Why Blame Republicans?[1]
George H. Blackford (2009)
Today’s economic crisis is the worst since the Crash of 1929. That crisis led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, the effects of which were felt throughout the world.
Consequences of the Great Crash
In 1929 the international financial system was the gold standard; the sun never set on the British Empire, and Britain was the most powerful nation on Earth. America was an isolationist country with a mere ten percent of GDP devoted to government expenditures, virtually no military at all, and the labor movement had been almost beaten into submission. The Soviet Union, China, and Japan were third world countries, and the entire world, save the Soviet Union, was dominated by a free-market capitalist ideology.
The ensuing depression caused tremendous social upheaval in the United States. There was a revolution in the way Americans thought about the role of government in the economic system. Social Security came into being along with a welfare system and unemployment insurance. The labor movement made tremendous gains in the chaos. A comprehensive regulatory system was put in place in the financial sector of the economy, and the government grew upwards to thirty percent of GDP. But the effects of the Crash of 1929 went far beyond these social and economic changes.
Nations were crushed and governments fell around the world. Within four years the Republican Party was completely routed in the United States, and Roosevelt was elected President; the Weimar Republic was destroyed as Hitler came to power in Germany, and the Militarists took over Japan. The international financial system collapsed as Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931 and the United States followed suit in 1933. In 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria and China in 1937; Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and Grease in 1940. The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, and in 1939 Germany invaded Poland then France in 1940 and the Soviet Union in 1941. When in July of 1940 the United States placed a gasoline and scrap iron embargo on Japan the fate of Pearl Harbor was sealed, and on December 7, 1941 the United States was drawn into the conflict.
When the dust settled from WW II 50 million people were dead, and the entire world had changed. The British Empire collapsed. France was devastated and eventually lost her colonies. The Bretton Woods Agreement established the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; the international financial system evolved into a dollar reserve system, and New York City became firmly entrenched as the financial capital of the world. The United States became the world’s most powerful nation and one of the most interventionist. The Soviet Union went from being a third world country to one of the world’s super powers. All of Eastern Europe was dominated by the Soviets, and much of the world began to view communism as a viable alternative to capitalism. Within four years of war’s end the Nationalists were driven out of Mainland China, and China became a Communist country. In March of 1947 Truman gave a speech before Congress announcing what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, and the Cold War began in earnest.
In January of that year the Republicans took over Congress, and the House Un-American Activities Committee was reconstituted with John Parnell Thomas as its chair. With Parnell in the lead, the Communist witch hunts of what later evolved into the McCarthy Era began. For the next seven years the United States was gripped with hysteria as right-wing propagandists accused everyone who disagreed with them of being a communist, a pinko, or a fellow traveler.
Under the leadership of John Parnell Thomas and Joseph McCarthy the right-wing ideologues wrapped themselves in the flag and let lose a deluge of unfounded accusations that there were traitors, subversives, and communists in our midst—in the labor unions, in the movie industry, in the government, in the universities, in the Democratic Party. Combined with the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, Truman’s speech, the Soviet testing of an atomic bomb in August of 1949, and the fall of China to the Communists in October of that year, these accusations created a heightened state of fear which terrified the American public and allowed the Republican Party to bully anyone who disagreed with them, got in their way, or was simply a convenient target by accusing them of being a communist.
As a result, hundreds of innocent people were hauled before Parnell’s House Un-American Activities Committee and, after 1952, McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Witnesses before these committees were asked to describe the political and social activities they had attended or participated in throughout their lives, to name people who they observed attending these political and social activities, and to identify anyone they thought might be a subversive. Lists of names were accumulated, and the FBI was turned lose to investigate thousands, if not tens of thousands of people who by virtue of being on a list were ‘suspected’ subversives.
The FBI interrogated people at their jobs; their bosses were contacted, and the FBI questioned neighbors about alleged subversive activities. Those who objected to the unfairness of this process or refused to name names were prosecuted or were hounded by the FBI, blacklisted, their careers destroyed. Millions of people were terrified during those seven years, afraid their name would appear on a list that could destroy their lives—even if they had done nothing wrong—because the name of a member of their family or someone they knew or someone who knew someone they knew was on a list somewhere. The frenzy came to an end with the Army McCarthy hearings in 1954, but the effects of this era have had lasting consequences for our country that haunt us even today. (Johnson Boyer)
Because of the fear and hysteria generated by right-wing propaganda during that era the body politic in our country shifted to the right to such an extent that it became almost impossible for a politician to attack right-wing ideologues directly for fear of being labeled a communist and their career destroyed. As a result of this intimidation and anticommunist hysteria, three decisions were made in the 1950s that had serious long term consequences for our country:
The first was the decision to continue the arms race with the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death in 1953. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of was the result of this decision, and it led to our squandering vast amounts of economic resources on nonproductive military output, not to mention its fostering our foolish propensity to use military force instead of diplomacy to solve diplomatic problems. Today the United States spends more on its military than Russia and China combined, and much of these expenditures are a pure waste that contribute nothing to our national security or economic wellbeing.
The second was the decision to overthrow the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddeq of Iran in 1953 and to install Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Shah. This set the stage for the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the intense anti-Americanism we have seen in Iran since the Shah was driven out, and the problems we face with Iran today.
The third was the decision to install Ngo Dinh Diem in South Viet Nam after the French were driven out by the Viet Minh in 1954. In addition to the loss of 58,193 American lives, over 1,000,000 Vietnamese, and some 2,000,000 Cambodians that followed from this decision, it led to a devastating level of social unrest in our country, the worst military humiliation in American history, and the worst inflation in American history.
All of these events were, in one way or another, a consequence of the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed—the collapse of the international financial system, the rise of Hitler and militarists to power, WW II, the collapse of the British and French empires, the rise of the United States and Soviet Union as world powers, the McCarthy Era, the takeover of China by the communists, the cold war, the arms race, Vietnam, and Iran. And today we are faced with a financial crisis that threatens to dwarf the Crisis of 1929.
The Crash of 2008
If the United States is unable to resolve this crisis and avoid the kind of depression the world experienced in the 1930s the future threatens to be even more tumultuous, chaotic, and unpredictable than the history outlined above. A depression of this sort will devastate developing countries, especially those that have believed in the free-market ideology we have been pushing on them for the last forty years, specifically, South Africa and the countries of Latin America and Eastern Europe. (N Klein) China and India are also particularly vulnerable, and the most dangerous place in the world today is Pakistan—a nuclear power with 170 million people in the midst of a religious identity crisis.
In addition, all of our trading partners are at risk, particularly Europe, China, India, Japan, and Korea. Because of our huge current account deficits over the past thirty years these countries hold literally trillions of dollars of US obligations. If they were to try to shed these obligations it could destroy the international financial system and cause worldwide chaos. Of course it doesn’t make sense for them to do this since it would mean their own destruction, but where is it written that things have to make sense? When people are starving, rioters are in the streets, and the army revolts what’s to stop some madman or insane cabal from gaining control of the nuclear arsenals in China, Russia, India, or Pakistan? Did Hitler make sense? What’s to stop the same from happening at home with the Right-wing Propaganda Machine running full speed and Republican hate mongers like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter cheering on the mob if the economy were to spiral into the abyss?
Russia is particularly ominous in this regard. Right-wing ideologues from the United States promised the people of Russia streets paved with gold if they threw off Communism and accepted free-market principles. The Russian economy was devastated by the fall of the Soviet Union. The result of their taking our advice turned out to be a ruling cabal that expropriated the country’s wealth for their own ends and widespread misery for the vast majority of the population, far worse than what they experienced under Communism. (N Klein) Russia today is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. What will happen if the rest of their economy collapses? Who are they going to blame?
The Right-wing Propaganda Machine and the ideologues that control the Republican Party have brought the United States to the brink of destruction. If the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress can’t turn this crisis around the world is going to change in ways that just a few months back were unimaginable. If foreign investors who hold trillions of dollars of US obligations either lose confidence in those obligations, or choose to use those obligations through some insane logic as a weapon against the United States, the international financial system could collapse, and the United States will no longer be the economic and financial center of what’s left of the world. No one will trust the United States again, and the harm to our country will be irreparable.
Unfortunately, there may be nothing the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress can do to avoid this looming disaster. It may already be too late. The Bush Administration allowed Wall Street banks to package together trillions of dollars of toxic mortgages and sell them to financial institutions throughout the world. In the process the mortgage originators and Wall Street bankers walked away with billions and the rest of the world was left holding the bag. The most sensible way out of this mess would be for the Federal government to nationalize the financial system, assume responsibility for the toxic assets these institutions have fraudulently foisted on the rest of the world, restructure the institutions involved and reprivatizing them, and then increase taxes in such a way as to make sure those who caused and benefited from this mess are made to pay for it. But given the power of the Right-wing Propaganda Machine I see no way this can be done. Every time a payment from TARP to a foreign bank is leaked to the press it becomes a political issue and there is outrage from the American people.
One thing that is clear, however, is that there can be no hope of minimizing the damage from this disaster if Obama and the Democrats do not step forward and clearly identify who is to blame for today’s mess. When there is a disaster of this magnitude someone is going to be blamed. The people will demand it. The only question is who.
Republican Approach to Bipartisanship
While the Democrats and Obama are sitting around trying to make nice with Republicans, talking about looking forward and not back, the Right-wing Propaganda Machine is doing everything it can to blame the Democrats, the poor, and blacks for the financial crisis and the looming recession. Rush Limbaugh is spewing forth his vitriolic attacks daily. Ann Coulter is continually promoting her hate filled screeds with hate filled rhetoric. Fox News rants on twenty-four seven with their ‘fair and balanced’ attacks. Right-wing think tanks are working around the clock to put out their distorted view of reality. There are innumerable emails proclaiming the problem to be liberals trying to help the poor. Right-wing blogs are filled with this sort of stuff, and as I type this Dick Cheney is on CNN proclaiming that he and Bush are not to blame because they tried to fix Fannie Mae but Chris Dodd and Barney Frank kept them from doing it. (Two days later John Boehner was on CNN proclaiming to the world that the Republican agenda of deregulation is not the problem because there has been no deregulation of the financial markets!)
People actually believe this sort of thing when they hear it on TV, especially when it is reinforced from so many different directions, and Democrats stand idly by and don’t stand up and object.
What's more, the behavior of Republicans and their Right-wing Propaganda Machine is imminently predictable as the recession gets worse. They are going to move on from blaming Democrats, liberals, poor people, and blacks to blaming communists and socialists, and they are going to start calling anyone who disagrees with them a communist or a socialist. It is inevitable the Republican Party will react this way because the mess we are in was caused by the ideologues of the Republican Party and their Right-wing Propaganda Machine. The Republican Party is at the center of this mess, and, as a result, Republicans have only two options: They can admit they were wrong, accept the responsibility for what they have wrought, and try to fix the situation, or they can find someone else to blame. These are the only choices available, and there is no way they can admit they were wrong.
All that is left of the Republican Party are the ideological, religious, and racist extremists they gathered under their tent in the 1970s and 80s. These extremists make up the Republican Party’s base, and to admit they were wrong would destroy their entire view of reality and everything they know to be true. They are true believers. (Frank Westen) They have to find someone to blame, and whenever they find themselves in this situation they always blame communists and socialists and start calling anyone who disagrees with them the same. This is who they turned to throughout the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, during the Great Depression, during the McCarthy era, and it is who they will inevitably turn to today. (Johnson Boyer)
What’s more, if the Democrats don’t take them on directly and make the truth known there is a good chance the extremists of the Republican Party will be able to pull it off. They are incredibly well financed with over 700 think tanks listed on the Heritage Foundation’s website. (HF) They own Fox News and dominate talk radio. They have unfettered access to MSNBC and CNN as these networks attempt to be ‘objective'. CNBC is an incessant sounding board for their free-market ideology, and the internet is the most insidious source of propaganda of all. The Right-wing Propaganda Machine has innumerable hate filled websites they feed off, and they crank out countless propaganda filled emails that circulate as chain letters to tens of millions of people daily. This gives them easy access to hoards of ignorant people who are angry and filled with hate. The extremists do whatever they can to fan that anger and direct the hate toward Democrats, liberals, poor people, blacks, or anyone else they can scapegoat. (Frank Westen N Klein) About the only places in the mass media you can get an objective view of what is going on today are CSPAN, NPR, and PBS, and these networks have dismally poor ratings.
The Right-wing Propaganda Machine turns out what is objectively absurd nonsense, but it plays to the mob, and it is very effective in doing so. The ideological, religious, and racist extremists at the core of this machine are having a fair amount of success in convincing their Republican constituency, and if Democrats don’t stand up to these bullies soon they will eventually convince the body politic. (Frank Westen N Klein) If this happens, and Republicans are able to regain power, all is lost.
Republicans not only brought us to where we are today, they don’t have a clue what is happening. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary they are trying to convince the world the problem was Fannie Mae, the Community Reinvestment Act, and Democrats forcing banks to give loans to poor people and blacks. Throughout this crisis congressional Republicans have fallen back on their mantra of lower taxes and less government as they blame regulations for the mess we are in. They have voted against every proposal that has come before Congress to deal with this situation, not for the purpose of making the proposals better but for the purpose of positioning themselves for the next election. They have offered no proposal of their own except to keep lowering taxes.
At the same time the Republican leadership pays homage to Rush Limbaugh as he defends his hope that the Democratic recovery plan will fail because he and his Republican followers think this will somehow save the world from socialism.
None of this is surprising. The Republicans have experienced a humiliating defeat at the polls, and they have no choice but to return to their base to regroup. As I have said, their base consists of a coalition of ideological, religious, and racist extremists. These people cannot even conceive of the possibility of being wrong. They are true believers. Their attempt to implement their view of a free-market utopia is the source of the problems we face today, and their ideological slogans cannot contribute to solving these problems. All the Republicans can do is find someone to blame. And they are dangerous. They think their cause is so just that their ends justify their means no matter how unconstitutional or unjust or inhumane their means may be. They have no respect for the rule of law, the Constitution, or human rights in this regard. (Frank Westen N Klein Mayer)
The Complicity of Democrats
It is, of course, not just Republicans who are to blame here. Democrats were complicit in much of what led to this crisis. Given Republican success at the polls and the power of their Propaganda Machine much of the free-market ideology of the Utopian Capitalist's Free Market Movement has been accepted by Democrats. It was Clinton who appointed Alan Greenspan to a full term as head of the Federal Reserve and worked with the Republican Congress to deregulate the financial system. It was the Democratic Congress that was rolled by Bush and Paulson in their disastrous bailout proposal for the banks. (Johnson) And it was Obama who brought in Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers to implement this disastrous proposal in spite of the fact that Geithner (as president of the New York City Fed) was directly responsible for the failure to regulate the Wall Street banks as they created the financial disaster we are experiencing today, and Summers (as Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury) fully supported and helped create the deregulatory regime that Clinton and the Republican Congress brought into being. (Kotok Sachs)
More important, Democrats allowed themselves to be bowled over by the Right-wing Propaganda Machine and failed to stand up and fight for what they presumably knew was right. And Democrats, to their everlasting discredit, failed to provide a viable alternative to the Republican agenda. That failure on the part of the Democrats left the electorate with virtually no choice. (Westen)
Even worse, when Democrats came to power, in spite of all we had gone through, they were not willing to hold Republicans accountable for their actions. The Democrats did nothing about the disastrous tax policy put in place by the Republicans that is responsible for seven trillion of our ten trillion dollar Federal debt, and they refused to impeach Bush and Cheney when the Democrats clearly had the responsibility and, in fact, a duty to do so once it became clear that Bush and Cheney had 1) violated both American laws and treaties by making torture the official policy of the United States for the first time in our history and against everything America has stood for from its inception, 2) politicized the Justice Department by firing U.S. Attorneys who refused to bring unwarranted prosecutions against Democrats in tight political races or who brought cases against Republicans who were clearly guilty of corruption, 3) violated the Constitution by refusing to obtain warrants before wiretapping American citizens as is required by FISA, and 4) manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq while leaking the name of a CIA agent to punish her spouse for revealing the nature of this manipulation, thus, putting her CIA contacts in foreign countries at risk.
Throughout the past thirty years Democrats have proved themselves to be a pack of bumbling, gutless incompetents. All the Democrats have going for them today is they are not Republicans, and as they continue the tax cutting, financial bailout, hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil policies of the Bush Administration even this advantage is rapidly evaporating. (Westen N Klein Mayer)
But the blame goes beyond either Republicans or Democrats. In the end it is the American people who voted for the right-wing extremist that comprise the base of the Republican Party and put them in power, and we the people are ultimately to blame. There was some question about this in 2000 when Bush lost the vote and was appointed by the Republican members of the Supreme Court, but this question was removed in 2004 when Bush was the clear victor. Accepting this responsibility does not resonate well at home since Americans have never been very good at accepting responsibility for their mistakes. But there can be no doubt that if the American economy collapses and the rest of the world is thrown into chaos this will resonate with the rest of the world, and this does not bode well for the future or our country.
Just the same, no matter how hard we try to spread the blame, it is impossible to get around the fact it’s the Republican free-market mantra of lower taxes, less government, and deregulation that brought us to where we are today. It was the Republican Party in conjunction with the Right-wing Propaganda Machine that convinced the American people we can defund government programs and do away with the regulatory functions of government without consequences—that government doesn’t solve problems, government is the problem. (Frank Westen)
The truth is there are a number of problems essential to civil society and economic prosperity that are beyond the kin of markets and can only be dealt with by government. Markets cannot protect society from dangerous consumer goods, pollution, harmful work environments, child labor, monopoly, collusion against the public interest, and economic instability. Nor can markets provide an adequately educated electorate or an equitable or efficient distribution of income and wealth. Markets cannot “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” and markets cannot protect “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Only government can provide these things, and economic prosperity within a civil society cannot be achieved if government does not do these things well. (Amy Musgrave Hartmann Sachs Frank)
The Republican Attack on Government
One did not have to be an economist to look around the world at the height of the Cold War to see that free-market capitalism was not the sine qua non of economic prosperity and social wellbeing. All of the most prosperous countries of the world, especially in North America and Western Europe, contained significant and essential elements of socialism. At the same time, the vast majority of people who lived in what we euphemistically called the Free World—the Caribbean Island nations, Latin America, and much of Africa and Asia—lived in abject poverty. The fundamental difference between the prosperous and free, and the impoverished and enslaved of the world was then, and remains today, the quality of their governments. When markets fail there is a chance that government can do something about it. When governments fail all is lost. The single most damning failure of the Utopian Capitalists and the Republican Party is the failure to grasp this obvious fact.
For the past forty years the Republican Party has incessantly attacked the institution of government in our country: Government doesn’t solve problems, government is the problem. Get the government off the backs of the people. It’s your money; you can spend it better than the government can. The government is of a bunch of liberal elites who think they are better than you. The only thing government does is waste your tax money. The solution to all our problems is lower taxes and lower government spending. We have to get rid of government regulation to stop the government from holding us back.
In their drive to power Republicans have avoided issues of substance and focused on the most divisive issues we face, such as abortion, gun control, or gay marriage, not for the purpose of resolving these issues and bringing us together but for the purpose of dividing the electorate to create an us versus them mentality for their own political and economic gain. To avoid issues of substance Republicans have directed slanderous attacks toward the personal integrity of their opponents, questioned their motives and insinuated that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow dishonest, elitist, untrustworthy, corrupt, and unpatriotic.
The result of this onslaught is a consensus among the body politic that government is essentially useless and politicians are the lowest form of human animal. That government is inevitably a bureaucratic mess, can’t get anything right, and a waste of taxpayer’s money. That public officials and government employees are not public servants but, rather, are in it for themselves, are untrustworthy, dishonest, elitist, and corrupt, and we would probably be better off if we did away with the whole lot of them.
But the most important and most difficult problems faced by any society can only be solved by government—problems of fairness, equity, and justice and problems of economic stability and wellbeing. (Amy) To solve these problems we must be able to demand and to expect excellence and integrity and the best efforts and the utmost dedication of our elected officials and government employees. How can we possibly expect these qualities in the people who accept the challenge of government service when we show them and the institution they serve so little respect in return? How can we expect the best and the brightest of our youth to choose a life of public service for little pay and no respect over a life on Wall Street making hundreds of millions of dollars to the adulation of the entire world even when the Wall Street billionaires are gaming the system and producing nothing of value?
And why was anyone surprised when Republicans took over the government in 2000—after they had spent forty years telling the world how worthless, ineffective, and corrupt government is—that we ended up with the most incompetent, corrupt, and disastrous government in the history of our country? Why would anyone think that someone who doesn’t believe in government can make government work in the first place? Why would anyone expect them to not prove their point? And why are we surprised when the world begins to crumble around us and the people finally come to their senses and throw the rascals out, we end up with a bunch of bumbling, gutless incompetents waiting in the wings to take over? After forty years of diatribe and personal attacks directed against public servants and the institution of government who did we expect to find waiting in the wings to take on such a thankless task?
Assigning Blame
Even though there is plenty of blame to go around and the American people are ultimately responsible for what has happened, there is a special place in the pantheon of blame for Republicans. It was the implementation of their Utopian Capitalist ideology that deregulated the financial markets and led to the explosion of leverage in our financial institutions. It was their failure to regulate the mortgage originators that led to the creation of tens of millions of toxic mortgages. It was their refusal to interfere in the financial markets that allowed these toxic mortgages to be securitized into trillions of dollars of toxic MBSs and CDOs, insured by worthless CDSs, and spread throughout the world. It was their duplicitous and irresponsible drive to cut taxes that created seven trillion of our ten trillion dollar Federal debt—debt that threatens to bankrupt the Federal Government in our time of need and which will drastically limit the ability of the government to function even if we are able to survive this catastrophe. It was their trade policy that changed the United States from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. And it was their relentless attack on the institution of government and their politics of division and personal destruction that allowed them and their insane view of Utopian Capitalism to undermined the institution of government in our society, the very foundation on which our social and economic wellbeing depends.
Republicans have not accepted responsibility for their actions and are now trying to blame Democrats, the poor, and blacks for what Republicans, the rich, and whites have done. And, as I have said, they are dangerous. The ideological, religious, and racist extremists that comprise the base of the Republican Party believe their cause is so just their ends justify their means no matter how unconstitutional or unjust or inhumane their means may be. They have no respect for the rule of law, the Constitution, or human rights in this regard. (N Klein Mayer) Not only should they be blamed for the disaster they have caused, those members of the Bush Administration that participated in the decisions to torture people, politicize the Justice Department, illegally wiretap American citizens, and manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq should be rooted out and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
If Republicans are not held accountable for their actions in light of the blatant criminal behavior they have flaunted in the face of the Constitution, what is the point of the Constitution? How can there be any sense of fairness or justice or faith in the rule of law in our society if this is not done? If Republicans are able to regain power in the midst of this disaster by blaming Democrats, the poor, and blacks for what Republicans, the rich, and whites have done what does this portend for the future of our country? How can we meet the challenges we face today if the body politic—in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—accepts this absurdity? We would be living in a world where north is south, up is down, and east is west with no compass and only the ravings of ideological, religious, and racist madmen to guide us—the same group of madmen who got us in this mess in the first place.
Why blame Republicans? The short answer is: Because it’s their fault; they are dangerous, and if they are not blamed they and their Right-wing Propaganda Machine will find a scapegoat and drive us so far into their Alice-in-Wonderland world of Orwell’s 1984 there will be no way to escape their insane view of reality. We must not let this come to pass, and if we don’t blame Republicans there is a very good chance it will. (Frank Westen N Klein Mayer)
Endnotes
[1] Much of what is discussed in this essay has been subsequently expanded upon in Where Did All the Money Go?, The Rise of Utopian Capitalism, It makes Sense if You Don’t Think About It, How Propaganda Works, and Some Notes on Right-wing Propaganda.
<
