A History Lesson

Brian Zick

Kevin Baker has an article up at Harper's: Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth Baker documents the primary guiding principle of right-wingerism since its inception. He's more optimistic than I am that it has, as a strategically useful vehicle, run out of gas. Like Nosferatu, some things never die. The media, historically, has always been enthusiastically complicit in abetting the trick. Still, if there's any capacity for Democrats to learn from experience, exposing the trick as it's being attempted has gotta be a good thing. And maybe folks really will someday begin to say "I've seen that trick too many times before." Photo by Charles "Teenie" Harris, 1949, copyright the Pittsburgh Courier via Atrios

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