Weekend reading I wrote about why the “These guys are weird” messaging is significant: It rejects the claim of “real American” white Christian conservative “normalcy,” and with it the Right’s justification for minority rule. This week’s piece: 🧵1/ thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/what-is-weir…

“Don’t be weird” is *not* a call for conformity. The trick is precisely to demand a new “normal” that affirms pluralism and diversity - and reject as “weird” the Right’s insistence on a white Christian patriarchal default America.

How does today’s Right justify its absolute claim to power? As they have fully abandoned the idea of representing the majority, they are aggressively presenting themselves as an endangered minority of virtuous “real Americans” who embody the true essence of the nation.

The mainstream political discourse – and a lot of Democrats as well – has accepted and perpetuated this assertion of a white conservative Christian norm that is supposedly shared by the majority of Americans and represented by the Right for far too long.

Openly and aggressively contesting the idea that reactionaries “naturally” get to define the nation is certainly better than preemptively conceding ground to the Right’s claims that they deserve disproportionate power as representatives of “real” America.

Last week, the band Bon Iver performed a rendition of the abolitionist anthem “Battle Cry of Freedom” at a Democratic campaign event. It precisely captured this moment, and a Democratic leadership that is, finally, aggressively asserting a (small-d) democratic patriotism.

Ridiculous piece from National Review’s editor-in-chief Rich Lowry in the NYT yesterday: “Trump Can Win on Character.” Ok!   I wrote about his utterly disingenuous anti-anti-Trumpism, and how it is paving the way for authoritarianism, a while back:   1/   thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/anti-anti-tr…

These “respectable” conservatives are building and perpetuating a permission structure that allows people who don’t think of themselves as supporters of rightwing extremism to support rightwing extremism nonetheless.   That is the role they are playing. That’s their legacy.

Let’s not be hasty! What evidence do we have? Other than, uhm, the empirical record from about a decade, across almost all “Western” democracies, plus a mountain of academic research and analysis… But hey, maybe *next time* this strategy will work for the established parties?!?

Really excited about this: Discussing “Project 2025” in the context of the Right’s history and present - with Cristina Beltrán and Joe Lowndes Happening a week from now at IPK in New York City. Come join us!