Book Review: The Party of Fear

Introduction

The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, is an account of American conservative extremism. The book (second edition, 1995) was written by historian David Bennett. The party of fear does not refer to a political party as such. Instead it refers to various groups of people who share a common mindset that is fundamentally grounded in fear. The main fears changed over time, but included groups that could be vilified and attacked. Focus groups included various immigrant groups at various times, Catholics, immigrants (Irish, Italians, Germans, etc.), communists, Jews, blacks, homosexuals and secular humanists. For his 1995 edition, Bennett added a chapter that described the rise of the militia movement and the ideological constraints the fear party had to deal with to remain viable and to try to build mainstream political power.

The book is easy to read but dense with facts. The book discusses dozens of groups, movements and leaders. Some of them were quite influential and had hundreds of thousands of believers. Over the 20th century, the numbers of people actively involved decreased. That coincided with the gradual loss of fear-based issues that extremists would wield to get people to join fear party (FP) causes.

Book review

Since the 1700s, the goals of the American far right have been about the same and the fears have been similar. Regarding overall fears and goals, Bennett commented about the Order of the Star Spangled Banner of the 1850s, informally known as the Know Nothings:

“For they were there to save and cleanse the nation, to preserve for themselves that abstraction which some would later call the American dream. .... In dozens of books, pamphlets and broadsides the theme was repeated and refined: ‘Our mission is to restore America to the Americans, to purify and strengthen this nation ... to keep it clean from corruption.’”  

Although that bile was directed at Europeans, it sounds like American conservatism and populism in 2020 directed at non-European immigrants, Jews, democrats, actual experts and pretty much anyone who disagrees. The issue or problem that Bennett’s narrative raises over and over is simple: Who are the ‘real’ and privileged Americans, what is the ‘real America’ and who is to be ostracized and suppressed? It was always about the same. Regarding colonial times, Bennett writes:

“The specter of an alien religion penetrating and poisoning the new world garden made anti-Catholicism a recurring theme in early American history. .... What tied these movements to one tradition was the common vision of alien intruder in the promised land -- people who could not be assimilated in the national community because of their religion or ethnicity.”

As Bennett put it, the common FP ideological belief was:

“saving America was worth any price. .... As politicians of morality, they refused to treat those whom they feared with tolerance or civility. As moralists of the Right, they were idealists whose utopia was in the past.” 

Apparently, nothing much has changed since then. That makes sense. Significant human evolution happens over at least tens of thousands of years, not a few centuries.

Bennett comments that early scholars focused on the “history of American bigotry.” The FP leaders were seen as “vicious authoritarians, terrorizing the vulnerable, the sensitive, and the innocent.” Later, more analytic and detached scholars focused on economic factors, social disorder and intense competition for jobs that led to the fear mindset that motivated many but not all nativists of the 19th and 20th centuries. As time passed, scholars were apparently becoming more ecumenical about the human condition and the harsh reality of everyday life for most Americans. Dire circumstances lead some to extremist distrust, intolerance and hate:

“Unable to adjust to a world of power dispersal or to handle life in a complex society, the ignorant or the the powerless abandoned themselves to apocalyptic fantasies. They embraced what two writers called a ‘politics of unreason,’ striking out against certain perceived villains, who often themselves were innocent victims of a society in flux.”

Good grief, that sounds like 2020.

The right ≠ the left: The past vs the future

Bennett comments on the overall appearance to some scholars of extremists on the right compared to extremists on the left:

“The men and women of the Left can be pictured as heroic losers, persevering but not prevailing in the struggle for justice and equality, fighting to help the poor, ....; those on the right often appear only as the deranged or malevolent enemies of American freedom. The vision of the left is of the future, not the past; the ideal America is yet to be created .... Their language may be as graceless as their adversaries .... Those who respond to its appeal reject not only reject traditional political arrangements but also the values of society.”

The right = the left = everyone else in the 99%

Bennett argues that the fears of the extremist right reflect tensions that have been endemic in American history. As other historians have observed, elites, ideologues, wealthy people and interests (the 'manipulators') knew and still know how to deceive, manipulate and divide people to advance their own interests. When it suited them, the manipulators fomented discord between races, nationalities and anything else they could use to polarize and divide average people, e.g., lies, deceit, gender, religion, work skill level, language, ethnicity, nationality and everything else that can be used to foment distrust, hate, bigotry and so forth.

Fun & games in modern times: Christian deceit & etc.

A few of points from the last chapter 16 are merited. One deals with the fall of communism. It forced the extremist right FP to abandon communists as an enemy that could win public support. Bennett observes that the New Right had to focus on domestic enemies because the commies were mostly neutralized. The public didn't much fear that alien ideology. The new FP, the militia movement, focused instead on domestic enemies, the main one being the federal government with a tinge of veiled racism. Catholics were largely no longer seen as an enemy of the nation. The far right anti-government message resonated strongly with presidents Reagan and Bush, who favored wealthy people, e.g., by decreasing their taxes and decreasing regulations. In the 1980s, extremist right anti-government sentiment slowly crept into mainstream belief. Government spending was typically characterized as an attack on traditional family values.

In the 1980s and 1990s, extreme right televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggert, Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson introduced Christianity into politics with a renewed intensity. In the 1700s and thereafter, many radical right ideologues wanted a clean Christian American nation, which meant Protestant, not Catholic. Unlike their predecessors centuries before them, the smart modern day Christian political activists relied on deceit to not scare mainstream people off. Bennett commented on the Christian Coalition and the aggressive, deceitful tactics its leader Ralph Reed endorsed:

“But keep your profile low was the message. .... Reed was quoted in the spring of 1990 .... ‘What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, .... I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians . . . and Christian values.’ But saying such things to the larger public would only frighten the majority, who might find this an extremist vision in a pluralistic society. .... ‘Your should never mention the name Christian Coalition in Republican circles,’ the coalition’s Pennsylvania manual instructed.”

Politicians who were in the Christian Coalition but downplayed their extremism included Rick Santorum. These Christians were accomplished deceivers and liars, just like the practitioners of the radical right in 2020. Lies meant nothing to them. At the time of Reed and other radical right extremists, the GOP did not criticize the radicalization of the party. That too is just like it is in 2020. The invocation ‘Thou shalt not lie’ was completely obliterated into irrelevance for most politically activist Christians. The ends justified the means and that is still true in 2020.

One snippet reinforces the radicalism of the FP. This is how Bennett describes one group in the virulently racist and anti-Semitic extremist movement called Christian Identity:

“Total membership is probably not more than a few thousand, but those involved often appear as ordinary people at their Sunday place of worship -- singing hymns, eating potluck lunches, hearing announcements of upcoming church socials and then listening to an Identity sermon. ‘Judeo-Christianity is a lie from the pit of Babylonian hell. . . . Judaism is the pinnacle of filth and everything evil. Your are either a Christian following Christ or a Jew following a Satanic religion.’”

What a fine sermon.

About that pesky US Constitution & fine art -- Even they are

not something that deranged quackery can’t easily distort into nonsense

Bennett briefly discusses the Constitution and the how FP mindset makes it coherent with extremist FP views. Most crackpot extremist groups tend to see the Constitution about the same way, which is the way the modern GOP is coming to see it. This at is the core of some Christian radical right authoritarianism and probably some GOP authoritarianism, since the Christian radical right is integrating mostly into the GOP and it does not care.

The 14th Amendment says: “No state shall make any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Some Christian Patriots and other radical groups do not like that and rationalize it away by seeing two kinds of citizens. “State citizens” are White Americans who derive their rights from God, while “14th Amendment citizens” derive their rights from the Constitution. That makes blatant racism just fine because God trumps the constitution.[1]

On the other hand, radical right extremists tend to like the 10th Amendment just the way it is. The 10th gives powers to the states that aren't listed for the government or the people. That dovetails nicely with what the radical right libertarian movement that controls the GOP at present. They want federal power to flow from the central government to state governments, which are far easier to corrupt and subvert than a strong federal government.

A parting thought or two. Some on the radical right criticize Hitler as being too humane, while Bo Gritz of the Christian Patriot movement said of the Oklahoma City bombing that killed dozens of innocents, “it was a Rembrandt.” Apparently, some on the radical right have a twisted appreciation of what is humane and acts of destruction. They think savagery is too humane, while or murdering lots of innocents is art.

Footnote:
1. And apparently, Trump trumps God for at least some Christians.