Today's right wing lionization of Daniel Penny is the genealogical descendant of Pat Buchanan's 1992 primetime RNC speech, which ended with a riveting but untrue story about young (implicitly white) soldiers defending helpless elderly people from a Black mob. - ThreadSky

sethcotlar.bsky.social • 157 days ago

Today's right wing lionization of Daniel Penny is the genealogical descendant of Pat Buchanan's 1992 primetime RNC speech, which ended with a riveting but untrue story about young (implicitly white) soldiers defending helpless elderly people from a Black mob.

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sethcotlar.bsky.social•157 days ago

Rather than interpreting the violence in LA as a response to decades of racist police brutality & economic marginalization, Buchanan encouraged his primetime audience to interpret the event as one in which (white) civilization was under siege by "animals" who only understood the language of violence

sethcotlar.bsky.social•157 days ago

That sort of framing is not all that different from how Bill Buckley understood the "civilizational threat" of the Civil Rights Movement, ca. 1965. Buckley analogized head busting Southern cops to Brits who had recently fought off the Nazis. https://bsky.app/profile/sethcotlar.bsky.social/post/3lcstgcq3vk2r

sethcotlar.bsky.social•157 days ago

This excellent journal article unpacks the white supremacist language of "civilization" that Buckley and other conservatives used to justify their defense of apartheid and opposition to the civil rights movement in the US. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/will-the-jungle-take-over-national-review-and-the-defense-of-western-civilization-in-the-era-of-civil-rights-and-african-decolonization/5086179AE7A8F473C9C405092E134B62

sethcotlar.bsky.social•157 days ago

The "thin blue line" framing of Penny's actions feeds into this same, illiberal mode of thinking & talking about US society as if it is about to be turned into a "jungle" of violent disorder if "they" aren't kept in check by noble vigilantes and violent policing. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/09/the-short-fraught-history-of-the-thin-blue-line-american-flag-309767

jonreilly1313.bsky.social•157 days ago

Gawd. It's 1981 Reagan all over again.

gingernorth.bsky.social•157 days ago

Reagan on steroids

jronc.bsky.social•157 days ago

Perfectly in line with Bannon & others in the first Trump Admin hanging out copies of Raspail’s “Camp of the Saints.”

The latter might even be worse.

jronc.bsky.social•157 days ago

*handing out. dammit

sharkman1963.bsky.social•157 days ago

reading fever in the heartland about the klan in the midwest (IN)... not much has changed other than now the catholics are ok with the extreme right

antonbh.bsky.social•157 days ago

Same playbook, different (but oddly similar) players ...

rockwils1.bsky.social•157 days ago

maryjoy.bsky.social•157 days ago

Buchanan won. It's a paleo party.

guineapigdan.bsky.social•157 days ago

Sadly. Ironically back in 1999, Trump and Buchanan both ran for president in the Reform party, and Trump denounced Buchanan as a Hitler lover and antisemite, and left the party when David Duke endorsed Buchanan. In the present, Trump now praises Buchanan and Duke endorsed Trump in 2016.

victorsforza77.bsky.social•125 days ago

Buchanan and trump made up a few yrs later. Trump appointed pats sister Angela BAY Buchanan to some sub cabinet position.

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