The Far-Right is Rising - Part IV: The Mainstreaming of Extremism with Garrett Graff
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.7 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2023
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
In the final episode of “The Far-Right is Rising”, host Reed Galen is again joined by Garrett Graff, a journalist, historian, and host of Long Shadow: Rise of the American Far Right. In part two of a two-part conversation, they discuss how the American far-right extremist movement went from being on the fringe to being accepted by the mainstream, how political violence and its associative rhetoric has become frighteningly more common (and acceptable), and why this moment in American politics is so pivotal. If you’d like to connect with The Lincoln Project, send an email to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone, it's read. This is the third part and the fourth part in our mini-series examining |
| 0:06.0 | the rise of right-wing extremism in this country. Why is there a fourth part? Because my |
| 0:10.3 | conversation with my guest today, Garrett Graff, was so compelling I just couldn't stop asking him |
| 0:15.5 | questions. I hope you'll enjoy and now on with the show. |
| 0:19.5 | Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gail. This is the conclusion of our |
| 0:32.8 | conversation with Garrett Graff. If you didn't catch the first part of our talk, we welcome you to |
| 0:37.3 | give it a listen. And now, let's resume our conversation with guest Garrett Graff. |
| 0:43.0 | So we've talked about the groups in the 80s and the 90s. Again, we know most about, let's say, |
| 0:48.7 | Waco and the Branch Dividians. You talked about this guy Bill Cooper and Alex Jones, I think |
| 0:53.5 | that probably Rush Limbaugh is in that. And right-wing radio has always been both a very popular and |
| 0:59.7 | very efficient means of moving messages. What is it about the right-wing radio guys that make them, |
| 1:05.2 | I don't want to call it compelling because they're not compelling to me, but they're compelling to |
| 1:08.6 | an awful lot of people. Yeah, the series is not meant to be an autopsy of what happened to the |
| 1:14.1 | Republican Party, but you sort of can't help but think about some of that. And to me, it has always |
| 1:20.4 | been a story of when the movement of the center of power of the GOP shift from people who are |
| 1:32.1 | involved in politics and policy and people who are showing up who are actually interested in |
| 1:38.9 | profit. Rush Limbaugh, these other conservative hosts, what they care about is the profit of their shows, |
| 1:48.4 | the power of their listenerships. And they sort of shift the center of gravity of the whole |
| 1:55.2 | conservative movement by really, I think, making it one where the more extreme you are, the more power |
| 2:05.5 | you have in the movement because you have these sort of vast tools of profit available to you. |
| 2:12.4 | And whether that's Bill O'Reilly and his killing book series. As a historian, just as an aside, |
| 2:19.6 | those must just make you crazy. Yes. And Sean Hannity and Alex Jones, these are people who are |
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