A New Book: "American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation Of How The Republican Party Went Crazy (David Corn)

David Corn's new book looks like it will be a solid, if depressing, history lesson.

It Didn't Start With Trump: The Decades-Long Saga Of How The GOP Went Crazy
The Modern Republican Party Has Always Exploited And Encouraged Extremism.
David Corn, Mother Jones, September/October 2022

. . . Joe Biden had expressed [the sentiment] during the 2020 campaign: If Donald Trump were out of the White House, the GOP would return to normal and be amenable to forging deals and legislative compromises. . . .

But was the GOP's complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. . . .

In my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, I lay out this sordid history in great detail. But even a highlight reel makes it clear that the GOP has bowed to, depended on, and promoted far-right extremists and conspiracists for the past 70 years. Trumpism is the continuation, not a new version, of Republican politics. . . .

The Southern Strategy

In 1968, Nixon had a problem, actually two: George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. . . .  Nixon worried that Wallace, the segregationist and former Democratic governor of Alabama running as a third-party candidate . . . Nixon feared that Reagan, the onetime B-movie star who had won the California governorship in 1966 by exploiting white backlash to the civil rights movement . . .

This led him into the arms of white supremacists. At a May gathering of Southern Republican officials, Nixon pandered, saying he opposed forcing the pace of integration, especially busing to redress school segregation . . . [Nixon met and found common ground with] Strom Thurmond, the arch-segregationist senator from South Carolina . . . 

In subsequent weeks, Nixon contemplated how best to capitalize on racism. . . . Nixon instructed his campaign manager, John Mitchell, to tell Southern party leaders that he would choose a running mate acceptable to the South and would "lay off pro-Negro crap." . . . 

Nixon blocked Reagan and won the nomination. He chose Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew, an experienced race-baiter, as his running mate. . . . He had won the nomination battle by kneeling before the segregationists and adopting racism as a key ingredient in the GOP's recipe for electoral success.

Reagan's Allies of Hate

Reagan eventually got his turn. After being nominated at the GOP's presidential convention in July 1980, his first campaign stop was in Philadelphia, Mississippi—where 16 years earlier the Ku Klux Klan had murdered three civil rights workers. . . . 

Throughout the campaign, Reagan courted the new religious right. . . . [In August 1980, Reagan sat behind] fiery Pastor James Robison . . . "There is no possible way that you can separate God from government and have a successful government," Robison thundered. He blasted liberals, homosexuals, and communists, lumping them all together into one giant threat to American families. "We'll either have a Hitler-type takeover, or Soviet dominion, or God is going to take over this country." . . .

Satan's Useful Idiot

. . . The GOP's embrace of [Pat] Robertson became a bear hug after he formed the Christian Coalition in early 1990. . . . Robertson advanced the far-right trope that America was being annihilated from within, claiming "elites" were trying "to destroy the very society from which they drew their nurture." He added, "There will be Satanic forces . . . We are not going to be coming up just against human beings to beat them in elections. We're going to be coming up against spiritual warfare." . . .

Robertson had published a book, called The New World Order, that merged some of the battiest conspiracy theories of the ages. . . . George H.W. Bush, he asserted, had "unwittingly" carried out "the mission . . . of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers."

George Bush, Satanic dupe—that was Robertson's claim. The Wall Street Journal called his book a "compendium of the lunatic fringe's greatest hits." . . .

But the Christian Coalition would become further integrated into the GOP and help Newt Gingrich and the Republicans gain control of the House in 1994. Six years later, Robertson and his group would rescue Texas Gov. George W. Bush when Sen. John McCain threatened to defeat him in the Republican presidential primary. W. welcomed the assistance of the nut who had pegged his dad as Satan's useful idiot.

Joining the Tea Party

In the fall of 2009, a House Republican backbencher summoned conservative activists to the Capitol for a protest and ended up fusing the GOP to a new manifestation of far-right extremism. . . .

Tea Partiers, led by Sarah Palin [and shot full of paranoia, racism, and rage] . . . falsely claimed Obama's health care reform bill would set up "death panels" . . . [They] legitimized Fox News host Glenn Beck, an unofficial Tea Party leader who suggested Obama was a "full-fledged Marxist" who hated white people, was setting up concentration camps for his political foes, and was creating a "fascist" state. . . .

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann . . . urged Tea Partiers to protest the health care bill at the Capitol. Thousands showed up. They carried signs depicting Obama as Sambo. . . . Another equated Obamacare with a Holocaust death camp. At the mention of Democrats' health care plan, the Tea Partiers shouted, "Nazis! Nazis!"

Yet this crowd was welcomed by the top leadership of the GOP. Present were House Republican leader John Boehner, Reps. Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, and other House Republicans. . . .

Boehner and other Republicans had emboldened a nativistic and tribalistic right-wing force that would soon provide a political base for Trump's jingoistic, racist, and demagogic campaign.

There's a well-established record. For more than 70 years, the Republican Party has stoked animus and conspiracies, often capitalizing on unfounded apprehension about internal enemies subverting the nation. In the 1950s, the foe was Reds. In the 1960s (and beyond), it was Black people demanding social justice and societal change. In the 1970s, the New Right and the religious right claimed liberals and Democrats (and gays!) were plotting to destroy the nation. Tea Partiers asserted Obama headed a sinister cabal bent on turning the United States into a socialist hellhole. Trump and his devotees say the same about today's Democrats.

From McCarthyism to the Southern strategy to the New Right to the Tea Party—the GOP told Americans they were being victimized and that their nation was being sabotaged by their fellow citizens. The Republican Party encouraged Americans to believe the worst, and it affirmed the worst beliefs held by Americans. It operated a feedback loop that caused and reinforced animosity. It bred extremism; it cynically profited off extremism.

There is a great body of academic literature exploring why people believe conspiracy theories, hold fast to false premises, and are susceptible to tribalism and drawn to authoritarians. In 1970, sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab wrote, "Right-wing extremist movements in America have all risen against the background of economic and social changes which have resulted in the displacement of some population groups from former positions of dominance." Four decades later, political scientists Christopher S. Parker and Matt A. Barreto concluded, "People are driven to support the Tea Party from the anxiety they feel as they perceive the America they know, the country they love, slipping away, threatened by the rapidly changing face of what they believe is the 'real' America: a heterosexual, Christian, middle-class, (mostly) male, white country." In an analysis of Trump's 2016 victory, political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck reached an identical conclusion: "He capitalized on an existing reservoir of discontent about a changing American society and culture."

The GOP hasn't been all extremism, all the time. . . . But since at least the 1950s, the party has consistently boosted extremism, prejudice, paranoia, and rage. . . .

This dark side of the Republican Party has often been obfuscated, allowing Biden, Pelosi, and others to suggest there was once a day when the GOP was an honorable entity. Yet the history is undeniable: The party has consistently sought to exploit the worst of America and foment hate and suspicion. Trump didn't invent this malevolence. He merely turned it into the party's brand.

Also from Our Land, Corn's newsletter:

Donald Trump and Snowflake Fascism

Donald Trump recently issued a statement on his struggling TRUTH Social platform: "Why are people so mean?" This came in the middle of a conservative crusade to depict liberals and Democrats as nasty folks. Trump's remark captured the absurdity of this campaign. The fellow who routinely assails political foes and critics as "losers," whose misogynistic history of denigrating women is unparalleled in American public life, who rose to the top of the GOP pile by disparaging the physical appearances of his opponents (and, in one case, the wife of an opponent), who railed against Muslims and "shithole countries," who called for locking up his political rival, who worships revenge and lives on spite, who denounced journalists as "the enemy of the people," who relishes conjuring up ugly and dismissive nicknames for his political adversaries, whose entire political project is built upon denigration and vilification—this guy complains about people being mean? And this list does not include his incitement of an insurrectionist riot or his attempt to destroy the foundation of American democracy.

Yes, you can chalk this up to Trump projection: his habit of accusing others of his own pathological sins. But his whine occurred as other right-wingers boo-hoo'ed about President Joe Biden's recent blast at Trumpism. . . .

Trump and his cultists are masters at the I'm-rubber-you're-glue form of name-calling. Each day, I receive a bunch of fundraising emails from Trump or other Republicans lambasting evil Democrats as radical socialists or communists pursuing devious plots to purposefully destroy America. . . .

On September 1, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Biden again addressed the issue of MAGA extremism in a formal speech. Noting that not every Republican is a MAGA Republican—which is a charitable position these days—he declared, "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." He put it simply: "MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they're working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself….They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence." . . .

And this, too, triggered the Trumpers. Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House official, exclaimed, "No Republican can feel safe in Biden's America.". . . In pro-Trump internet forums, Biden was cast as Hitler. Ari Fleischer, the onetime White House press secretary who helped the Bush-Cheney administration lie the United States into the Iraq war, slammed Biden as "the most divisive, over the top, rhetorically vile, bumbling, inarticulate president in history." Did Fleischer just wake up from a five-year coma? . . .

The GOP, going back to McCarthyism, has wielded falsehoods and paranoia to cast its political enemies as malevolent and nefarious threats to the nation—as literal enemies of the state. . . . [N]ow we see that Trump and his Republican enablers are snowflake fascists. They hurl false accusations to demonize and dehumanize adversaries, plot against democracy, peddle outrageous lies to their followers, support dangerous and nutty conspiracy theories, and fan the flames of political violence. Then they moan when they are called out. C'mon now. Fascists ought to be made of sterner stuff. Perhaps that's why Biden called them semis.

Donald Trump and Gaslight Fascism

. . . This is when authoritarians deny their own efforts to impose an authoritarian regime. The GOP has been engaged in gaslight fascism since the January 6 riot, refusing to fully acknowledge the assault for what it was: a rampage of domestic terrorists who had been directed by Trump toward the Capitol and who tried to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. . . . To counter Biden and to claim that he (not Trump) is the divisive force in American politics—Trump called Biden an "enemy of the state" at a rally in Pennsylvania this weekend—MAGA-ites cannot admit the reality of January 6 and Trump's various schemes and actions to sabotage the 2020 election. . . .

I encountered this directly . . . when I got into a Twitter dust-up with Ric Grenell, the combative and nasty (and apparently misogynistic) Trumpster who served as Trump's acting director of national intelligence for three months in 2020 . . . Grenell contended that criticism of Trump and the Republicans for January 6 and the 2020 Big Lie was nothing but a Democratic attempt to "crush dissent." He insisted that Trump had done no wrong on January 6 and only had called for a peaceful protest. He asserted that the fact-based description of Trump's misdeeds—Trump declaring victory with no basis for that claim, subsequently plotting secretly to overturn the election results, and then doing nothing when his mob attacked the Capitol—was "fake" history.

This was full-scale denialism—so extreme as to be absurd. But this is how fascists and authoritarians debate. . . . George Orwell knew this. In 1984, what is the apotheosis of the Party's desire to create a false reality? "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it," Orwell wrote. "It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it."

Trump fascists have been trying to do the same with the 2020 election: conjure an alternative reality untethered from confirmed facts and declare it to be the party's truth. And in a two-plus-two-equals-five way, they transform a democracy-threatening authoritarian force into patriotic defenders of democracy. Grenell was casting the Big Lie brownshirts as heroic dissenters, not fascist thugs. More disturbing was that a pack of Grenell's tweeps chimed in with assorted lies and distortions about the 2020 election and January 6. They were drowning in the Kool-Aid served by Trump, Grenell, and their co-conspirators. . . .

The reality of Trump's conniving to subvert the republic cannot be recognized by leading Republicans. Doing so would create a dilemma for them. They would then have to explicitly declare themselves in favor of or opposed to this Trumpian war on democracy. They realize an outright expression of support for autocracy would not be good for the GOP, yet a declaration of opposition to the Trumpist assault on the Constitution would alienate any Republican from the party's cult-like base. . . . To survive within the GOP, they must deny. They must say black is white. War is peace. Authoritarianism is democracy. That is the only way the party can now exist. The logic of their position demands it.

In the latest edition of Our Land, Corn realizes his book's subtitle is "a bit of a misnomer":

[T]he Republican Party has always been somewhat crazy—at least since World War II. That is, if you define "crazy" as the acceptance and promotion of irrationality, bigotry, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and other elements of fanaticism. . . . Donald Trump just placed it front and center and made the red meat even bloodier. . . .

One point from the book that seems especially relevant these days is that the GOP and the right has long employed a diabolical and demagogic tactic: accusing Democrats and liberals of purposefully seeking to destroy the United States. . . . The threat within—it's been a common theme for Republicans for decades. We see it today, as the right pushes panics over CRT and the Great Replacement Theory and accuses Democrats of pedophilia.

Spending over a year researching and writing American Psychosis has bolstered my belief in the importance of understanding history. . . . [O]nce you recognize and acknowledge it, the task of countering such reckless and irresponsible political warfare becomes a tad easier. As I've noted before, at the start of this project I didn't envision this book being so timely and relevant. Yet as a debate has ensued over the role of MAGA extremism in the GOP and the value of dubbing Trumpism a fascist—or semi-fascist—enterprise, this history provides a crucial context for this moment and for figuring out what should be done.