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Finally getting around to reading @DavidNeiwert’s *Alt-America* (2017)
I recently learned from @buccola_nick’s book that in the 1950s WFB coordinated with the Citizens’ Councils to make use of their segregationist mailing list to get National Review off the ground. Guess there really is nothing new under the sun. (Photo from @DavidNeiwert’s book)
Neiwert: “The CCC enjoyed influence even in the halls of SC state government. A CCC national board member, Roan Garcia-Quintana[...] sat on Governor Nikki Haley’s re-election campaign steering committee until his CCC membership was exposed and he was asked to resign.”
https://twitter.com/jasonscampbell/status/1203002830329712641?s=21 https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1203002830329712641
#Livetweeting my reading of * Alt-America*
Here’s how Neiwert describes what he calls “Alt-America.”
Neiwert: “For Americans outside the Alt-America universe, ‘cockamamie’ doesn’t begin to describe how such ideas sound when Alt-Americans begin spouting unintelligible lingo at them. Some may question the Alt-Americans’ sanity or intelligence...”
Neiwert: “Yet various studies and polls of subscribers to conspiracy theories and Patriot movement beliefs have shown that the majority of Alt-Americans are better educated than the average American and have incomes well above the median.”
. @ppppolls survey from 2013: 61% of Romney voters believed global warming is a hoax.
Neiwert: “21 percent of voters said a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 and the US government covered it up. More Romney voters (27 percent) than Obama voters (16 percent) believed in a UFO cover-up.” ( @ppppolls)
Neiwert: “28% of voters believed that a secret power elite w a globalist agenda is conspiring eventually to rule the world through an authoritarian world government, or New World Order. A plurality of Romney voters (38%) believed in the NWO compared to 35% who didn’t” ( @ppppolls)
Neiwert: “13 percent of voters (22 percent of Romney voters) thought Barack Obama was the Antichrist.” ( @ppppolls)
Neiwert: “By August 2016, a poll conducted by NBC News found that 72% of registered Republican voters doubted that Obama’s citizenship was real. A May 2016 @ppppolls survey found that two-thirds of Trump’s supporters believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim.”
Neiwert: “An August 2016 @ppppolls survey found that 69% of Trump voters believed that if Hillary won the election, it would be because it was ‘rigged,’ whereas only 16 percent thought it would be because she got more votes than Trump.”
Hell of a book. Neiwert has been on this beat for years, and it shows.
Here’s a transcription from a section of @buccola_nick’s book, where he discusses William Buckley’s business relationship with the white supremacist Citizens’ Councils: ( https://foetoprinces.com/2020/01/18/buccola-excerpt-1/)
https://twitter.com/ifthedevilisix/status/1218239225843322880?s=21 https://twitter.com/ifthedevilisix/status/1218239225843322880
https://twitter.com/ifthedevilisix/status/1218239225843322880?s=21 https://twitter.com/ifthedevilisix/status/1218239225843322880
LOL omg
Neiwert: “Now Ruby Ridge and Waco were on a lot of people’s lips, not just Patriots’ lips, but also those of a number of mainstream conservative figures such as Rush Limbaugh[...]. Indeed, the Patriot movement was tapping into a deep vein of antigovernment sentiment that...”
Neiwert: “...Had been simmering among conservatives for many years, beginning in the years of the Reagan administration and its admonitions that the ‘government can’t solve problems, it is the problem.’”
Back to Buccola’s book, briefly. This alliance between mainstream conservatives and avowed segregationists has been long in the making. https://foetoprinces.com/2020/01/18/buccola-excerpt-1/
