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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFake history has powered the rise of the right,.. time for the left to fight back
Fake news is everywhere, both as an actual product and a false accusation. But a deeper phenomenon, fake history, is a big part of how we got here. Donald Trumps signature slogan, Make America Great Again, depends on a historical narrative of American greatness, swiped from Ronald Reagan, and a hazy peak in that past that Trump has never felt it necessary to identify.
This has been a long time coming. Back in 2010, with the Tea Party riding high in the news, Nils Gilman (author of "Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America" wrote a blog post, "Rightwing productions of history," that brilliantly explained how fake history empowers the right which writes "history" for immediate propaganda value, with only the most tenuous concern for what actually happened historically while academic history was too nuanced and complicated to help the left in those terms.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/11/fake-history-has-powered-the-rise-of-the-right-time-for-the-left-to-fight-back/
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)Lunabell
(6,111 posts)Up is down. The earth is flat. Truth is "fake news".
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Nixon conspired with the South Vietnamese.
Both Reagan and Nixon harmed Americans for their own political advantage.
And the right has written these facts out of history.
History matters!
Next time you hear someone praising Reagan, ask them why he courted racists at Neshoba County.
pbmus
(12,422 posts)I think it's absolutely true, and Ive written about this extensively: The failures of neoliberalism, and the failures to even confront the fact that neoliberalism has catastrophically failed large segments of the population, is a precondition for the rise of Trumpism. I have a line on this: If the left doesn't come up with decent solutions, the right will come up with indecent solutions.