Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's recent speech at the University of Texas at Austin about the ties between progressivism and vicious fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler alarmed an analyst on a new podcast episode on Wednesday.
Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz, co-hosts of "The Court of History," argued in a new episode that Thomas's claim that all the ills of modern society can be traced back to the original Progressive era was not an accurate reading of American history. Wilentz was alarmed by the speech because it seemed to further claims that have been circulating on conspiratorial parts of the internet for several years.
"I'd be laughing at it if it wasn't so frightening," Wilentz said. "It's frightening the extent to which it shows me the triumph of ideas that have been around for a long time and are truly crackpot. This is not history. It's a crackpot right-wing musing coming out of a conspiratorial group ... It's very Tea Party-ish."
"But, the shocking thing is that he's getting praised all over the place by the right wing," he added. "This stuff is on Fox [News], all over the right-wing media. They're going in an echo chamber about how this is the real way to think about America."
Blumenthal argued that Thomas's speech seemed to go beyond Republicans' attacks on the administrative state. Instead, he seemed to be promoting a theory with roots in an antisemitic work that blamed Jewish people for the creation of the Federal Reserve system.
"We can laugh at it all we want because it's so stupid, but by the same token, there they are," Wilentz said. "They have a great deal of power, and these are the people who are certainly in charge of the Republican party these days, and it adds a dimension to what Trump is about that is really much more frightening."