'Terrifying': New book details the surge of 'authoritarian extremism' the MAGA movement has encouraged

To get a sense of how far to the right the Republican Party has moved, one need only compare 2023's MAGA Republicans to politicians who were considered arch-conservative during the 1960s and 1970s. President Richard Nixon, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) and the National Review's William F. Buckley were highly influential conservatives back then, but the MAGA Republicans of today would dismiss them as RINOs: Republicans In Name Only.

Nixon would be condemned for supporting environmentalism and universal healthcare, and Goldwater's disdain for the Religious Right would be as much of a deal breaker as Buckley's decision to exclude the John Birch Society from the National Review. Veteran Washington Post columnist and ex-Republican George Will, once the United States' most famous conservative journalist next to Buckley, is now an outcast in the MAGA movement.

In his new book "The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy," journalist David Neiwert takes an in-depth look at the gains that the far right has made since Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the rise of his MAGA movement. Violent extremism, Neiwert warns, has become increasingly widespread in the United States.

The Guardian's Charles Kaiser, in an "Age of Insurrection" review published on July 5, explains, "Right-wing extremism has always been a feature of American life, from the diehard supporters of slavery in the 19th Century to the 20,000 fascists who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 and the violent opponents of integration who beat and killed civil rights workers and leaders throughout the 1960s. Today, this ugly tradition of hatred is perpetuated by dozens of vile groups, from the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to the Family Research Council and a slew of Christian nationalist organizations."

Kaiser continues, "But as the investigative reporter David Neiwert argues in his terrifying new book, there is one terrible difference: the relentless mainstreaming of such disgusting ideas. The white nationalist ideology which inspired Payton Gendron to travel 200 miles to massacre 10 people in a Black Buffalo neighborhood is becoming as American as cherry pie."

Neiwert's book, according to Kaiser, "offers some of the most detailed descriptions I have read of the movement's biggest moments, including Charlottesville and the January 6 Capitol attack." And he "documents how so many far-right conspiracies have made their way into the mainstream, especially the Great Replacement theory, which says progressives want to flood the country with immigrants, to undermine white citizens."

"How successful has this effort been?" Kaiser observes. "In 2020, the Republican Party refused to withdraw support from of any of the '64 GOP candidates.… with QAnon connections…. Neiwert's book is full of reminders of how social media promote right-wing lies. When a veteran of the Tea Party movement teamed up with two ex-writers for Steve Bannon's Breitbart News to start a 'Stop the Steal' Facebook group in November 2020, it got 300,000 followers in 24 hours…. The book ends with a horrifying description of how the movement has metastasized since the January 6 attack."

Kaiser continues, "By fall 2021, Proud Boys and 'patriots' were everywhere, harassing 'LGBTQ+-friendly teens at libraries, mask-promoting school board members and mall shops that required masks.' In Trump-loving rural areas, daily life 'had become filled with foreboding, intimidation, threats and ugliness, all emanating from authoritarian right-wingers directing their aggression at anyone who failed to follow their dictates.' America's only hope lies in the power of important books like this one to inspire decent citizens to redouble their efforts to defeat these vile scourges of freedom and democracy."