December 1961.

This Salon article by Ian Hanley-Lopez is well worth taking the time to read. Although it was written in Dec. 2013--BEFORE the age of Trump, it was prescient of the continued trajectory of the Republican Party towards a white nationalist agenda. The article describes:

How the indirect racist messaging of "dog whistle politics" began with George Wallace, using the language of being opposed to "arrogant federal authority," and being for "states’ rights," "law and order, running your own schools, [and] protecting property rights." Even though Wallace was a Southern Democrat (and later an Independent) the "dog whistle" strategies he employed were later appropriated by the GOP in the "Southern Strategy."

How the GOP's "Southern Strategy" slowly developed in the 1960s, when Goldwater began to push “states’ rights,” as well as “freedom of association." This strategy over time helped the Republican Party begin to appeal to those white voters who still held overt or covert racial prejudices.

How Kennedy and Johnson, by promoting civil rights legislation, turned the Democrats into the party identified with championing the civil rights of marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

How Richard Nixon fully embraced the "Southern Strategy," through his messaging of being for "law and order," and against the "forced busing" of children (to integrate public schools). As he gradually adopted this strategy, Nixon also turned against one of his own administration's earlier policies (developed by George Romney), which Nixon later derided as the "forced integration of the suburbs."

How, according to Hanley-Lopez, these changes in the racial strategies and policies of the diverging Republican and Democratic parties in the 1960s/early 1970s contributed to "the rise of racially identified parties," with a majority of white voters shifting to the GOP (which became "in fact, though not in name, the White Man's Party"), and the Democratic Party being associated with racial and ethnic minorities (as well as a smaller proportion of white voters, i.e., well-educated whites, especially white women). [color emphasis of terms, quotes added]

Echoes of Nixon's 1968 campaign ad in one of Trump's 2020 campaign ads

Hanley-Lopez mentions a 1968 Nixon campaign ad that focused on "exploiting the growing panic that equated social protest with social chaos." Above is the video of that 1968 ad: "The First Civil Right." Below is a transcript of the video:

TRANSCRIPT* (Music with snare drum and dissonant piano chords) MALE NARRATOR**: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States. Dissent is a necessary ingredient of change, but in a system of government that provides for peaceful change, there is no cause that justifies resort to violence. Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States. [TEXT: THIS TIME VOTE LIKE YOUR WHOLE WORLD DEPENDED ON IT. . .NIXON] [Color/ emphasis added.]

This 1968 Nixon campaign ad is eerily like at least one Trump 2020 campaign ad, "Abolished," which used some out of context video footage in order to exploit the fears of many white conservative voters regarding the Black Lives Matter protests and the poorly worded "Defund the Police" slogan.

Below is a transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" video.

TRANSCRIPT*** [ Phone ringing/ Answering machine beeping/ background music. ] AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE: You have reached the 911 police emergency line. Due to defunding of the police department, we're sorry but no one is here to take your call. If you're calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2. To report a home invasion, press 3. For all other crimes, leave your name and number and someone will get back to you. Our estimated wait time is currently five days. Goodbye. [ TEXT: Joe Biden's supporters are fighting to defund police departments. Fox News, 6/6/20 | Violent crime has exploded. ABC News, 6/24/20 | You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America. | TRUMP   PENCE   KEEP AMERICA GREAT   20 ] TRUMP: I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. [Color/ emphasis added.]

In conclusion, the barely covert racism in the GOP's political messaging that was so prominent during Trump's administration, and currently in the DeSantis Florida administration (among other GOP administrations) was not new. It was deliberately fostered by Republicans, starting in the 1960s, as they deployed their "Southern Strategy" to woo white voters who still had some overt or covert racial prejudices. The "Southern Strategy" relied on Republicans incorporating into their messaging strategies the kind of covert racist messaging that George Wallace used.

This strategy has unfortunately succeeded all too well.

[edited]

______________ *Transcript source (before layout changes/ edits) of the 1968 Nixon campaign's ad "The First Civil Right,"(alternatively called "Law and Order"): Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012. **Note that the "male narrator" sounds a lot like Nixon (at least to me). ***The transcript of the Trump campaign's 2020 "Abolished" ad is based on the English auto-generated YouTube transcript, as well as the video text and sounds/music.

Barry Goldwater

The street sweeper, 1966 - by Barry Goldwater (1909 -1998), American

The whole campaign was run on fear of me. In fact, if I hadn't known Goldwater, I'd have voted against the SOB myself

— Barry Goldwater

(From a 1960s Mad magazine issue)

1994, as quoted by John Dean in Conservatives Without Conscience

1966.

Philosophy

“I quote from Galt's speech: "Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value by choice; he has to learn to sustain it by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality."

The standard of value of the Obiectivist ethics - the standard by which one judges what is good or evil - is man's life, or: that which is required for man's survival qua man.

Since reason is man's basic means of survival, that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.

Since everything man needs has to be discovered by his own mind and produced by his own effort, the two essentials of the method of survival proper to a rational being are: thinking and productive work.

(…)

Man cannot survive as anything but man. He can abandon his means of survival, his mind, he can turn himself into a subhuman creature and he can turn his life into a brief span of agony - just as his body can exist for a while in the process of disintegration by disease. But he cannot succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman - as the ugly horror of the anti-rational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate. Man has to be man by choice and it is the task of ethics to teach him how to live like man.

The Obiectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value - and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man.” - Ayn Rand, ‘The Objectivist Ethics’ (1964)

Politics

“The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given. It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."” - Barry Goldwater (L. Brent Bozell Jr.), ‘The Conscience of a Conservative’ [1960]

Economics

“No sensible proposition concerning human action can be asserted without reference to what the acting individuals are aiming at and what they consider as success or failure, as profit or loss. If we study the actions of the individuals, we learn everything that can be learned about acting, as there are, as far as we can see, in the universe no other entities or beings that, dissatisfied with the state of affairs that would prevail in the absence of their interference, are intent upon improving conditions by action. In studying action, we become aware both of the powers of man and of the limits of his powers. Man lacks omnipotence and can never attain a state of full and lasting satisfaction. All he can do is to substitute, by resorting to appropriate means, a state of lesser dissatisfaction for a state of greater dissatisfaction.

In studying the actions of individuals, we learn also everything about the collectives and society. For the collective has no existence and reality but in the actions of individuals. It comes into existence by ideas that move individuals to behave as members of a definite group and goes out of existence when the persuasive power of these ideas subsides. The only way to a cognition of collectives is the analysis of the conduct of its members.

There is no need to add anything to what has already been said by praxeology and economics to justify methodological individualism and to reject the mythology of methodological collectivism. Even the most fanatical advocates of collectivism deal with the actions of individuals while they pretend to deal with the actions of collectives. Statistics does not register events that are happening in or to collectives. It records what happens with individuals forming definite groups. The criterion that determines the constitution of these groups is definite characteristics of the individuals. The first thing that has to be established in speaking of a social entity is the clear definition of what logically justifies counting or not counting an individual as a member of this group.

(…)

The rejection of methodological individualism implies the assumption that the behavior of men is directed by some mysterious forces that defy any analysis and description. For if one realizes that what sets action in motion is ideas, one cannot help admitting that these ideas originate in the minds of some individuals and are transmitted to other individuals. But then one has accepted the fundamental thesis of methodological individualism, viz., that it is the ideas held by individuals that determine their group allegiance, and a collective no longer appears as an entity acting of its own accord and on its own initiative.

All interhuman relations are the offshoot of ideas and the conduct of individuals directed by these ideas. The despot rules because his subjects chose rather to obey him than to resist him openly. The slaveholder is in a position to deal with his slaves as if they were chattels because the slaves are willy nilly prepared to yield to his pretensions. It is an ideological transformation that in our age weakens and threatens to dissolve entirely the authority of parents, teachers, and clergymen.

The meaning of philosophical individualism has been lamentably misinterpreted by the harbingers of collectivism. As they see it, the dilemma is whether the concerns - interests - of the individuals should rank before those of one of the - arbitrarily selected - collectives. However, the epistemological controversy between individualism and collectivism has no direct reference to this purely political issue. Individualism as a principle of the philosophical, praxeological, and historical analysis of human action means the establishment of the facts that all actions can be traced back to individuals and that no scientific method can succeed in determining how definite external events, liable to a description by the methods of the natural sciences, produce within the human mind definite ideas, value judgments, and volitions. In this sense the individual that cannot be dissolved into components is both the starting point and the ultimate given of all endeavors to deal with human action.

The collectivistic method is anthropomorphic, as it simply takes it for granted that all concepts of the action of individuals can be applied to those of the collectives. It does not see that all collectives are the product of a definite way in which individuals act, they are an offshoot of ideas determining the conduct of individuals.” - Ludwig von Mises, ‘The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method’ (1962)

Prediction by the late Republican Senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

The odd thing is, I had those exact two clip-on bowties as a kid.

And what the aitch eee double-hockey sticks is Senator (and one-time presidential candidate) Barry Goldwater doing there?