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Trump has mainstreamed the radical Right His politics feeds off the anger of the individual

'Trump’s anger is downright enlightening for many.' Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

'Trump’s anger is downright enlightening for many.' Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images


July 13, 2024   9 mins

In the wake of Biden’s rambling press conference, his answers dishonestly and mechanically padded with campaign boilerplate that wandered far away from the questions — you could see the Scotch tape on his synapses — America is wondering to what extent Biden is mentally impaired. This in itself is a symptom of national cognitive decline; the country seems to be losing its ability to focus. The pressing reality is not Biden, whose departure from the race is all but inevitable. The central drama now is about to happen next Tuesday, at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. Here the question of America’s fate will depend upon a larger question: whither the American Right? That is a complicated matter.

To even begin to understand it, you first have to understand the arc of contemporary mores. To put it crudely: behaviour that was once publicly unacceptable is now tolerated, even embraced. Trump’s abusive language and threats didn’t come from nowhere. America’s famous radical individualism has burst its last restraints. It is hardly a surprise that a major American political party will be anointing an apparent sociopath its king when, for example, some American schoolchild somewhere could still be responding to the TikTok challenge, “Slap-a-Teacher”. Trump didn’t drop from the sky. He grew out of a coarse transformation of American life.

Or to put it another way, just as liberal culture long ago assimilated a culturally avant-garde nihilism — moving from Dickens to Kafka to Fifty Shades of Grey — the conservatives are experiencing their own upheaval in morality. Liberals have Quentin Tarantino’s revels in meaninglessness and violence. Hard-Right conservatives can now be entertained by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s social media posts encouraging the execution of Democratic leaders.

This Right-wing assimilation of once subversive values and sentiments, however, had a long gestation. For the fringe energies on the Right — the calls for violence, the paranoia, the nativism, the xenophobia — to have come bounding into the mainstream, two things had to happen. The Right had to shift its attention from political issues to cultural ones. And culture had to become a highly personal, idiosyncratic matter. The disappearance of a mass culture, and the rise of countless streaming niches, has had an incalculable effect on politics. People no longer stand around the proverbial water-cooler talking about the TV show or the movie they saw the previous night. Now they sit in their cubicles and watch on their screens recaps of what they saw the previous night. And few people saw the same thing as other people. A good part of Trump’s appeal is simply that he is someone who gets lots of people to poke their heads out of their cultural niches and pay attention to him, the way people used to go en masse to a movie theatre instead of sitting home alone in front of their screens (where they are now all following Trump). This great divider is also, for masses of people, a great uniter.

The story of the contemporary American Right is a tale of fringe to mainstream, of a long, slow embrace of what was once unacceptable. It took some time, but an adversarial energy was its mother’s milk from the beginning. Today’s take-no-prisoners, radical American Right was born in opposition to the New Deal and to what appeared to be Soviet communist threat. The Right has been and will always be a counterpunch. Trump is a born counterpuncher.

In the Thirties, class was the focus of both Right and Left. With the legislative triumph of FDR’s New Deal, though, the liberal idea of material hardship as something to be ameliorated by the state established itself, forevermore, as the dominant political ideology in America. The Right-wing counterpunch occurred quickly. But it found no real outlet in national politics, fulminating instead in print and in the new medium of radio. It was exemplified by the ideas of Father Charles Coughlin, the radical Right’s chief demagogue at the time. Coughlin was a pastor in a small Michigan town who had turned sharply from a supporter of FDR and the New Deal to a vicious opponent of both, using radio broadcasts and a magazine he published called Social Justice, to attack communism, bankers, and Jews. Coughlin began as an advocate for the economically disenfranchised, but his Left-populist rhetoric gradually evolved into pro-Nazi tirades. At his height, his broadcasts had a staggering 30 million listeners — he was proof of concept for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson. Though Coughlin’s sentiments found no political platform, their incendiary quality threatened public order, especially after America entered the Second World War. The federal government shut down Coughlin’s magazine in 1942 for violating the Espionage Act, and the Catholic Church put an end to his radio broadcasts at the same time.

Coughlin had been silenced, but his enmity toward liberalism seethed under the surface of American life. Yet as the New Deal became a welcome permanent condition for most Americans, as the country grew prosperous after the Second World War, and as accelerating industrialism slowly eroded the moral fabric of small-town America, Coughlin’s focus on class lost its pull. Enter Senator Joseph McCarthy, who replaced class consciousness with an obsession with seditious elites. This shift in emphasis was a virtuoso move. McCarthy’s anti-communism provided an intellectual style of its own for the masses of people alienated by the liberal intellectual class. McCarthy became a sort of cultural mandarin from below, simply by virtue of his attacks on the cultural mandarins who ruled from above. This was the first step, by the Right, out of politics into culture.

McCarthy was exposed during the televised 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings as vapid, venal and heartless. And as a result of its tribune’s public discrediting, the Right lost much of the following McCarthy’s conspiracy theories had won for it and settled back into the political margins. There the fevers McCarthy had unleashed were soon embraced by the ill-tempered John Birch Society, which represented the return of Father Coughlin’s dark populist zeal. Like the Tea Partiers and MAGA enthusiasts who eventually followed them, Birchers blamed moderate elites in the Republican party, just as much as Democratic elites, for an expanding universe of entitlements — and also for the seemingly unstoppable growth of international communism. William F. Buckley, routinely praised for purging the conservative movement of its extremist fervors, in fact gave the Birchers an appreciative wink as he finally, and with finely calibrated ambivalence, seemed to usher them out the door in 1965 with a series of scathing editorials that he published in his weekly magazine, National Review, at the time a highly influential force in conservative life. After all, Buckley’s seminal 1951 God and Man at Yale lambasted cultural elites across the political spectrum in a way that held great appeal for the Birchers.

Coughlin’s original economic populism had never caught on with conservatives, who were, and always will be, the party of banks and big business. But with Buckley’s book, a strenuous argument for replacing the teaching of secular humanism in universities with the propounding of Christian principles, the Right found its most powerful appeal and its true purpose: the battle over who owns American culture. The shift from the conservative pursuit of class conflict to its pursuit of a culture war was almost achieved. Once you draw a bead on the liberal elites, the liberal elites train their attention back on you. The result is that you share their visibility, and their glamour. Bob Dylan in 1962:

So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin’ down the road
Yee-hoo, I’m a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!

The American radical Right was well on its way to being mainstreamed.

The Left, clutching their Gramsci, followed a similar path, as they embarked on their long march through the cultural institutions, mainly the universities. In 1989, the Catholic conservative Michael Novak published, in Forbes magazine of all places, an essay titled “The Gramscists Are Coming”, in which he urged conservatives to adopt the principles of Gramsci’s Kulturkampf — what Gramsci called a “war of position” — in order to head off the Left’s incursions into culture.

Three years later, at the 1992 Republican convention, the Right-wing Catholic populist Patrick Buchanan — Father Coughlin with an urbane, smiling face —declared: “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” The cosmopolitan Buchanan was shrewd about empowering people who felt left out by the ruling elites: he gave them an intellectual framework of their own. A “cultural war” is, after all, a form of culture. The Right-wing motion from politics to culture was complete.

In response, the Left’s grip on the universities hardened into identity politics and “political correctness”, the ancestors of today’s “woke” crusaders. And in response to that, but mostly to the election of the country’s first black president, the Tea Party briefly rose to prominence, bringing the virulent sentiments of Father Coughlin and the Birchers, which had always lingered on the fringes, into the Republican mainstream. Yet the Tea Party’s feral energies were too much, it went too far in its refusal to compromise in Congress — and wiped itself out.

Trump would later incorporate the Tea Party base into the GOP by elevating the Tea Party’s cultural animadversions — they, like Trump, believed that Obama had not been born in the US, and that he was secretly a Muslim and a socialist — over its radically libertarian economic agenda. Trump played down his radical free-market economic agenda — it pretty much went without saying for a GOP candidate who was also a successful businessman anyway. Instead he played up a rhetorical Grand Guignol of feral sentiments. He abandoned the Tea Party’s intransigence over the budget. And made a bullying, derisive intransigence the substance of his politics. Trump is the only American president to be loathed by liberals, not for his policies and actions as president — as Nixon, Reagan and Bush had been — but simply for being an asshole.

Nowadays both Right and Left accuse the other of inflaming passions over culture to conceal an economic agenda; but with the triumph of neoliberalism, the economic agenda of the two sides has become strikingly similar in many respects. The war over who owns the culture, though, is where the irreconcilable differences lie. Not over tariffs on China, or managing Social Security, or even the need to curb illegal immigration. There is middle ground on all those issues. There is no middle ground over the belief in the fungibility of biological gender, or the certainty of the existence of inherent racism, or the issue of whether to teach both to children in school. The emergency in the way people expect their most intimate realities to remain constant is what is largely inspiring them to protect Trump from the destabilising assaults upon him.

Surprising as it may sound, the culture war in America has been, to a meaningful degree, a clarifying, sometimes bracing, dispute in the absence of the communist menace on the one hand, and of a shared water-cooler culture on the other. But America’s culture war has now, like pretty much every public experience in America, begun to vanish into the labyrinth of the American psyche.

“But America’s culture war has now, like pretty much every public experience in America, begun to vanish into the labyrinth of the American psyche.”

Just as late capitalism has made the commodification of psychological life — Mark Zuckerberg is the Cecil Rhodes of our time — its last commercial frontier, American politics now is more and more a matter of mental states; no wonder that Taylor Swift’s lyrics often sound like middle school meets Munch’s The Scream. It is fitting that the entire country should be obsessing over the fraying synapses of its two presidential candidates. Ideology is out. What you think people are actually thinking behind the veneer of what they want you to think they are thinking, as you are trying to figure out what you actually think or should seem to be thinking yourself: that is in. Unmasking deep psychic truth, once the project of high art and modern sociology, is now a common reflex.

Forget all the talk about the administrative state, and the deep state, and Hayek and Strauss and Agamben; forget libertarianism, and Catholic integralism, and neo-conservatism, and the Claremont Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, and Project 2025, and the slick, hustling Right-wing New Dealers. Think instead of that great emblematic American experience: driving on a highway.

Everyone is a centrist behind the wheel. You drive according to the speed limit when you have to, exceeding it when you are alone or when everyone else does. You mostly stay in the middle lane, or in one of the middle lanes, changing to the left lane to pass or to the right lane to exit the highway. So long as everyone else driving near you behaves in the same way, everything goes smoothly. Your life is fine, it will be fine, all will be fine. There is no reason to think or feel radically different about anything. All of sudden, though, someone cuts you off. You fly into a rage and want to follow them to wherever they are going, pull them out of their car and beat them into extinction. In much the same way, patriotism and ideology instantly vanish from the minds of soldiers in battle, who care only to survive.

As American life fills with conveniences, inconvenience begins to feel more and more like a broken promise. Responsibility itself comes to be experienced as a betrayal of free will. In this carnival of sovereign impulses, the space between politicians — and every public figure; think of those postgame press conferences in which athletes have to atone to viewers for their mistakes during the game — and the people who elect them disappears. It’s not enough to vote someone out, or vote against them, when they cut you off, as it were. You have to destroy them. Ideology is irrelevant, except as someone’s pretext for enraging you, and as your pretext for striking back.

The rise, in Europe, of fringe parties in the mainstream, is one result of a democratic politics that regresses, more and more, to the appetites of the individual. In America, where the sense of community has always been elusive, such bespoke politics, if you will, is becoming more and more prevalent. You might also call it streaming, or niche politics. Something for everyone; nothing for all.

This atomised political consumerism is why, professed liberal amazement and outrage to the contrary, there is nothing contradictory about an American Right in which Mitch McConnell and Marjorie Taylor Greene share the same (ultimate) fealty to Trump. Having its roots in opposition to the New Deal, then to godless Ivy-educated elites, and now to progressive commandments to transform human life from the genitals, to the kitchen, to the highway, the American Right, like any person ruled by anger, is open to the most intense emotions, no matter how contradictory. In a blurry, mentalised time, Trump’s own anger is downright enlightening for many people.

In Milwaukee, Trump will continue to capitalise on the American Right’s movement from fringe to mainstream, from politics to culture to psyche, and turn himself into a syncretic masterpiece. He is, all at once, a fractured Picasso and a reassuring Hudson River landscape; a Buckley-like cosmopolitan exerting a clownish appeal to born disrupters and, in the eyes of prim liberal elites, “losers”; a convicted felon who can now present himself as an American anti-hero on the order of Christ himself. And, to top it all off, the Democrats are becoming, before everyone’s eyes, the party of sclerosis, dishonesty, concealment, and sanctimonious hunger for power.

That is to say, the erstwhile party of the New Deal is now retreating into the shadows, while the party of Father Coughlin has emerged from the shadows once and for all and, short of the Lord himself intervening with Josephus Bidenarius Caesar, ready to take centre stage.


Lee Siegel is an American writer and cultural critic. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award. His selected essays will be published next spring.


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Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
5 months ago

I couldn’t even finish this article. I got about a third of the way through and I reached my daily limit of toxic self righteousness. This is sadly typical of American politics on both sides. The judgemental finger wagging tone, the utter disrespect for dissenting opinions, the condescension, the open and unapologetic contempt for the other side. All are typical of both sides. This is traditional American Puritanism with a modern spin, Jonathan Edwards without the pretense of divine inspiration, a dogmatic true believer preaching the indisputable gospel truth and condemning all those sinners who dare to disagree to the fiery pits. Shame on Unherd for publishing this. I am no fan of Trump, and I am all for hearing many viewpoints but this is utter drek, every bit as disgusting, one sided, and openly prejudiced as the racist drek the author is criticizing. Congratulations, the cycle of hate continues.

Stuart Bennett
Stuart Bennett
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Same, less than a third of the way through.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
5 months ago
Reply to  Stuart Bennett

I made it to the Biden comment.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Thanks you pretty much summed up, what I felt. I actually wanted to stop reading at the point, where he claims, that banks and corporation will be always part of the Right (really?) It seems they totally embraced the Left‘s woke agenda of DEI and swallowed NetZero. He also alleges that the Right calls for violence and are paranoid and xenophobic. Hmmm… No mention of recent violence by BLM, who were pretty much given free pass by Blue States to go rampaging through major cities, some armed to their teeth, looting shops and incinerating public buildings. The most recent Gaza demonstrations weren’t that peaceful either, organised mostly by left wing students, and ended up in violence, destroying public buildings and campuses….

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
5 months ago

I can only attribute this inconsistency to religious fanaticism. I’m sure the author would be fuming at me to be put in basically the same category as McCarthy and Father Coughlin, but to me it sounds exactly the same. What’s the difference? Like them, he is proclaiming one ideology as righteous, condemning the rest, expressing open contempt for other viewpoints, reducing complex issues to childish good vs. evil narratives, and presuming that his righteousness grants him some elevated status and right to rule over others. He might even be worse. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

0 0
0 0
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Or more likely the dreaded F—— word.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  0 0

what is this F word?

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

This is yet another article where Unherd’s aim to provide a spread of opinions has overreached, to put it diplomatically.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
5 months ago

Yes, thank you for putting it diplomatically. Perhaps Unherd could publish something from Tucker Carlson for the sake of balance.

David B
David B
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Or Steve Sailer.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

There are quite a few left leaning authors worth reading but UnHerd keeps bringing in college professors, writers for places like the New York Times and The Guardian, and hacks like the author here. I can hear people like that anywhere. UnHerd should live up to their name and find worthwhile stories and arguments that I won’t find many other places.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Good idea. Balance one unbalanced account with another unbalanced account.

Kerry Davie
Kerry Davie
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Agreed; it is a largely bee ess diatribe of self-indulgent pseudo intellectualism. I had to skin the last third; the first two thirds were as much punishment as I could take.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

You guys are stronger than I am.

I managed till about here:
“fringe energies on the Right — the calls for violence, the paranoia, the nativism, the xenophobia”
Meanwhile, I see lefties burning down Paris because they might lose an election, raving fantasies of how Trump might do, while doing exactly the same against him and his supporters, the hatred for anyone who thinks differently…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

I was the same. I can only take so much codswallop in any given day and getting only about a third of the way through this nonsense has done me for the foreseeable.

jane baker
jane baker
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Best to keep aware of the enemies narrative spin

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Thank you! Yes, I gave up reading this part way through as well.
As a former Berkeley radical, I absolutely disagree that the left only reacts to overreach by the right. We were not reacting, we were ACTING! we wanted a revolution!
Fortunately I grew up some and now I detest leftist revolutionaries. They want to destroy the foundations of our political stability as well as what little remains of our common culture.
This writer’s thesis is garbage!

T Bone
T Bone
5 months ago

This reads like conspiratorial projection. I don’t know how you can critique the “Extreme Right” from this unhinged perch of self-righteousness.

He did say one thing that was true when he said “Trump is the only American president to be loathed by liberals, not for his policies and actions as president — as Nixon, Reagan and Bush had been — but simply for being an asshole.”

I’m sorry but in a Sea of incompetent, performative actors posing as politicians, most people will take the asshole with decent policies every day.

Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Yes, the Right is rising. Our American culture has been dominated culturally by the Left for several decades now, as the Left has moved on from economics to identity and culture, and gotten crazier and crazier. Now we have a Pride Month (and people are talking about Pride Season) which de-legitimizes same-sex attraction and elevates transgenderism and various types of fetishists, from bondage aficionados, to furies, to piss-drinkers. We are, in many cases, accepting that little girls and young girls shall compete athletically against boys, share toilets, and undress with them. We have been forcibly stripped of any positive sense of national identity, and of our right to have national borders. We have watched crime and chaos expand in our cities. And now the House That Progressives Built seems to be collapsing, along with the fairy tale that Joe Biden is, or ever was, able, competent, and decent. Perhaps the author sees all this recent history as an inevitable reaction to the values of the John Birch Society, which were an dangerous and unnecessary reaction to the New Deal. As a former Democrat who came of age on a college campus in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and protested the Viet Nam War, I hardly know where I fit in. But I do know that if it’s Biden or Trump, no, let me amend that – if it’s the progressive (Woke) Democrats or Trump, then I must chose Trump. I will agree that it does feel like the Right is rising, with all its inherent, attendant dangers. I’m used to worrying about the loony, aggressive, Left, and now I also have to worry about the loony Right as well. There are some cycles that we will, perhaps, never break.

Julie Curwin
Julie Curwin
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Exactly. And as Andrew Klavan has pointed out, when the left created an entire system of rules for political correctness–things polite and sophisticated people are not allowed to say but everyone with common sense (and eyes and ears) knows are true–it became inevitable that a rude boor of a man would become president.

El Uro
El Uro
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Why do you name Trump “asshole” when he is saying openly what you think privately?

T Bone
T Bone
5 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

I didn’t name him that. I accepted the author’s name because I don’t care about his personality. I care about the policies.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
5 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Because that’s the operational definition of “asshole.” But I’m glad they exist!

James S.
James S.
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

Ditto! What drives the so-called elites crazy in part regarding DJT is the “mean tweets,” in-your-face attitude, and the unpardonable sin of not rolling over when attacked (like a host of mainstream Republicans). Personally, I’ll take an a-hole with common sense policies over the sh—show that is the Biden administration any day.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
5 months ago

No, this article is a prime example of why people like the author are worth hating. The revisionism and deflection in this is shameless. For example, modern right wing populists have much more in common with the New Dealers than the neoliberals who followed afterwards especially economically. Not too mention the slow destruction of the populist left through the 90’s and 00’s. I mean just look at the blatant lie that the immigration debate does not include irreconcilable differences. Mr. Siegal is pulling a nice little story out of his rear end about Birchers and throwing in a little *nudge nudge wink wink* to those nasty German guys. Let’s just have a little fun and list some of the relevant things he cannot be bothered to bring up. No mentions of decades of economic disasters, out of control illegal immigration, the blatantly authoritarian tendencies of Western governments as they claim to be saving us from the dreaded “F word”, frequent foreign policy fiascos, trans insanity, and hold on… I need to take a break here… Whew, there we go. Where were we? Ah yes! The demonization of Western countries own citizens, out of control corporate power, small businesses being destroyed in favor of massive monopolies, attacks on factual history as well as the foundations of Christianity, rampant rising crime, a hilariously untrustworthy media, half the things called “conspiracy theories” turning out to be true six months later, progressive radicals and criminals getting a free pass, “experts” somehow not knowing anything, unaccountable technocrat bureaucrats running governments over elected officials… I need to stop. Yeah, take this garbage and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

T Bone
T Bone
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

It’s time to just overwhelm Progressives with good culture, good music and enjoyment of life and let them try to tear it down. They’re running on carbon emitting fumes of misery.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

But do you dispute that the MAGA movement–and the portion of actual conservativism it has swallowed–are hugely fueled by anger, much more against than for anything?
(If so inclined, see the comment I’m about to make about the mirror image of this).

0 0
0 0
5 months ago
Reply to  T Bone

You will never overwhelm the progressives with regressiveness, time always moves forward whether you like it or not.

T Bone
T Bone
5 months ago
Reply to  0 0

Define regressive.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
5 months ago
Reply to  0 0

Time may move forward, progressives do not. These are the people who have reintroduced race-based discrimination, separate but equal, and the erasure of womanhood.

Ardath Blauvelt
Ardath Blauvelt
5 months ago
Reply to  0 0

Note: time is the only thing that progressives can claim. They fail to “progress”.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

The article follows the standard practice employed by elitists right across the West which is to tell you that politics is no longer about class and the reason that they are in charge is because ‘we knows best’.

In the UK they’re currently telling us that ‘the grown ups’ are back in charge. Unfortunately for them a growing number of people have begun to notice that these are the same grown ups whose refusal to be accountable to the electorate is responsible for the causes of all the current discontents, the Iraq war, Libya, the 2008 crash and the immigration apocalypse.

Politics is always about class. That’s why we need democracy.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

In Diana West’s American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, we find that Joseph McCarthy was right: Washington DC was awash with Russian spies. The problem he had was that infiltration had meant that part of the Federal Government was working for ‘the other side’, so investigations didn’t get very far, and the nation was unable to distinguish truth from lies.  Sounds familiar?

And in her (much shorter) book, The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, West finds connections going back decades:
“The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from “politics as usual” to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election? Finding clues in an array of sources, Diana West uses her trademark investigative skills, honed in her dazzling work, American Betrayal, to construct a fascinating series of ideological profiles of well-known but little understood anti-Trump actors, from James Comey to Christopher Steele to Nellie Ohr, and the rest of the Fusion GPS team; from John Brennan to the numerous Clintonistas still patrolling the Washington Swamp after all these years, and more.”

Yes, there are connections going back to the Cold War. It’s really one long narrative, and there are many YT videos of Diana West discussing the connections.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago

You’re not a very good or principled sceptic when you claim “McCarthy was right” about commie spies in D.C. Where’s your list of names? Remember, many of the people McCarthy vilified and destroyed were not guilty, at least not in the way or degree that finger-wagging, gum-flapping Joe claimed. Joseph McCarthy was about as un-American as they come. Or maybe all-too-American, in the PT Barnum, Huey Long, Donald Trump mold.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Alger Hiss ring a bell? McCarthy was an ass, but there was some evidence on his side if not the sweeping stupidities he perpetrated.

hugh shull
hugh shull
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

There were 57 varieities of communist, according to Senator Iselin.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
5 months ago
Reply to  hugh shull

Haha! Actually he alleged 57, not 57 varieties…I doubt any were called Heinz though…
I’m just going to play a little solitaire…

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

You kidding? FDR’s first Veep, Henry Wallace, was an active communist. Not a fan of inconvenient history, I guess.

0 0
0 0
5 months ago

Funny then isn’t it that McCarthy found no spies.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  0 0

No, it’s not “funny”, KGB tactics have been honed for a long time, as have the CIA’s, actually, in regard to infiltration and spying. The ability to not be “found” out is literally textbook 101.

Terry M
Terry M
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

“the liberal idea of material hardship as something to be ameliorated by the state established itself, forevermore, as the dominant political ideology in America.”

That is not liberal, it’s collectivist nanny statism. This idiot doesn’t understand that individualism is the liberal ideal. Trump taps into that, and it certainly carries a lot of anger at the manipulative authoritarians.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  Terry M

Individualism goes back to the founding of America. It not conservative or liberal. The Transendentalists of the 19th Century were the first to give voice to individualism, and they were neither conservative or liberal. I wish you would have explained why individualism is a liberal ideal rather than a national ideal—sort of like the rugged individual.

Terry M
Terry M
5 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Unheard: Classical Liberalism is individualist, not the pseudo-lib that is bandied about today. Neo-libs are collectivists.

General Store
General Store
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Lee Siegel mainstreams the politics of unhinged, anti-human communists.

Arthur King
Arthur King
5 months ago
Reply to  General Store

True. And history shows us that the ideology is extremely deadly. Communists are demonic in their folly.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Now that’s a reply! My shorter version is that we American citizens feel like we’re going through a newer version of the fall of the Roman Empire (which among other things fell due to mass migration as the Germanic tribes fled Atilla the Hun), and we don’t like it.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

All of what you say might well be true, but it does not make the author, and people like him, “worth hating”. For one of the foundations of Christianity to which you refer please see Matthew 5:44.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

Fifteen years ago I would have agreed with you. Hating, especially over a long time is not a healthy way to be. However, things have got to such a state that not hating, or at least being prepared to defend yourself is tantamount to suicide and that also is a sin.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
5 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

There’s a big difference between not hating someone and being prepared to defend oneself, isn’t there? Feeling hatred for someone is like drinking poison and then expecting them to die.

Nick Faulks
Nick Faulks
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

Best long comment I’ve ever read here.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
5 months ago

At first I thought this was parody. I was thrown for a loop by the superficial logic and weak arguments attacking political opponents and social movements the author clearly knows nothing about it. Turns out low-information stooges can still make a living in journalism.

You know someone thinks they are the smartest person in the room when they write drivel like this; confusing verbal diarrhea for profound wisdom. “What you think people are actually thinking behind the veneer of what they want you to think they are thinking, as you are trying to figure out what you actually think or should seem to be thinking yourself: that is in.”

I actually appreciate Unherd’s efforts to publish ideas that are profoundly at odds with the prevailing attitudes on this site. But you gotta be better than this guy. A quick search on Wikipedia reveals the true character of this clown.

J Bryant
J Bryant
5 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I actually appreciate Unherd’s efforts to publish ideas that are profoundly at odds with the prevailing attitudes on this site.
That’s why I appreciated this article. I doubt there’s a better summary of why a certain segment of the population so detest Trump. For me, it’s useful to understand that perspective, even if I profoundly disagree with it.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
5 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

For me it’s just more evidence that if you judge a man by his enemies, then Trump can’t be all bad.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
5 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Totally agree

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
5 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

But you can have too much of a good thing.

Fortunately, the posts below rectify the situation, somewhat.

michael harris
michael harris
5 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

The article describes the justifications people use for their hatred of Trump. The hatred is, in fact, a pure expression of caste behaviour.

alan bennett
alan bennett
5 months ago
Reply to  michael harris

Exactly.

Obadiah B Long
Obadiah B Long
5 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

There are hundreds of better summaries. This one utterly missed the point. It’s not Trump per se, nor the mainstreaming of the ever-miniscule far right. It’s the dramatic leftward shift in the Democrat Party. Trump is a symptom, and his manner or lack thereof is a sideshow.

AC Harper
AC Harper
5 months ago

“And, to top it all off, the Democrats are becoming, before everyone’s eyes, the party of sclerosis, dishonesty, concealment, and sanctimonious hunger for power.”
And this sentence, possibly the most insightful one of otherwise a whole pile of misdirection, captures the return of populism. It is not (necessarily) the ‘Right’ but an anti-establishment reaction to the current gerontocracy.
So here’s a suggestion… wherever you read of ‘populism’, or the resurgent Left, or the resurgent Right, substitute ‘Anti-Establishment’ for those words and see if that doesn’t make political debate clearer. It might also explain why the Establishment is reacting in such a heavy handed and duplicitous manner to protect their rewarding grasp on power.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

When you replace an overused term you don’t like with one you do, you’re pretty much bound to get something that seems more clear, and reinforces your existing preferences.
Perhaps the violence-ready anti-establishment forces on both the far-Left and far-Right can repair to a large remote island and fight it out amongst themselves. When a winner emerges, they can let the rest of us know–and we’ll vote to let ’em back on our shores, or not.
For those whose populist anti-establishment tendencies are less given to burning things and destroying-to-save: stick around to participate in and enjoy the conversation. Step One: have a conversation, which involves more listening than many of us are used to. Yeah. me included.

AC Harper
AC Harper
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

Maybe yes, maybe no. But perhaps seeking a new perspective will help avoid the entrenched and threadbare Left/Right ‘shouting but not listening’ mode of debate?

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

I agree with you there. But I’d caution that changes in terminology rarely cause fundamental change in perspective—at least not for long. The replacement term acquires the same baggage as the one it replaced, faster than ever in these times.

I was also trying to highlight that extreme anti-establishment forces at both ends of the (yes, oversimplified) spectrum—or horseshoe—tend to share an appetite for destruction, but rarely find common cause with, or even see themselves in the Other Side.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  AC Harper

Agreed, though his insightful comment lacks the obvious truth that the Dem party is not “becoming” these things, it’s been a slow and steady march, and many of us, regardless of political affiliation-or none, such as myself- have been noticing it for quite some time.

michael harris
michael harris
5 months ago

Is that final paragraph advocating the assassination of Trump?

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago
Reply to  michael harris

Ah, you managed to understand the (possible) meaning of it? After reading your post, I returned to that paragraph which I just skimmed, like the big part of the article. Frankly, I could not make any sense of it. Not that I could make much sense of the article as a whole…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago
Reply to  michael harris

No. But surely you recall when trump said there was a Second Amendment solution for dealing with Hillary Clinton. Hmmmm.

michael harris
michael harris
5 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

No I don’t remember that., Do cite the quote, please, in its full context.

Yuri G
Yuri G
5 months ago
Reply to  michael harris

Well, his secret with may had come to fruition last night.

David L
David L
5 months ago

This is bollocks. The radicalisation of the right, is the direct consequence of the ever increasing nastiness and vindictiveness of the left.

John Lammi
John Lammi
5 months ago

The sociopaths who have recently been in power are Clinton, Obama, and famously Biden.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  John Lammi

Strangely edited list.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I would have thought at least Dubya would have got a mention.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

He wasn’t a sociopath, though, just a sort of dumb drifter who worked for Daddy’s poltical interests in the moment. What some people fail to understand is that most governments, at their rotten core, are run by mafia-style families. And what most folks also don’t know is that the heads of the most successful (Greek, Polish, Italian, etc.) mobsters were absorbed into the US government and ruling class, as were the Nazi scientists who generally averted sentencing at the Nuremburg trials.
Americans also seem to forget that the Clintons and the Trumps go way back, and Trump was a registered Dem. I have a pet hypothesis that Trump was run to ensure that the big momma mobsta Hillary would surely win, but he found he enjoyed working a crowd and being adored, and just rolled with it. Surrounded himself with a cabinet antithetical to his purposes, which may or may not have been to actually “drain the swamp”. His multiple firings early on may have been a decent effort to do so, however. He appears to get very little credit for the Abraham Accords happening under his watch, or for pointing out the disastrous open borders to the South. Many conservative blacks claim their quality of life was better under Trump than eight years of Obama – and that’s even more true under his third term via Biden, who has been a pampered and painfully embarrassing puppet.
Very few of us, here, don’t want that festering swamp drained, but the bridge trolls are crafty and well armed, that’s for surej

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago

 Road rage as an umbrella metaphor for the frustrated zeitgeist?

Having its roots in opposition to the New Deal, then to godless Ivy-educated elites, and now to progressive commandments to transform human life from the genitals, to the kitchen, to the highway, the American Right, like any person ruled by anger, is open to the most intense emotions, no matter how contradictory.

Yet we could say something fundamentally similar about uber-woke Progressivists: Broadly speaking, they are united by divisive faultfinding and a disdain for the American experiment–at least if you listen to their public performances. They too often rest in bubbles of self-exoneration; their hollow land acknowledgements (do it once maybe, then give some land back or shut up!) are emblematic of their phoniness. They are often self-critical, but from a shaky foothold of presumptive moral victory, where History itself is on their side and they are in no real danger of sinking as low as even the best of the Others. Their anger and judgment seem forever misdirected outward, just like that of the MAGA crowd they so despise. They can hardly believe the smallmindedness of the other Them, their sociopolitical enemies, who are all stupid or malevolent, or both.
I like this article more than most will here, but it’s glaringly one-sided*.
*It seems that this website is publishing more “competing myopias” of late: waring extremes that reflect our fraught times too unreflectingly. Provide more balance, depth, and nuance within a single article more often please!

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I want to be able to press the like button on this repeatedly… thank you for your measured reason, it’s much appreciated!
I’m going to exit, now, since the trolls , even here, have likely gotten our scent…

alan bennett
alan bennett
5 months ago

He grew out of a coarse transformation of American life.

This curtain twitching Hyacinth Bucket cannot keep his hatred for the ordinary people under control, it seeps out of every word he so crudely twists.

Sean Lothmore
Sean Lothmore
5 months ago

As American life fills with conveniences, inconvenience begins to feel more and more like a broken promise….
That was a good paragraph.

David Jory
David Jory
5 months ago

The Left starts the culture wars:BLM,Antifa,the deluded trans debate etc and then blames the Right for fighting it.
For heaven’s sake the Left even uses the term ‘reactionary’ for the response of the Right.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago
Reply to  David Jory

In psychology there is that concept of reactive abuse. It means a situation when someone, usually belonging to cluster B personalities (e.g. with narcissitic personality disorder), abuses another person. When the latter reacts by fighting back, the abuser uses this (over)reaction, aka reactive abuse, to claim being abused for no reason.
Sometimes the real perpetrator resorts to this intentionally, engineering situations that trigger reactive abuse. On other occasions, the perpetrator is unaware of the abusive nature of their behaviour, but still accuses the real victim, while claiming being a victim of abuse.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

El Uro
El Uro
5 months ago

It’s not just familiar, it’s very accurate. Just look at how often these professional liars repeat the “Trump is a liar” mantra.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Well, what you are describing is rather projection than provoking reaction abuse.
Still, you are right to speak of projection in this case, because projection is typical of people with cluster B disorders (or strong cluster B traits), albeit it is not limited only to cluster B. Actually, we all use projection to a certain degree in certain situations, but definitely not too often and not for blame-shifting purposes (hopefully).

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago

I think they were describing a little of both… but the clarification is useful. And “cluster-b cluster-f**k” is a phrase I dislike spitting out, but unfortunately seems to be more and more useful in our hypernovel and terribly fractured society

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago

Am not sure whether you will read my reply, because I have checked this thread again only now. Still, if you are reading this, my apologies for the delay.
Cluster B disorders do exist, whether we like it or not. (Most probably not, as contact with people who belong to this cluster are very disturbing, to say the least.)
And I agree with you that currently we can see many phenomena that, even if they might not be the root cause for the rise of cluster B disorders and pronounced traits, make these disorders much more visible and expose many more people to contact with cluster B personalities. Social media is an obvious example here. Therefore, I believe that we need to be aware of said cluster B in order to be able to recognise the behavioural patterns related to it and to draw the necessary conclusions.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago

Well, it’s a point of view I suppose, but I think the author has taken disparate bits of history and revised them to suit his argument.
By the way, Trump is no more a sociopath than anyone else in American politics.
This desperate plea to the world to see him as some sort of closet Hannibal Lecter is wearing a bit thin now.
If he was really personality disordered in that way he could never have achieved what he has and would have fallen apart long ago.
A better question might be what caused Americans to become so angry that they needed someone like Trump to sort it out?
You can then look at all the things that the globalist corporations and media have done to americas majority and maybe fix that?
As someone once said, fix the beam in your own eye before you go on about someone else’s mote.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Sociopath, like narcissist, is thrown around way too freely these days. But I think Trump is closer to earing those labels than most, even in the political game.

Philip Tisdall
Philip Tisdall
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

I think there is a gulf between Mr. Trump’s public persona and his personal life. Do you know any other man is spoken of well by all 3 women who have been married to him? His relationships with his many children seem to be exemplary. It is hard to reconcile all of this with a personality disorder.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  Philip Tisdall

*duplicated

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  Philip Tisdall

Exemplary? Look at who Donnie Jr’s become! DJT’s father Fred Trump–who gathered with the K K K at least once and promoted a “be a killer” worldview–had a more plausible claim to true sociopathy. But even wicked men love their children. I wonder what Tiffany thinks. Doubt we’ll hear much of what any of them really think, at least while their dad is still alive.
I’ve heard the late Ivana say some things that don’t support your public-private dichotomy too well. But I’d admit that there’s some good in Trump–a really low bar for a world leader.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
5 months ago
Reply to  AJ Mac

It’s a bit bewildering that he buried Ivana on his golf course without even a headstone.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
5 months ago
Reply to  Philip Tisdall

He’s still married to one of them. But I would say as long as he pays the bills there won’t be a tell-all. However, his niece has a different perspective.
Neither Melania or Ivanka will be speaking up for Trump at the RNC in Milwaukee.

Guy Johnson
Guy Johnson
5 months ago

If only the radical left hadn’t stoked the anger, there’d be very little for the radical right to feed off.

Jeremy Daw
Jeremy Daw
5 months ago

So the Republicans really *are* just a basket of deplorable? Yeah. Whatever.

People are angry for good reason. And sometimes anger is what is required. The American people have had a series of gross deceptions practised on them and they should, rightly, be furious. That destructive energy may, in fact, be what is required for a building of a new Republic out of the decrepit institutions of the old.

Still, it’s nice to know that the establishment has been closing ranks on its opposition since the 1940s. There is nothing new under the sun.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Daw

Destroy to save. Self-righteous anger. Do those forces have a noble history?

andy young
andy young
5 months ago

 “a major American political party will be anointing an apparent sociopath its king” The author has obviously never met a true sociopath. I couldn’t take him seriously after that.

Victor James
Victor James
5 months ago

Embarrassing article.
The institutions are virulently anti-American, anti-White, anti-West. How did that happen? What happened? The cultural revolution – the ‘commies’ – stormed the inner sanctums of American power in the 60s. It happened.
In other words, McCarthy was correct.
The fascist left – hateful, racist, punitive, evil – like their Bolshevik comrades – have been in power for decades now.
Really happy that the oppressed ( what the fascist left call “right-wing” ) are now fighting back.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago

I remember the times when I read all articles in UnHerd with interest and curiosity, feeling intellectully enriched and becoming better informed in a wide array of topics.
Unfortunately, once again I had no patience or motivation to continue reading this incoherent and all-over-the-place article that offers no insight, nor anything worth knowing.
Thank God for the comments section – not least for helping me to realise that maybe it’s not entirely my fault to be unable to read all this till the (bitter?) end.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
5 months ago

I also had no patience to read a long, twisted, unhinged rant by an author whose heart if filled with hate and whose tongue is forked. I prefer positivity, love, and truth, but Dems and leftists quickly turn to demagoguery, name-calling, and hatred.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
5 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

I agree.

Daniel P
Daniel P
5 months ago

So what?

The anger of the individual when shared by others is no longer the anger of the individual, it is a movement.

And, if we got here it is because so much of the left has been lying to and gaslighting the public for years.

The democrats are instruments of an economic and social elite and so are the media. They will bully, lie, gaslight to preserve power. You need look no further than first moving to elect Joe Biden and portraying him as some kind of saintly grandfather who in fact was always mentally weak and engaged in some creepy behavior. He was and is a man that can be controlled by the party elite and their donors. He was not fit for office in 2020 but they got away with it by hiding him in the basement. Then look at how they have protected him since. The party elders, the media, his staff. They gaslighted the nation, played us all for fools even though many of us could see the emperor was naked. Called us names and claimed we we conspiracy theorists for believing what we saw and heard over what they told us we saw and heard.

Chipoko
Chipoko
5 months ago

A sour, skewed piece, whose only value in reading it is what it reveals about the nature of anti-Trump bigotry out there.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
5 months ago

So this is basically the same lie the media spins every time they accuse Trump of saying the extremists in Charlottesville were “fine people.”

tom Ryder
tom Ryder
5 months ago

Saying NCAA women’s swim champion should have less d**k and fewer testicles is now called spewing hatred & divisiveness. Which political party moved away from the center?

Mark Royster
Mark Royster
5 months ago

At the end of a comedy everyone gets married. At the end of a tragedy everyone dies. I hope this will turn out to be the former. How long can we go on hating each other. If nothing else it is very boring.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
5 months ago

Strong borders, limited abortion, low taxes, strong manufacturing base, peace. All of these used to be policies of the Democrats. Now they’re Trump’s and that makes him a “Radical”?? Its well known that Trump used to be a Democrat. Substantively, he’s the same man. It’s why the Neocons hate him. He’s stolen their party. Sadly, the Democrats have been stolen too, by Bernie Sanders and his Socialist Party. Without Trump as their target they’d be as popular as they used to be. Fomenting the visceral hatred of him has allowed them to hide in plain sight. Predictably though their policies are proving so bad that even that is failing. No matter how you you dress Socialism it always fails.

Another Username
Another Username
5 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

The idea that Trump is representing radicals is hilarious. Trump is the moderate in this race. Team Biden are the radicals, and if we had a neutral press, people would see it easily. Instead they have created and continue to stoke TDS.

Additionally, the notion that Republicans and the party of bug banks and big business is laughable. Who was in power during too big to fail? Who bailed out the auto industry? People with TDS really live in a different reality than there rest of us. Both parties are bought and paid for by large multinationals. The question is, who has the principles and courage to bite the hand that feeds it?

Neal Attermann
Neal Attermann
5 months ago

I dunno, I didn’t find the article that offensive. Trump has proven to prevaricate time and time again. The right has grown increasingly impolite and indeed threatening. And recent politics is seemingly trying to attract as much attention as possible from a splintered public, hence the loudest voice wins.

He didn’t seem (to me anyway) to give the left a free pass either. The woke ideology (and it’s hypocrisy) is enough to drive anyone off the deep end. And its Stalin-like gatekeepers are no less impolite and threatening than those on the far right . I thought he made that clear too.

He also did a decent job of disparaging our aging deadender boomers for not letting go.

But he did ramble. And didn’t really bring the conversation forward. Would much prefer to read an essay that more clinically looks at what the hell is going on here. How much of this is the need to stir the pot in a strong economy? How much based on disagreement on legit issues like immigration, how much of a safety net is optimum, how best to harmonize a large country with an increasingly diverse population. How much is based on my group vs your group human nature and other “culture” issues. Likely some combination of all of this. But awfully hard to distillate.

Gregory Clark
Gregory Clark
5 months ago

There’s so much wrong with this article. Its only saving grace is that it treats Trump’s rise with some historical perspective.

Brian Matthews
Brian Matthews
5 months ago

>This Right-wing assimilation of once subversive values and sentiments…

We’re already drowning in this kind of stuff from the legacy media. Unherd is supposed to be for a higher level of discourse.

Stephen Feldman
Stephen Feldman
5 months ago

The current Democrats currently espouse race based identity politics that Kennedy and LBJ generation of Democrats would consider nuts and some kind of bizarre far left cult

Ardath Blauvelt
Ardath Blauvelt
5 months ago

You have to really despise all things “right” to prefer the finally exposed cheating, lying, deceptive, amoral left. What a terrible place to be and this author reflects it.

Chuck Burns
Chuck Burns
5 months ago

A difficult article to read. It made me feel that the authors main aim was to impress the reader with how smart he is. For the most part the article is convoluted, propaganda, and BS.

Malcolm Webb
Malcolm Webb
5 months ago

This is not one of the finest pieces which Unherd has published.

Pablo West
Pablo West
5 months ago

Not a fan of Trump, but I’m calling BS on this. The title itself gives away a lousy bias. The “radical right,” as many of us understand nowadays, is “eveything slightly right of center.” Not even going to read further.

Arthur King
Arthur King
5 months ago

Marxist revisionist nonsense.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago

Awful article, ridiculous presumptions, fabricated “facts”, sloppy analogies, lazy thinking, completely blank and unengaging writing style.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
5 months ago

One party is trying to jail the opposition, it is conspiring with private actors to silence inconvenient speech, it has turned the border into a punchline, but it’s the right that is “radical.” I’m sorry; how is anyone supposed to take this seriously?

William Knorpp
William Knorpp
5 months ago

I admire Siegel’s work in general, but I largely disagree with this essay.
Trump is a mess, of course, unfit for the office of President, in my opinion. But the Democrats are worse, the entire party having capitulated to the unhinged, extremist, anti-liberal, antirationalist, politically-correct/identity-politics left.
Trump, though personally very flawed–too flawed to be President, IMO–he is not by any means the orange Hitler the left has convinced itself he is. And he is no extremist. Read his Agenda 47. He is basically a ’90s-era Democrat.
Anyway, some details:
First: McCarthy, though also personally very flawed, was (like Trump) basically right. As the Venona decrypts finally proved, the U.S. government *was*, in fact, lousy with communist assets. This is now a matter of historical fact–though an unwelcome one, so it goes largely unreported. Were McCarthy’s beliefs justified? Well, they were true, anyway…
Second: Novak published “The Gramscists are Coming” in ’89, and Buchanan stuck his oar in in ’92? By that time, political correctness was already firmly ensconced in universities, and the Long March Through the Institutions well underway. Siegel seems to acknowledge this (sort of in passing), but then writes:
“In response, the Left’s grip on the universities hardened into identity politics and “political correctness”, the ancestors of today’s “woke” crusaders.”
No, PC, “multiculturalism,” and identity politics (though not generally known by that name) were already rampaging through universities. Nothing conservatives did caused or “hardened” this. Conservatives were always caught reacting…and always a day late and a dollar short.
The (progressive) left started the culture war. Liberals, sadly, fell into line because many of them accept the Kerenskian idea that there must be “no enemies to the left.” Trump, like many conservatives an (actual) liberals is fighting back…and fighting back largely by pushing ordinary centrist liberalism of roughly the ’90s. His anger and intemperance are problems. Big problems. But his ideas and principles in this respect are hardly radical. But any refusal to roll over for the revolution is always represented by the left as excessive anger…or fascism.
At any rate: I disagree with Siegel on this one, FWIW.

James Kirk
James Kirk
5 months ago

Seems strange to me to support an administration that has the streets awash with Fentanyl hypodermics, untrammeled immigration and crime. Defunded Police and tent cities in San Francisco. It’s a good job Mom and Pop still quietly gets on with it and keeps the place going.
Liberals spoil everything, their good intentions the Road to Hell. Look at Africa. I don’t know the answer to S. America. Is it the latin or native temperament?

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
5 months ago

The entire premise of the article rests upon the absurdity that there is no Right except Far Right. The very terms Far Right and Fringe Right necessarily imply otherwise. “Far” and “Fringe” are added exclusively to stigmatize anything that is not Left. They are pejoratives used by idiots on the Left to avoid having to respond to the inconveniently cogent positions of the Moderate and Center-Right. Trump leads no vast American army of frothing radicals; he was elected in 2016 and, if he is again this year, by millions of Americans who voted for him reluctantly as the lesser of two very poor choices. To extrapolate the thin ranks of Trump’s enthusiastic supporters as characteristic of all who did or will begrudgingly vote for him is to horribly misunderstand American politics.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

Please include the center left in this account who have found themselves more center right due to the extreme overton window shift!!
Otherwise, well put!!

J S
J S
5 months ago

Driving is an apt analogy. If you’ve been on American blue-state roads lately you know they are falling apart and downright scary, as traffic laws and basic maintenance and old norms of behavior are no longer kept up.

James S.
James S.
5 months ago
Reply to  J S

It’s amazing to see little differences between red and blue states that aren’t so little. I live in blue Washington, and our roads politely put are sh!t. Drive in neighboring Idaho, or Utah and I’m struck by the lack of roadside litter, relative absence of graffiti, and the much better road quality. And that drivers are more polite.

Y Chromosome
Y Chromosome
5 months ago

Claiming a parallel between Trump and Father Coughlin is more than a stretch. Sometimes it seems Unherd’s criterion for accepting an article is that it conforms to their standard ideal of wandering prose.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
5 months ago

Alot of people will be so disappointed if Trump wins, Trump cares about Trump, and winning for him. If he wins he will spend most of the time on the golf course and tweet messages to keep his supporters angry, he does not care about you folks. He’s a dumb ass billionaire who inherited alot of money from his father and almost lost it all in the failed casinos. I’ll give him credt for his ability to channel rage. The US is run by large corporations, Wall Street, and the military industrial complex, and in 4 years it will still be the same. Except the rich will have more money for themselves from his tax cuts and the national debt will be much higher, inequality will be worse. He already had 4 years to build the wall, and didn’t.
His policies are all inflationary, including tax cuts (more debt and printing), tariffs (higher costs of imports), and immigration (less labor supply). The culture wars are a sideshow to keep his supporters angry, as the middle class continues to decline.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

All salient points. Except I do think he did more good than you are giving him credit for, in the congregate. And not just in keeping the failing mainstream media outlets in content frenzies and out of eventual bankruptcy for a good 5 or 6 years…

Alan Gore
Alan Gore
5 months ago

In articles like this, the term “late capitalism” is a red flag.

John T. Maloney
John T. Maloney
5 months ago

TDS Claptrap. Trump, MAGA, America First is Classic Liberalism, plain and simple. Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech. What’s your problem, Lee?
Siegel seems to conflate Trump calling actor George Clooney a “rat” for dumping Biden with Mein Kampf. When will the TDS mass formation psychosis nonsense end?
Growing up in leafy suburbs adjacent to New York City, like Greenwich, Connecticut, my experience with Trump spans 50 years. For 40-plus of those years, Trump was a beloved swashbuckler, bestselling author, philanthropist, and award-winning businessman. Only when he started leading a platform of objective Classical Liberalism did the malignancy of TDS emerge. It’s pathetic and not sustainable. See:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/

Bored Writer
Bored Writer
5 months ago

I lose the will to live after four or five paragraphs of these sociology-speak articles.

Arthur King
Arthur King
5 months ago

We learned how to mainstream far right ideas from the radical left. Whatever methods you employ, we will do likewise.

Gayle Rosenthal
Gayle Rosenthal
5 months ago
Reply to  Arthur King

How can you upvote this rambling piece of crap journalism ? You are a writer yourself, I think. Is this just some mutual back scratching ?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago

Does Lee Siegal actually believe what he has written? If so, he is part of the problem…he has the whole thing reversed!

Anthony Taylor
Anthony Taylor
5 months ago

I guess there are many closed minds on this site, which is a pity. I come here for varied, alternate views, with a slight rightward tilt. Some of the commenters seem to feel that insult and hysteria are the order of the day if they disagree with a column. Don’t quit halfway through; read it all. You might find something that makes sense to you. Personally, I had never equated Father Coughlin with Pat Buchanan before, but it was an astute observation by the author. Lighten up. We can all learn from each other.

Jeremy Daw
Jeremy Daw
5 months ago
Reply to  Anthony Taylor

We’re in the middle of a culture war that may just have turned hot and has real world consequences in the form of mutilated children, the promotion of patent unfairness in the name of equality, the muffling of free speech and a host of other evils. Lightening up is for the birds.

Zirrus VanDevere
Zirrus VanDevere
5 months ago

Phew, hot and heavy take, coming in low and dangerous, sir. You seem to entirely miss the vast number of nuanced thinkers who don’t buy either of the fringe ideologies who are vociferously calling out their excesses in long form style and excellent journalism.
Your take itself is cartoonish, though like a good cartoonist, you have tapped into a quite recognizable truth about the basest elements of the current culture war. You’ve definitely been paying attention to our mainstream media which has certainly become nearly pure propaganda. What you miss is an understanding of the underserved and larger part of the distribution curve. It is true that both fringe edges have flattened the curve in some ways (ironic, that, in the wake of the authoritarian “pandamic” response’s disastrous effects). It is also true that the now “politically homeless” cadre is steadily growing and fighting back, with words, against both harmful ideologies, while the mainstream talking heads lose huge viewership numbers in comparison to those who take in content via non-propagandist venues (including but not at all limited to Substack and a plethora of popular podcasters, some of who’s followships dwarf the money-hungry, click-baity mainstream outlets by far). You might be able to sketch out a believable narrative, but you seem to have no real understanding about the true heart of America. Perhaps YOU are the person who’s been cut off in traffic and wants to follow that driver in order to angrily beat them up. Perhaps you are still angry about the little tea-dumping thing a way’s back. Perhaps you may need to calm your amygdala down in whatever way works best for you so that you can think rationally and clearly, in a more nuanced way.

It’s telling that there is no mention of a successful RFK presidential candidacy in this article, but no surprise since the mainstream media is also actively ignoring it (and unlike this malinformed writer, actively supressing it).
Perhaps some more investigation into the shift of the overton window towards the left in each of our countries could soften and fill out your understanding of the greater cultural shift in the West at large. Or perhaps you will stick to your guns (also ironic, since you are not allowed to own them via the second ammendment, per se) and prefer the simple cartoon that you’ve drawn.

In any case, a well written rant which was enjoyable to read, honestly, but even more fun the venture into some of the comments which appear to be both intelligent and knowledgeable (I will read them, now, before they devolve into tedious bickering, and then get on with my day, methinks).

Alexander van de Staan
Alexander van de Staan
5 months ago

“American politics is increasingly a matter of mental states“? Rising crime, infrastructural squalor, civic decay, exploding and unfunded national indebtedness, falling birthrates, and the hourglass economies in all Western nations are not abstract ‘right-wing’ or ‘click-bait’ culture wars, but very real consequences of the long march of progressively parasitic mediocrities through Western institutions..

martin ordody
martin ordody
5 months ago

Unreadable.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
5 months ago

Which is a long-winded way of saying that after decades of control by the liberal agenda, conservatives and conservatism is re-asserting itself in the US.

Richard Russell
Richard Russell
5 months ago

Only one phrase comes to mind: What a bunch of shit.

Gayle Rosenthal
Gayle Rosenthal
5 months ago

Rambling historical nonsense and non sequiturs. Parting shot at calling out national concern over immigration as ‘xenophobia’. Let’s call it what it is …. the age of ruling by stupidity is thankfully OVER !

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
5 months ago

Wow. I’ve read unhinged screeds about DJT since he announced his candidacy eight plus years ago, but this is on Pluto.
Mr. Siegel, if you aren’t just a paid troll, please see a reputable mental professional.

blue 0
blue 0
5 months ago

What utter drivel. This may be the worst I’ve read on unherd. I loathe Trump, but Lee has no idea what he is writing about. An no Lee the GOP is not the party of Fr. Coughlin.

Damon Hager
Damon Hager
5 months ago
Reply to  blue 0

Why do you “loathe” Trump?
This kind of language is part of the problem. I’m a British conservative, but I don’t “loathe” our new Labour Prime Minister. I may vigorously disagree with him, but I try to distinguish between ideological divergence and personal animosity.

blue 0
blue 0
3 months ago
Reply to  Damon Hager

You’re correct. I will strive to self-edit more. Thanks for pointing this out.

Sisyphus Jones
Sisyphus Jones
5 months ago

Surprising as it may sound, the culture war in America has been, to a meaningful degree, a clarifying, sometimes bracing, dispute in the absence of the communist menace on the one hand, and of a shared water-cooler culture on the other. But America’s culture war has now, like pretty much every public experience in America, begun to vanish into the labyrinth of the American psyche.

I would never have a beer with someone who congratulates himself with such turbid jabberwocky. What the heckfire kind of paragraph is that? In the real world where real people fix real things when they break, have real concerns requiring real solutions, where there isn’t the time to wallow in masturbatory nonsense, talking like that might get you an a**-whooping.

Mark Henrie
Mark Henrie
5 months ago

There are too many things going on in this article. Some of the observations are apt, but the analysis is off.

It is true that American culture has coarsened in the past ten years. We are more vulgar. But it seems to me this is a function of social media youth culture, much more than a function of Donald Trump. Vulgar and even vile things are said online which would never heretofore have been said face to face. But now, nearly 20 years into the age of the iPhone, a new and coarser culture has emerged. In fact, it is possible than some of Trump’s own vulgarity is a reflection of the cultural conventions he discovered on Twitter.

It is also true that Trump reflected and cultivated *anger* on the political right, and this was and is shocking to the great and the good. If you think about it, however, anger on the left is an everyday affair. It is natural to be angry at injustice—and the left claims to be working toward social justice. So we rather expect, and magnanimously tolerate, even quite extreme expressions of leftist anger. Such as “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” by BLM.

The anger on the right that emerged circa 2015 is indeed something rather new. The author might have asked himself: what is the meaning of this? Might it reflect an actual injustice? Instead, he presumes the complete illegitimacy of this anger. I suppose it is his belief that there is no injustice in being dispossessed of one’s culture. I disagree.

Finally, as others have commented, it turns out that Senator Joseph McCarthy was right. You can Google the “Venona Project” for some of the details.

But, I would add, at some point it would be interesting to see a study of the “score” here. Exactly how many leftists unjustly suffered career damage, and to what degree, during the McCarthy era—in comparison to those who have suffered cancellation for even innocuous remarks during the Woke Hysteria?

charlie martell
charlie martell
5 months ago

Whatever the point this convoluted article might be attempting to make, it has missed the most vital of all.

That is, that all the institutions, in the UK certainly, are now completely controlled by the aggressive left wing. All of them.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
5 months ago

Biden is mentally impaired based on the policies he prefers.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
5 months ago

Not the radical Right. Racist confederate Right.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
5 months ago

I wonder how well this one will age in light of Trup rally shooting

El Uro
El Uro
5 months ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

Cesspool CNN in their best: “Trump speech interrupted by Secret Service”

Atticus Basilhoff
Atticus Basilhoff
5 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Classic gaslighting. The leftist media has honed this process to a fine edge.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
5 months ago
Reply to  Susan Grabston

My thoughts exactly. I just came in to say this essay didn’t age well.

joe hardy
joe hardy
5 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It hasn’t aged well because the the left is soon to be destroyed.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
5 months ago

This article is rubbish with knobs. It’s not worth responding to in detail.

Brian Matthews
Brian Matthews
5 months ago

This is the type of unhinged writing that inspires unstable people to assassination attempts.

Who’s “assimilating once subversive values and sentiments” NOW?

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
5 months ago

This is a rant in the guise of an article. It’s not worth the reading of. The author should be embarrassed of his morals and likewise of his intellect – both low down to the ground.

Marc Epstein
Marc Epstein
5 months ago

Timing is everything!

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
5 months ago
Reply to  Marc Epstein

Whatever the repercussions of this event, no-one will be able to use the expression: “They’ve got Trump’s ear” ever again.

Cho Jinn
Cho Jinn
5 months ago

Well this article has aged like warm milk.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago

So I’m safe to assume that the guy shooting at Trump was some unhinged Proud Boy neo-Nazi? Anger on the right. —— oooh, so scary, Orange Man so bad.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
5 months ago

Ahh, the superior being looks down to n the population more in sorrow than in anger.
Yet another reason why only enlightened beings can control the world.
Has it ever occurred to these people that using the population as a means of keeping themselves in power might just be the reasons n people are angry?

jane baker
jane baker
5 months ago

I’m not American. I’m not in USA. I’m a British citizen for what that’s worth now. I’m not right,I’m not far right,I’m not even as far right as Russell Brand and he’s as far right as you can get now designated by some. But im fed up with being told NOT TO BE ANGRY. I WANT TO BE ANGRY OK. I WANT TO BE FULL OF HATE. ITS MY Human right to be angry just like it’s your right which I have to respect and joyfully celebrate with a colourful party in the park- your human right to take it up the ass or suck off that guy in the woods. Oh,sorry,I got an update yesterday when the bus in my city was packed with normies,suburbie,families,round as a ball hatchet faced Mum,round as a ball,”I take my shirt off at Minehead” Dad and their four kids,one a baby in a pram,all wearing rainbows and in festive mood ,it felt like how it must have been at an 18th century public execution. Family Fun for everyone. I was only going 3 stops on this bus,but spaced apart. I asked the man stood by me,no seats,what Pride was about. Seems it’s got NOTHING TO DO with SEX at all.
It’s a celebration and recognition of difference,it’s about loving EVERYBODY inclusively and denigrating no one for their life choices. Well,I’m PROUD OF WHAT I AM but I encounter plenty of people every day who let me know all too clearly that they don’t rate WHAT I AM at all. So why should I love Humanity back when it’s rejected and thrown back in my face. I’m fed up with this continuous be nice stuff. I want to be nasty,horrible and hateful.
I already AM!!!!

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
5 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

I respect you for admitting all of that. Most of us have at least traces or phases of what you let vent, maybe with different pet hatreds.
Once the electric juice of rage gets too poisonous, please find out or remind yourself of what you do like or love.

Terry M
Terry M
5 months ago

Alarmist crap like this adds to the division in America. Go to hell Siegel!!

Tim Smith
Tim Smith
5 months ago

Coming back to this after reading about the assassination attempt on trump and can’t but help think authors like this have contributed to the mess are in.

The anger of the individual that he talks about is as much directed at him as anyone else

Joshua Sterling
Joshua Sterling
5 months ago

Sir, you are totally right. There is surely nothing more hateful than “Make America Great Again” and the sense of national pride it instills. Never have there been four more hateful words. PS, please put down your pen and go fly a kite for a bit. Thank you.

Sj Kay
Sj Kay
5 months ago

.

Paul MacDonnell
Paul MacDonnell
5 months ago

Never has an article aged so poorly so fast.

Paul MacDonnell
Paul MacDonnell
5 months ago

95% of the violent rhetoric and 99% of the violence in American politics over the past 10 years has come from the left. The riots of 2020, were sponsored by Democrats as a strategy to wear people down so that they would vote for Biden just to make it stop. All of these so-called “protests”, all of the celebrities calling for Trump to be killed, The blatant lie that he plans to impose a “dictatorship” in America, the Jew hating pro-Hamas scum that the Democratic establishment has both imported and trained via government subsidised universities. There is an entire ecosystem of justification for violence coming from the left in America and in Europe.

But no. Trump says something nasty. And that’s all the evidence we need because “Trump is literally Hitler”.

The mainstream left-wing media even today are blaming Trump for the fact that he got shot.

All of the violent rhetoric in American politics is coming from the left. And so is all of the violence and that has been the case for a very long time.

Trump needs to win big. And then he needs to draw up a list of many, many thousands of people in the federal government — including those DEI-addled goons who run the secret service and he needs to fire them on day one of his administration.

Claire D
Claire D
5 months ago

I hear this characterisation of Trump a lot from friends on the Left.
He foments violence, he is racist, he is a threat to democracy..
I have yet to hear a single example of the above offered as evidence when I enquire.

What people really mean is – He is naff, he is low status , he is someone I need to make it known I do not approve of.

Trump triggers snobs essentially.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
5 months ago

Ah yes. The glory of the New Deal. The horror of Coughlin, McCarthy, Limbaugh and Carlson. The Horror!
I have a far more simplistic analysis, that you can take or leave, as you wish.
I say that the rule of the educated class for the last century has been a rule of injustice, of stupid wars, and economic incompetence. But it sure has been good for the educated class with government sinecures as far as the eye can see. And NGOs! And Peaceful Protest!
The current global movement of populist nationalism is simply an organic rebellion by the ordinary middle class against this pompous and ineffective ruling class.

Nancy Kmaxim
Nancy Kmaxim
5 months ago

what drivel.