There has definitely been a change in the propaganda coming from the right, and I don't think its an accident. Conservative propaganda used to try to convince, it worked at pointing out alleged deceit and the existence of deliberate attacks on commonly accepted cultural standards in their opponent's positions. It sought out traitors and conspiracies and tried to establish links between their enemies on the left and and genuine national threats like the Communists overseas. What they saw was going wrong with America was part of an orchestrated campaign by the left to commit treason, and it was supported and directed by foreign enemies and employed an organized and disciplined fifth column of domestic sympathizers and spies. The theme was exaggerated but not totally unreasonable, that is precisely how Communist propagandists and subversives worked, by their own admission. The aim of right wing propaganda was to convince the politically apathetic that the threat was real and imminent, and that drastic measures needed to be taken to stop it. Like all ideologically driven communication, it tended to seek out evidence of conspiracies even where none existed, and all critics were cast in the role as well. " If you are listening to us, you should be" soon became transformed into "If you are not unquestioningly with us you are an active and dedicated enemy and must be stopped.". In this respect, right wing propaganda differed little from left wing propaganda, in its methods if not its content.

Then something happened. The Cold War ended, Communist governments throughout the world collapsed from their own ineptness and incompetence and many sought improved relations with the West and embraced capitalism. Even those who did not, particularly the Chinese and Russians (our most formidable enemies), began developing free market institutions that challenged us in the same arena we had staked out for own. They were still our enemies, but now they were business rivals, too, and this wasn't supposed to happen! Finally, a new class of enemies, the Islamofascists, arose which could not be easily cast into the stereotype of godless Communism.

A general turn to the right in both government and the population as a whole had already materialized during the Reagan years. The sixties and seventies finally ran their course, the hippies and rockers cut their hair and went into business, and even the Civil Rights movement's flirtation with the left sputtered as positions in the society began to open up for blacks. Other social movements which had been co-opted by the left, such as the environmentalists, gays and feminists, began attracting conservative members, and the much-feared leftist conspiracy shrank to a some flaky Hollywood types, a few Berkeley professors and some beret-heads in Greenwich Village.

The right suddenly found itself without an enemy, but its primary domestic agenda of creating a business-friendly environment of low taxes, decreased government regulation, corporate access to public lands and its resources, and a docile and intimidated work force, could no longer be linked to a desperate defense against the Evil Empire. The arrival on the scene of a centrist Republican Bush administration, followed by an attractive, articulate and very capable Clinton presidency (even though it was actually quite moderate in its political positions) threatened to unravel all the gains the right had made during the Reagan years.

Conservative propaganda underwent a sea-change, into something rich and strange. Rather than recruiting the apathetic, it now sought to inflame the convinced, to reinforce the core constituency and to organize the social conservatives into a potent fighting force. Not only the target audience changed, but the targets as well. It was no longer a foreign Red Menace which had to be confronted, it became a systematic extermination of anyone to the left of Richard Viguerie. The style of the propaganda changed as well, rather than appealing to fear and anxiety, it relied more on contempt and ridicule of its enemies. No one could take seriously the threat of a small, dangerous, capable left, so they created the vision of a huge, wealthy and diseased one. The fact that their rivals were so few and powerless was disguised by the elaborate construction and depiction of a left wing cabal which had somehow infiltrated the universities, the press, the media, government, entertainment, indeed, every existing American institution except the entrepreneurial and managerial class and those who felt they belonged there by divine right. The American right needed the left to be big and malicious or it could not justify its own need to exist.

Eventually, as it always does in American politics, the party in complete and unchallenged power got fat, lazy, corrupt, and then malignant. It engaged in the same favoritism and greed that it had once been able to criticise the left for with some justification, and soon became indistinguishable from the very stereotypes they had created to attack their enemies and advance their program. It is inevitable that sheer incompetence will eventually lead to their electoral defeat, but the legacy of division and polarity they have introduced will haunt this nation for a long time, both in the bitter and disaffected class of losers they will leave behind, but in the climate of revenge and retribution that will almost certainly characterize those who will defeat them.