Near the beginning of this article it says this:

The radical right has developed a global narrative that, by uniting virulent racists and commonplace conservatives, mass shooters and populist politicians, is already injecting fringe ideas into mainstream culture.

A paragraph soon after says this:

The radical right’s story is rooted in the most basic plot of all: us versus them. Its main nemesis is determined, so the tale goes, to storm the battlements of the “civilized world” and, in what’s called a “great replacement,” oust its innocent inhabitants.

Soon after, it says this:

The idea of “the great replacement” is based on the fantasy that “they” (especially migrants and Muslims) are intent on replacing “us” (whites, Christians). Some versions of the narrative have an anti-Semitic slant as well, with Jews lurking in the shadows of this fiendish plot. For racists, the Others, of course, have darker complexions. For Islamophobes, the outsiders practice the wrong religion.

 

The article says most mainstream people don’t hear about this, but “The Great Replacement” theme is present everywhere in right-wing extremist websites, tweets, manifestos, and so forth. We do see it in the anti-immigrant xenophobia, in Trump’s rhetoric and policies, in Europe’s anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant movements, etc. The article also says that this attitude – this story-telling – has crept into mainstream culture, so it is not only in the right-wing extremist hate groups.

The article also says the “Third Way” politics of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, etc., abandoned the working class as their political base and supported neoliberal Big Business politics instead. When neoliberal politics hurt the working class it became possible for racists, anti-semites, and xenophobes to recruit working class people into their political analysis.

It also briefly discusses the breakup of multi-cultural Yugoslavia.

The article says we need to re-define the “us” vs. “them” model by recognize that the climate crisis has made everyone on planet earth a new “us.” The climate crisis has made the fossil fuel industry and the financial sector the new “them.”

 

Read the article at this link:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176618/tomgram%3A_john_feffer%2C_the_far_right%27s_war_on_culture/#more