I've been quoting several of the essays from a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science (382) Mar 1969, devoted to Protest in the Sixties. One essay that particularly engaged my attention is "The Republican Radical Right" by Sheilah Koeppen. She covers the ideology and attitudes of various groups that were then viewed as on the fringes of the Republican Party; the John Birch Society, the Minutemen militias of that time, Billy James Hargis' Christian Crusade, Fred Schwartz' Anti-Communism Crusade.
She examines five approaches to explaining the appeal of the Radical Right and finds them all wanting to some degree: authoritarianism; alienation (a very fashionable concept in the 1960s); Christian fundamentalism; social-status anxieties among white ethnics; and, anxiety over urbanization. She apparently did not closely examine the "mean, paranoid white people" thesis.
Her analysis of those five explanations is interesting. But I was struck in reading it how little she focuses on issues around race. Then it dawned on me. Her topic is the Republican Radical Right, and the segregationists of the Deep South at that time were only beginning their migration from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
She does observe, though, that even the radical right groups in the Republican orbit were shifting their focus from "a vague and mysterious Communist conspiracy" to more concrete issues such as "the increase in crime, the use of drugs, the ghetto riots, student rebellions and demonstrations, and the Supreme Court decisions which are seen as protecting these 'lawless' activities".
Pickling one's mind in OxyContin had not yet become a key symbol of rightwing radicalism.
Tags: 1968, billy james hargis, radical right, republican party, sixties
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