Talk: Social and Economic Roots of Today’s Right [] Center for Global Justice

From White supremacists, to evangelicals, to White nationalists, to racist police, to anti immigrant groups, to insurrectionists, to QAnon, the political Right has risen to prominence in recent years. Many says it was President Trump who brought the cockroaches out into the open. But they have been there all along. Indeed the far Right seems to have now taken over a major political party. And on January 6 they sought to violently prevent an orderly transfer of power in the Executive.The 2016 election brought them into the national spotlight. At that point in time they were mobilized against the political establishment of both parties. Urban and rural White voters were angry at leaders who had betrayed them for years. As Michael Moore observed, they just wanted to throw a human Molotov cocktail into the political machinery. Donald Trump took advantage of the fear and rage and they came to love him for that.Where did all this anger come from? What was the economic and political soil that enabled it to grow? And what has sustained it to this day among 20 to 30% of the electorate? These are the questions that will be examined by Joe Belden and Cliff DuRand. Belden is a Washington, DC- based writer and lecturer, specializing in rural issues.