of the Capitol riot and the riot and you can find in New
York magazine welcome to the show Rick I am a good to be
here. Good to have you so you've spent multiple decades,
studying. That's the right wing in America. So you're good
person to talk to about this. Send.
Thankfully are still same. As specifically Reagan in your
in your most recent book talk about how Reagan specifically
targeted people with authoritarian tendencies and
how we can see a lot of those shades or I guess the
manifestations are the multiplication YS and what we
saw in the Capitol insurrection now 6 months ago.
Yes, if I said.
>> To you that the Reagan presidential campaign in 1980
targeted people authority authoritarian tendencies you
might accuse me of. Now slandering Ronald Reagan but in
this particular case I literally have a historical
document. It which they pretty much say, let's target people
with authoritarian tendencies right so that the document in
question actually which I write about in Advertising Age
magazine. In an article about his poster which are worth
plan. An article about how he strategize for the Reagan
campaign and one advertising age's ad man of the year which
is kind of goofy an interesting in itself. One of the things
that would have this guy worth lands. Aides told the reporter
was that Reagan supporters court obtain high scores on
authoritarianism and a low score on a military has.
And then they also discovered basically that European ethnic
groups living in large cities follow the same pattern and
hence they were prime target of conversion. So in this is a
quote that Reagan launched his campaign with quite highly
visible visits to such neighborhoods.
So literally there like let's find people who you know
Democrats right and then debt, Democrats them and to that we
can turn to Republicans and then we're going to find them
is to find these pockets where people are most likely to be
authoritarian us and these were places like South Boston where
the terrible controversy over busing or people basically
fought the police to keep their kids from going to school with
black people
or Cicero Illinois which is
formerly all-white suburb of Chicago. Martin Luther King was
warned by the county sheriff that he be held the housing
March there. He beat committing a suicidal act, you know,
Milwaukee Wisconsin, which was the most segregated city
America which was kind of undergoing a very big reckoning
when it came to police violence against African Americans.
And this is literally, you know where Ronald Reagan, we know
that Ronald Reagan opened his
general election campaign right in the summer of 1980 in the
Shelby County which is another great, you know example of a
place where you'd find a lot of authoritarian is because of
course this was what Goodman Chaney and Schwerner were
lynched in 1964 for registering African Americans and stuff.
But this was actually the opening of his primary
campaign.
And so that's what they did and I found something else that was
very interesting in this article and it shows
basically in the most elegant way I've ever been able to come
up with because this is not really a complicated concept,
but I've never really found a really elegant way to kind of
hammer to really can't get this across the people.
The devolution of the Republican Party from Reagan to
Trump, so yeah, it's bad enough that a political party is
saying, let's find thought this, you know, so we can you
know basically turned them into Republican, so we can win a
presidential election.
Really nasty itself. But one of the to basically explain this
to the reporter said well Ronald Reagan said he didn't
want to do this anymore so we stopped, you know going to
these places and I don't really know what he was talking about
because yeah they you know never there that appeal to
authoritarian is not really at. But what's fascinating about
that is you know this expression of shame right this
very admission that what they were doing was something that
they kind of shouldn't been doing
and I think that the difference between the Ronald Reagan
generation that was kind of
prospecting for authoritarian somebody that you can include
the U.S., you know George hw Bush generation that George W
Bush generation the mitt Romney generation basically all Reagan
Republicans up to Donald Trump was Donald Trump kind of rips
off the mask and says well we're going to do this without
chain. You know, this is the guy who bought Watts into is
you know debut as a presidential campaign and says
you know Mexico is sending rapists and the Middle East.
Right. So what we have is kind of this subtle double faced
appeal to authoritarian is that can kind of high when it
doesn't look respectable to this is outright make it appeal
to authoritarian son here we are and kind of thesis I I I
you know pursue after making that point in this little or no
call of mine as well if you build your political power on,
make it appealed authoritarian YS
of course that's going to get a hand
and I tell a little bit about that history. They see it.
>> But part of you know the misunderstanding about that is
a news so well said by you
is a seemingly deliberate sanitizing and misunderstanding
of that history right where it into that media piece right.
Yeah, I mean like I mean it's not just the media I really do
think that there are a lot of
Democrats from that era. Of the Reagan era who kind of
want to believe something different about that era of
conservative dominance or at least have like some sort of
shell shocked PTSD colloquially you know I
I I was not alive during the Reagan era. And what what
what's been told to me is just he appealed to working class
whites. Battalion the scent of optimism. Right and so I mean
that's just so counterfactual and so that's I'm assuming
that's a lot of what you write about in your book and what you
you talk about a little bit. There are significantly but not
as in-depth as in your book I I presume in in this piece in New
York magazine, and if you could just
touch upon that that that has an understanding.
>> Sure Chris Matthews of formally of MSNBC wrote a whole
book about one o one the foal or rich
relationship these 2 sons of Irish immigrants, you know
Ronald Reagan and tip, o'neill you know had for each other
because they had some you know Scott schefter work and you
know we're civil and papers pursue negotiations and of
course the reason Ronald Reagan pursuit negotiations with
tip o'neill is because Democrats had lots of power.
He did it because he had to so the answer to that story is you
know well if you want you know to have a more civil politics
Republicans have to respect us that answer is the Republicans
right, it's not be nice to Republicans right so this whole
idea is you know the the sentimental fantasy and you
know, there's a big there's a big yeah because we are a
country that's you know has lots of structural nastiness
built into it. I think a lot of all kinds of elites whether
their media elites are politically it's kind of see
this part of their job ideologically is kind of
tamping down the the reality right of just how ugly.
The violence, you know hateful a lot of our fellow Americans