Evidently the looney-tune folks are back–or never really went away…What’s that old saying? The more things change, the more they stay the same…
I was a teenager in the 1950s (yes, I’m old), and I still remember my mother fretting about the growing influence of the crazies of the John Birch Society. For those of you too young to remember that organization, allow me to share some lyrics from a satiric Chad Mitchell song of that time…
Oh, we’re meetin’ at the courthouse at eight o’clock tonight You just come in the door and take the first turn to the right Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft But we’re takin’ down the names of everybody turnin’ left
We’ll teach you how to spot ’em in the cities or the sticks For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks The CIA’s subversive, and so’s the FCC There’s no one left but thee and we, and we’re not sure of thee.
The repeated chorus explained the organization’s mission:
Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society Here to save our country from a communistic plot Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks.
There’s a lot more, all clever, but the selected lyrics will give you the essentials. The Birchers were too crazy for even William F. Buckley, and the movement was gradually laughed off the political stage.
The link has the story of how the organization–“once relegated to the outermost edges of the conservative movement, now fits neatly into its mainstream.” The Birch Society had once been too “far out” even for CPAC, but was welcomed back during that organization’s most recent convention. (Reportedly, along with “out and proud” neo-Nazis…)
It isn’t just the Birchers. Along with organizational nuttiness, a variety of health-related conspiracies have emerged. There’s the anti-science, anti-rational rejection of vaccination–evidently grounded on fear that somehow those crafty “woke” liberals will inject recipients with Bill Gates’ tracking devices, or otherwise compromise the health of godly White Christian Americans…And now, we are evidently in for a round of a similar panic reminiscent of my youth: fear of fluoridation.
From North Carolina, we learn that
After weeks of often contentious debate, Union County commissioners voted 3-2 Monday night to stop adding fluoride to the county’s water supply.
As the linked article explains, fluoridation has been incredibly effective in improving dental health.
Water fluoridation has been used by cities for decades to reduce tooth decay. Pediatric dentists told commissioners the practice was not only safe, but it was also essential for those who never or rarely see a dentist.
Dr. Meg Lochary, a Union County board-certified pediatric dentist, told commissioners fluoridation was a public health issue. “I take care of a lot of people who have terrible, terrible dental health. If you had to sit in my office every day and see screaming 4-year-olds getting teeth extracted, it would be a very personal situation for you too,” said Lochary.
Another implored that fluoride was critical for underprivileged children, whose parents may not brush their teeth or help them get to a dentist.
The American Dental Association calls fluoridation of community water supplies “the single most effective public health measure to prevent tooth decay.”
Science, schmience. Instead, the County Commissioners evidently listened to the head of the Union County Chapter of Moms for Liberty, who cited a debunked study for the proposition that government agencies are deliberately adding fluoride to their drinking water and thus impairing the brain development of gestating children. (On purpose? She doesn’t say, but it’s implied…)
Shades of Bill Gates’ chips….
The re-emergence of these “oldies” joins the newer conspiracy theories: QAnon, the Big Lie, the “Replacement” theory, the fires started by Jewish space lasers…
Back when I was still a teenager, I assumed that only a small minority of people embraced these looney-tune beliefs. That was then; now, with survey research showing that some 30% of Americans continue to support a self-absorbed madman who cannot even utter a coherent sentence, I realize how naive I was.
To say that realization is depressing would be an understatement….
Ever since Kellyanne Conway introduced “alternative facts” into the political lexicon, I’ve been bemused–and concerned–about the numerous Americans who choose to live in alternate realities. And I do think that residing in Cuckoo Land is usually a choice.
Trump’s victory in 2016 was due to a variety of social and political dysfunctions–most obviously, the Electoral College–but also the influence of QAnon. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals continue to analyze the reasons some people are susceptible to conspiracy theories that strike most of us as bizarre and ridiculous (Jewish space lasers??), but I’ve been focusing on a somewhat different question.
How have modern communication technologies and the Internet fostered the embrace of these “alternate” and often internally-inconsistent world-views?
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times considered that question through the lens of Dominion’s settlement with Fox “News.” The essay noted the voluminous revelations from discovery in the case, and reminded readers that those revelations not only disclosed a great deal about Fox and its relationship with the Republican Party, but also about its relationship with “a political tradition on the right that goes back decades.”
What may not be so obvious following the revelations in the Dominion suit is that many people at Fox are often engaged with a set of deeper forces at play — and these forces most likely helped trigger the case in the first place.
Fox has both promulgated and become subsumed by an alternative political tradition — perhaps most notoriously embodied by the John Birch Society in the 1960s — in which the far right, over decades, has challenged mainstream conservatism on core issues like isolationism, racism, the value of experts and expertise, violent rhetoric and conspiracism.
The Republican Party and the American right’s ability to police extremists was never particularly robust, but whatever guardrails they provided have become diminished through the years. Fox helped break the American right.
As a number of pundits have noted, Fox and its viewers currently have a symbiotic relationship. The views of Fox’s audience are “rooted in the nation’s traditions and culture, and in the far right’s in particular.” What is different today is that those views “have been modernized and mainstreamed by a variety of factors like technology, social media and economic incentives.”
In other words–as a number of observers have noted–Fox no longer controls the beliefs of its audience. The audience controls Fox.
After the 2020 election, fed a diet of lies by Mr. Trump and his lawyers, Fox’s viewers found a community of the like-minded in the notion that liberal enemies had stolen the election and destroyed America. They shared a code that adds fuel to far-right conspiracy theories: The nation’s chief enemies come from within, and the plots are hatched by powerful elites.
This strain of paranoia has deep roots on the American right. It was true of McCarthyism, which blamed State Department traitors for the “loss of China” to Communism. And it resonated with many members of the John Birch Society, a group that flourished in the 1960s, devoted to weeding out Communism from American life. Birchers, too, championed ideas that today’s Fox viewers find persuasive: The plot against America was orchestrated by liberals, State Department types, journalists and other elites out to destroy the country.
Another pattern that surfaced in the Fox revelations: Just as Mr. Carlson, Ms. Ingraham and Sean Hannity dismissed the Big Lie in private while giving airtime to Mr. Trump’s conspiracism in public, some Birchers questioned or played down the conspiracy theories of Robert Welch, a retired candy manufacturer and founder of the group, while remaining true to the Bircher mission and sticking by it.
The essay reminds us that Birchers also attained considerable power in their day, but the transformation of the GOP and the influence of cable television have empowered the distributors of delusion far beyond that exercised by the Birchers.
A critical difference between the experience of the Birchers and Fox and its audience today is that the Republican Party, at times, was willing and able to push Birchers and their ideas to the margins, where they remained for years. Today, the party seems neither willing nor able to police the extremes: It cannot control a national megaphone for Bircher-esque views and, as important, the way companies like Fox monetize them.
Fox began by selling a product that met a perceived demand–but its survival is now tethered to its viewers’ delusional beliefs. The concluding paragraphs of the opinion piece remind us that when the Birch Society became even more extreme, it fizzled out–but the Birchers didn’t have Fox, Elon Musk’s Twitter, social media and a zillion wack-a-doodle Internet sites– and even apps— to sustain it.
As that saying goes, history doesn’t always repeat: sometimes it just rhymes.
