder’s documentary films uploaded the John Birch Society propaganda film ANARCHY USA, which claims the civil rights movement “is simply part of a worldwide movement, organized and directed by Communists, to enslave all mankind”

A thread, w/ clips🧵 ANARCHY USA was written & directed in 1966 by JBS member G. Edward Griffin, a prolific propagandist & first-rate quack. Griffin believes that HIV “doesn’t even exist” & that cancer is a dietary deficiency that can be cured with “an essential food compound” mediamatters.org/glenn-beck/who…

"Cultural Marxism" has entered mainstream political discourse, appearing in recent speeches by DeSantis and Hawley, Fox News broadcasts, and right-wing media from Breitbart to Ben Shapiro.

This is a thread, with clips, on the 25-year history of "Cultural Marxism" on the Right 🧵 1. We begin with the arch-conservative activist and TV host, Bill Lind.

He began his 1998 talk "The Origins of Political Correctness" by saying college campuses have become so authoritarian that he'd be put "literally on trial" for joking about women and shopping carts

Greg Wickenkamp taught 8th-grade social studies in Iowa, where a GOP state legislator accused him of violating a law against teaching CRT.

Mr. Wickenkamp asked his superintendent whether he was allowed to teach students that slavery is wrong.

She couldn't give him an answer. Source: wapo.st/3lbLgSo

BREAKING: Leaked documents from Florida’s State Board of Education reveal that @CollegeBoard has been lying about the edits to the APAAS curriculum. They have been in contact with the DeSantis administration for over a year to tailor the course to the state’s anti-CRT policies. HB 7 is the 2022 “Stop WOKE Act” and Rule 6A-1.094124 is the 2021 State Board of Education ruling that compares CRT to Holocaust denial and requires teachers to lie to their students about the founding of the United States.

AP African American Studies was whitewashed for these.

Last night I watched a PBS documentary called “The New Klan: Heritage of Hate” from 1978.

This interview with David Duke, who gets extremely frustrated as he tries to insist he is not a Nazi, despite wearing a Nazi armband and selling Nazi literature, was especially satisfying. [CW: extremely racist language, imagery]

This clip illustrates that the reactionary right-wing attack on antiracism in the U.S.—though it has evolved to adapt to new sociopolitical contexts—has remained the same at its core: “antiracism is race-based Marxism pushed by Jews.”

DeSantis's administration claims that the AP African American Studies curriculum “is inexplicably contrary to Florida law.”

But the Stop WOKE Act isn't supposed to ban ANY content; it's supposed to allow such concepts to be discussed, which is exactly what the curriculum does. This is the document the administration provided today identifying its "concerns" with the AP Af Am Studies curriculum.

As @JeffreyASachs immediately noted, the inclusion of such authors and topics in course curricula is in no way in violation of HB 7, aka the "Stop WOKE Act."

Kanye: “I don’t like the word ‘evil’ next to Nazis… I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” This is wild. Never seen Jones do damage control live on his own show

In light of right-wing media and politicians’ rapidly accelerating, public embrace and defense of antisemitism, I’d like to point out that the anti-CRT movement played a crucial role in re-normalizing and mainstreaming conspiracy theories and talking points contrived by Neo-Nazis

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1404520688719826945

Rufo’s adoption of the “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory was inspired by James Lindsay, whose ramblings about Marcuse and the Frankfurt School were eagerly and uncritically accepted by Rufo. When I pointed out the neo-Nazi origins of these ideas, Lindsay doubled down.

A lot of people talk about how the GOP is under the spell of Trumpism. Not a lot of people talk about how it has become everything Paul Weyrich wanted it to be when he started to get deeply involved in party politics ~50 years ago. Here’s a 🧵 highlighting a video of Bill Lind, Weyrich’s closest far-right co-conspirator, arguing that Political Correctness is actually “Cultural Marxism,” an ideological virus destroying American culture & Western civilization. The talking point has hardly changed over 30 yrs.

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1370322692528693251

When Christopher Rufo is exposed in a major news outlet for being the race-baiting demagogue he is—on which his entire political career rests—he simply resorts to gross mischaracterization and character assassination. Just like any other race-baiting demagogue would. Rufo feels threatened by WaPo, because of their status and power. So he feels he can’t ignore those articles on him.

When I wrote a thorough investigation of his “reporting” on CRT for @DiscoverFlux, a smaller outlet, he never responded. But he’ll block you if you bring it up.

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1499664675251769344

60 years ago, National Review claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was a Marxist plot to inject socialism into the US.

Today, National Review claims that teaching AP African American Studies is a Marxist plot to inject socialism into the US. Again, this is why “CRT isn’t even taught in K-12 schools!” is awful, unconvincing messaging. For these people, anything that rejects “colorblindness”—anything that rejects the bastardization of MLK according to which the solution to racism is to ignore racial inequality—is CRT.

Chris Rufo, arguably the most influential Republican propaganda strategist since Lee Atwater, is now promoting Auron McIntyre, a neofascist influencer whose latest grievance is that the GOP establishment is conceding that racism is bad & civil rights are good. Note the Stonetoss comic, intended to dissuade readers from “conceding” that racism is bad by showing them that they already reject the idea that “transphobia” (which they don’t believe exists) is bad.

Stonetoss, a neo-Nazi, used to make “RedPanels,” which was much less covert:

Teaching the true story of the Oberlin Rescue "would evidently violate typical anti-CRT guidelines, which prohibit describing 'American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles'"

Excellent article thehill.com/opinion/civil-… The Fugitive Slave Act "was not mistakenly enacted despite the nation’s principles. It was, as Charles Langston understood, the intentional institutionalization of white supremacy, under which a Black man had no rights."

Cannot stress enough how counterproductive it is to insist that "Critical Race Theory is not taught in American schools."

We said that when we thought the reactionary anti-anti-racists were actually looking to debate CRT. By now it ought to be crystal clear to all: they're not. Their game: to redefine CRT to "annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans."

Our strategy shouldn't be to lie. ON THEIR OWN TERMS, the work of MLK, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois would all count as CRT. That's how we must respond.

In 2012, the Texas GOP rejected "critical thinking skills" in public education which "undermin[e] parental authority." The nation laughed.

Now they've replaced "critical thinking" with "critical race theory." Republicans everywhere have embraced it. washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-s… Also on the 2012 agenda for TX GOP: "American Identity Patriotism and Loyalty – We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive..."

Jordan Peterson has racked up millions of views on a video in which he reads an essay he wrote. He argues that climate change is a hoax invented by “the cabal of centralizing globalist utopians operating in the media, corporate and government fronts.”

A (((globalist cabal)))? 1/ Previously, Peterson has said, “what bothers me about the climate change types” is their failure to grasp that “‘climate’ and ‘everything’ are the same word.” 2/

https://twitter.com/thebadstats/status/1486103450446303234

At last, the meeting of minds we have all been waiting for: Jordan Peterson and Christopher Rufo. Arguably the country’s most ideologically influential conservatives at the moment.

I watched this whole episode, so here’s a short thread of some of the most revealing clips. 🧵 1. Rufo reveals something often overlooked: the moral panics about CRT and queer theory/“grooming” in schools—which he spearheaded through Fox News appearances and pseudojournalistic propaganda—began as a reaction to the summer of protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd.

James Lindsay is giving a keynote at the Moms for Liberty national summit and somehow it’s going worse than you’d have thought possible ok this is doing numbers so fuck it: James Lindsay cringe mega thread

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1514050399770087427