Same Old Shit, Newer Bag

Our illegitimate, socialist and Kenyan-born commander-in-chief.
Tomasz Kobosz, from In These Times.

Goldwag underscores how the past serves as prologue. Again and again in The New Hate, he demonstrates how the theories, and the rhetoric spreading those theories, were devised decades and sometimes centuries earlier by previous generations of conspiracy-minded, history-twisting, racist, misogynistic, homophobic evangelicals. Since the internet spawned authoritative-sounding blogs and social media, the haters appear to have become better at reaching beyond the lunatic fringe. For example, right after Barack Obama’s election, Goldwag noticed the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate continued unabated. He wondered whether to add a paragraph about Birthers to a new edition of one of his previous books, but decided “that references to such a transitory political derangement might just as easily date” the book as update it. No one will remember the Birthers six months hence, he calculated – mistakenly.

[...]

Goldwag comes to realize that what stands out most about contemporary paranoids and conspiracists is, ironically, their lack of newness: “The most depressing thing about the demagogues who tirelessly exploit it – in pamphlets and books and partisan newspapers two centuries ago; on websites, electronic social networks, and 24-hour cable news today – is how much alike they all turn out to be.”

From a book review spotted at Newshoggers.