Right-Wing Road Trip: Will Bunch on Writing "The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama"

Wednesday 22 September 2010

by: Alissa Bohling, t r u t h o u t | Interview

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Participants of the Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, DC. (Photo: Luke X. Martin / Flickr)

Not every liberal is eager to mingle with the angry populists who are the face of the anti-Obama backlash that has taken over the airwaves, the Internet, and the nation as a whole since the 2008 election. But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Will Bunch isn't any liberal. Bunch decided he had to know what was driving the crowds of Tea Partiers, Oath Keepers, birthers, gun lovers, and Glenn Beck fans to take up their cause with a grassroots fervor that the US hasn't seen in years. So he went behind the scenes -- to a marathon shootout in Kentucky; to an exurban home where two anxious retirees stoke their unease with their nightly Fox ritual; to a big-box bookstore signing where a line of Beck fans reaches longer than the queue at an unemployment office. Why? As he says in his book trailer, "All so that you didn't have to." But in some respects, Bunch takes all of us along . . .

Why did you decide to write Backlash in the second person?

I didn't start that way actually. The first couple of chapters I worked on, I started writing in the more traditional first person. In order to report this book, I had to make a lot of choices and do a lot of traveling to find people. And you know, the logical thing is to write that, "I went here, I met this guy." But I didn't want this to be a book about this one guy Will Bunch discovering the Tea Party. I wanted to be more of a representative of a lot of people who have questions about the Tea Party movement, or these right-wing movements.

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I think all of us who are progressives and a lot of people who are moderates and middle of the road are as curious and perhaps in some cases troubled by this phenomenon as I was. And I thought by using the second person I was kind of more a representative, like we're all on this quest to find out what's motivating this backlash against Obama.

To research the book, you spent a lot of time with people whose versions of reality were often not only untrue but the exact opposite of the truth. Did you ever feel like you were losing your own sense of reality when you were immersed in their worlds?

I never lost my own sense of reality, but I guess there were moments when I became accustomed to being in that reality. I guess it's more a case of acceptance, rather than buying into it. To me, the ultimate example was spending two whole days at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot outside of Louisville, Kentucky, where the default point of view of just about every single person in attendance was not only extreme anti-Obama-ism, if that's a word. In reporting the issue that I was really there to get at, which was the gun issue and the Second Amendment, these widespread beliefs -- that the Obama administration has this plan to somehow either confiscate guns from Americans or confiscate ammunition, or tax ammunition so that it's unavailable -- these are just the default views of everybody, and so you get to the point where it's not like you're going to ask every new person, "Really, you think Obama's going to confiscate guns? Because he's not doing that," because that wasn't my job as a journalist. To me it wasn't about confrontation. I was trying to get as full a picture as I could about what these people believed and where those ideas were coming from. There certainly were times when people said things that were extremely unfactual, and I would try to ask them in such a way about it, like "Really, because I heard that . . ." and I'd tell them what the facts are, but I would never contradict people because they wouldn't want to talk to me after that.

You document how social networking and the Internet are helping to spread paranoia and misinformation in a way that wasn't possible before the online era. Why do you think there hasn't been a parallel, "viral" response against the right-wing populist movement? Are the Tea Partiers and their cohorts using social media in ways that progressives are not?

I don't think it really relates to the ways they use social media. I think it cuts to something deeper. I think they use social media in the same way, but I think the backlash against Obama is just such a unifying force for these people. They're highly energized right now. The people who are most involved in the Tea Party movement are people who think that their culture is under assault by this guy who many of them think is an imposter. Many of these people are people who psychologically are vested in what Glenn Beck said, in a notorious moment, about "white culture" in America. I think a lot of people do not like the idea that studies are showing that America not only could but probably will become a majority nonwhite country by the middle of this century. Now most of these people won't be around, but still the idea that the culture they've known all their lives is disappearing and may disappear altogether after they're gone is kind of an electrifying force for a lot of people. One of the main points of my book is looking at how people like Glenn Beck or other people on Fox News, and right-wing politicians who basically act less like politicians and more like radio hosts, manipulate these emotions.

Racism appears in the book as both an undercurrent and as the main driver of the backlash. Can you talk about some of the ways the people you spoke with either acknowledged or denied racism's role in their beliefs and in their movement?

As I point out in the book, obviously when it comes to race and racism things have changed a lot over fifty years. If it was still the sixties you might see a lot more explicit racism in the sense of perhaps people more often using racist terms to describe Obama or some of his minority supporters, or people who would flat-out say they didn't think an African-American was qualified to be president. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but certainly sizeable numbers of people believed that kind of thing to the point that they would tell that to a pollster in the 1960s. We've changed society to an extent, but also people who have beliefs about racism maybe don't express them in the same ways.

When I was interviewing people for the book, several people told me a very similar story, which was that as they watched the 2008 campaign unfold, that they had memories of the first time they watched Obama give a speech, or realized he had a serious chance of becoming president. The phrase that came up several times was that they felt "uncomfortable" watching Obama, and they said they felt uncomfortable with some of the language he was using. The two words in particular were "change" and "transformation." How much of this discomfort was because of race? Obviously it depends on the individual, but I think in some cases it's not too hard to make a connection. And I think this is significant when you look at something like the birther theory because then I think what happens for a lot of people is, their emotional and visceral response to Obama is that, "I can't see a person like this being the president of the United States of America." Rather than deal with it on that level, I think people began looking for "facts" and "information" that they could cite to justify this emotional idea that Barack Obama wasn't an American.

Race is a very important factor, but let's not forget that people also resent Obama for a lot of the reason that conservatives have resented a lot of white liberals for 40 years -- his education, going to Harvard law school. In his case it's kind of a perfect storm, because a lot of the people involved in the Obama backlash see him as an African-American or dark-skinned man who benefited from affirmative action and who went to these elite universities where professors taught him these allegedly socialist ideas. He just kind of ties together a lot of resentments among middle class Americans that have been out there being stirred up by politicians and the media for the last 40 years.

For the rest of this article:
http://www.truth-out.org/right-wing-road-trip-will-bunch-writing-the-backlash63495

It looks like it may be a good book to read.

they out to ban that truthout web site...just a bunch of left-sided commentary that has no truth in anything...

No, your mistaking it for Fox News Network.

fox isn't left...
fox is fair and balanced
fox ALWAYS tells the truth
fox is the best news around...

lol - i can't even buy that...
all news sucks... cnn seems ok tho...

interesting article

I tend to believe there is quite an undercurrent of racism and conservatism(fear of change) going on there, but to be honest a trained pollster or seasoned researcher knows what and who to look for and speak to and how to edit their responses to fit whatever they want it to

haha...

It can't just be that people don't like his policies, can it?

It has to be racist related..

So now conservatism is being defined as "fear of change".. That is pretty funny.

I don't know if you have noticed, but these people are changing the republican party. They are banding together to vote out the establishment candidates that have helped put us in the mess we are in. That is "real" change. Voting for Rangel, and others that have sat in Washington for decades and created this environment isn't change its the status quo.

You can sit there and think modifying a couple of programs or policies is change, but when you have the same people running them it's putting lipstick on a pig..

notice, I never said racism and conservatism were the ONLY reason,,I said there was an undercurrent of those two issues,,,,

mirriam webster defines conservative:
3
a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional
b : marked by moderation or caution <a conservative estimate>
c : marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners


which I equate to NOT WANTING TO CHANGE


and I believe tea party is a good thing, it is stirring things up and I think it gives republicans a run for their money and splits up their votes with people who are EXTREMELY conservative

maybe a similar fragment can happen in the democratic party by people who are EXTREMELY liberal

I know I get tired of being lumped as one or the other,
those who are sometimes liberal and sometimes conservative need people to speak for them too, the tea party is taking the extreme conservatives away from republicans and leaving the moderates

be great if extreme liberals would do the same for democrats,

I wouldnt be opposed to splitting tickets four ways instead of two,,it would be a more honest and fair run

Definition of QUITE
1
: wholly, completely <not quite finished>
2
: to an extreme : positively <quite sure> —often used as an intensifier with a <quite a swell guy> <quite a beauty>
3
: to a considerable extent


Definition of UNDERCURRENT
1
: a current below the upper currents or surface
2
: a hidden opinion, feeling, or tendency often contrary to the one publicly shown

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quite?show=0&t=1285349460



I can play the definition game as well..

"Quite an Undercurrent of racism"....

Ok... but it's not all about racism... LMAO



More important issues..


lower taxes, less government interference, and cuts in spending are now EXTREME positions.. LMAO

Your definition, is correct in a generalized sense of the term conservative, however, it does not reflect the current status of the conservative movement.

Voting out the idiots that overspent and didn't have the guts to stand up to Bush, is not maintaining existing views, nor is cautious..

The race card isn't working. The EXTREME positions isn't working..

I can only hope that the far left does completely take over the democrat party. There wouldn't be a single democrat elected outside of New England... That works fine for me..

well, I agree there are more important issues and probably in a more political powerful position I would try to stick to those

but in such a general and public forum I am giving my opinion as an observer on just one issue,,,and I sincerely believe it took a brown face with an African/Muslim name to invoke the type of 'fear' that made people 'unite' over these other 'important issues' that were issues long before his arrival

The right extremists are as dangerous to this country as any foreign terrorist organization could be maybe more.

And to try to say racism plays no role in politics is foolish.

Race card is an ideal created by racists to discount accusations of racism so they will be able to do more racist crimes and get away with them.

Second place is the first Loser

better to be in first place, even amongst the 'losers'


second place is still above ALL those others who entered and all those who never tried at all

Very True

The lefties are getting too desparate. They are still trying to save Oblowme's pride!!
Their ship is sinking and they know it, so they gotta resort to these long stories about how they feel towards the right-wingers.

Too bad for them, its not working. Nov. 2 is getting closer and closer....