Podcast
The Rachel Maddow Show
The book was praised as an excellent historical investigation that traced decades of Republican engagement with extremism, showing that contemporary MAGA politics are a continuation rather than an anomaly. David Corn and Rachel Maddow highlighted its relevance as a cautionary tale about the party's recurring flirtations with radical movements.
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It was described as an excellent book, which provided a historical investigation of how the Republican Party has interacted with extremism over time.
And in doing this book American Psychosis, I saw the same thing in American history.
I saw the same thing in American history. We see patterns again and again that even we live through that we don't recognize, that the Republican Party--and we're now having a debate about whether MAGA extremism is something akin to fascism, but the Republican Party for 70 years keeps having this dance with extremism, encouraging and exploiting extremism.
And that's happened all the time. What we see now with Donald Trump and the Republican Party is not an aberration, it's a continuation.
David Corn is Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones. His new book is called American Psychosis, a historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy.
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It's a modern history of the right, specifically how the Republican Party has dealt with extremism in their midst leading up to the Trump era, providing a cautionary tale of past and present dynamics.
In January 1962, William F. Buckley and other conservative luminaries met with Barry Goldwater at a Florida hotel, and they further discussed what to do about the Birchers. Goldwater insisted the group contained both kooks and decent conservatives, and he was opposed to slamming the group.
They cooked up a compromise--denounce the leader of the John Birch Society, but not the society itself.
The fundamental mission of the Birchers was to promote crazy conspiracy theories. They were allowing lunacy to spread on the right, even encouraging it.
With all this assistance from Birchers and other far-right extremists, Goldwater secured the nomination in 64.
In his acceptance speech at the convention that year, he famously thundered that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
