Following Saturday’s mass shooting in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y., that authorities say was racially motivated, a new Morning Consult survey shows most voters continue to support stricter gun-control measures, though that level of backing has declined since President Joe Biden took office last year. What’s more, the […] Read more »
How white racism and anti-democracy elite rhetoric create the conditions for right-wing violence
… When a man walked into a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York, yesterday and shot 13 people, killing 10, he illustrated the extreme consequences of the same minoritarian, anti-democracy thinking that is used to justify things like ending Roe and the existence of the […] Read more »
A Fringe Conspiracy Theory, Fostered Online, Is Refashioned by the G.O.P.
… At the extremes of American life, replacement theory — the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans — has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally […] Read more »
Immigration Attitudes and Conspiratorial Thinkers
After years of heated rhetoric around immigration and its impacts, new data from an AP-NORC poll reveals that two-thirds of Americans feel the country’s diverse population makes the US stronger – less than 10% say diversity weakens the country. Still, roughly one in three (32%) adults agree that a group […] Read more »
Trumpism is terrible. It also might be popular.
Authoritarianism, American-style fascism, Trumpism — or whatever other term you choose for the radical turn that the American right has taken — is terrible for our nation and the world. But something can be both terrible and popular. … I think the most important explanation is that the sentiments that […] Read more »
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable
… Alchemizing media power into political influence, Mr. Carlson stands in a nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan. Now Mr. Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much […] Read more »