Trump's claim of Kamala's airport scam harks back to the 1950s and John Birch Society

In Trump's Truth Social rant about Kamala Harris and her scant attendance at an airport, he included two items that were of particular interest.

He wrote "there was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it." An item of greater interest, "She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture." Both were specific allegations backed by evidence that professed a substantiation of "the truth."

Harris cleverly manipulated "AI" to fool the American public — Trump knew precisely what digital tool she had used — but then she was caught red-handed by a "maintenance worker" who was on the ground as an eyewitness to the fraud. Neither element was critical to his accusation; he included them only to show his readers that he possessed an insider knowledge of Kamala's scam — plus he had the "evidence" to prove it.

And that's what fascinated me about Trump's post. The conspiracy theory techniques he exploited were discussed by historian Richard Hofstadter in his 1964 Harper's Magazine essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," adapted from a lecture he gave at Oxford University a year earlier. Today he would cite Trump as the techniques' avatar; in 1964 he cited Robert H. Welch, Jr., founder of the John Birch Society. In his essay, Hofstadter quoted from one of Welch's publications:

"For many reasons and after a lot of study, I personally believe [John Foster] Dulles to be a Communist agent." Here was a conspiracy of titanic proportions, reaching even further into the Eisenhower administration.

It included Prof. Arthur Burns, head of the Council of Economic Advisors, which was "merely a cover-up for Burns’s liaison work between Eisenhower and some of his Communist bosses." The conspiracy also included President Eisenhower’s brother Milton, who was "actually [his] superior and boss within the Communist party." Continued Hofstadter, "As for Eisenhower himself, Welch characterized him ... as 'a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy'—a conclusion, he added, 'based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.'"  

Hofstadter — who happens to be my favorite of all American historians, for reasons of both his insights and colorful writing style — then set to work examining what lay concealed behind Welch's "study" of such a massive conspiracy, one in which "Communist influences are now in almost complete control of our government." 

"The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry," wrote Hofstadter. "One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed.... Respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates 'evidence.'"

Trump's stab at what Welch had perfected was typically Trumpian, which is to say, half-assed. But still he wowed his readers — or at least he tried — with an "almost touching concern with factuality" and his "heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed." He isn't a reader so I doubt he learned these techniques by perusing either Welch's garbage or Hofstadter's brilliance. He seems to have come by it naturally.

Trump's charge of Kamala's malevolent trickery is virtually nothing compared to Welch's of the Eisenhower administration as a collective agent of Joe Stalin and then Soviet communism at large. As absurd as his accusations were, the Birch Society's founder could nevertheless boast of 100,000 subscribers to his pamphlets.

I repeat, Welch boasted of 100,000 subscribers. Yet in the 1950s that was the kind of far-right number that President Eisenhower could scoff at in a letter to brother Edgar as "negligible," in addition to calling likeminded crackpots "stupid." In short, Ike believed conservatism's far right could never swell to the number that Trump not only boasts of today, but indeed has.       

And most of Trumpism's foundation consists of what the Birch Society consisted of: paranoia and conspiracy theories — both justified by "obsessively accumulate[d] 'evidence.'"

***

After posting I thought I should add this section of Eisenhower's letter. 

"The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon 'moderation' in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Eisenhower's last sentence quoted here is exquisitely correct in its second part. What Trumpism is attempting is stupid insofar as it ultimately will kill the Republican Party, unless the party kills it first. His preceding assessment, however, was written without knowing how deep and wide the far right and its radically peculiar beliefs were.

That's not a criticism of Ike's judgment; in 1954, the letter's year, he could not have known what lay beneath the veneer of the GOP civilization. One might argue he should have known because of the popularity and virulence of McCarthyism, but the argument would fail, for that movement was supported by Democratic politicians as well. It was also an encore presentation of the Red Scare, 1919-1920; if effect, nothing new, not much different from other American episodes of unhinged hysteria, such as the anti-Masonic movement of the early 19th century.

But they were there, the Trumpers, in 1954 — waiting for Barry Goldwater, the New Right, Reaganism and the second Bush's "unitary executive." They just weren't that visible yet. 

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

That careful and obsessive accumulation of "evidence" is exactly what "Gym" Jordan and James Comer were engaged in for the past several years. Indeed, it's the only thing the GOP bothers to do these days. Not for nothing the old saw, "Democrats legislate, Republicans investigate."