Dear Friend,

As they blared Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” from a speaker, a group of demonstrators stormed a Target store in Florida to urge shoppers to take off their masks. The New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu reported that it “was evidently ‘Burn Your Mask Day,’ a social media–promoted event” and an indication that support for Trump and the GOP “is as much, if not more, a cultural practice as it is an abstract political stance or a reflection of clear policy preferences.”  

Nwanevu noted: “The weirdness of it all has been attributed variously to the conservative movement’s long history of conspiratorialism and the reality-distorting effects of social media.” Video of the event was viewed more than 30 million times on Twitter.

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But what’s really driving this insane cultural phenomenon? Osita Nwanevu suggests it may be “the collapse of the religious right.” For several decades “the conservative movement’s cultural grievances were aired by a network of churches, nonprofits, and advocacy groups⁠—institutions that produced formal leaders and enforced message discipline.” Now the “preachers are out; pundits, social media influencers, and a bizarre menagerie of out-and-out grifters are in.”

And Nwanevu added a warning: “Unlike Trump, the right’s cultural sphere can’t be defeated in any real way and might grow even stronger under a Biden administration, just as it did under the Obama administration.”

With the election near, now’s the time to join Osita Nwanevu and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America. 

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Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Osita Nwanevu’s The Cultural Permanence of Donald Trump