Noam Chomsky, the renowned academic and political commentator, has said that the Republican party in its current form in the United States isn’t really a political party at all but rather a radical insurgency aiming to overthrow democracy by undermining elections and the role of government in society.
What did Chomsky say?
Chomsky’s comments come in regards to Trump trying to delegitimize the 2020 election’s integrity, and the insurrection that followed it.
“The Republican Party has simply drifted off the spectrum. It’s not a political party in the traditional sense,” Chomsky said. “It’s now a radical insurgency that has abandoned any interest in participation in parliamentary politics.”
He cited Trump building a cult like following and how these followers will do anything he says. “This group has taken over the Republican Party.”
Chomsky concluded by saying that the GOP, by not working with Democrats, “make[s] sure that the country is unrecoverable, and then the blame can be put on the Democrats who happen to have power. Republicans can come back into office doing exactly the same thing now. That’s not a political party. That’s a radical insurgency. No interest in democracy.”
How is the GOP becoming more radical
The Republican party isn’t functioning as a political party in any meaningful sense. For one thing, it is ideologically extreme. The New York Times says 89 percent of Republicans are conservative, compared to just 39 percent of Americans generally
To take an even more telling example, consider one of its few deviations from ideological orthodoxy: its new stance on immigration reform.
As recently as 2008, John McCain ran for president advocating comprehensive immigration reform. Today most conservative candidates oppose it.
This radicalization of policy position appears to be part of a broader process that includes both intensifying extremism within individual parties and asymmetric polarization between them.
According to work by Stanford University political scientist Morris Fiorina and his colleagues, for most of American history Democrats were slightly more conservative than Republicans (and independents slightly less so).
But since around 1980 these roles have been reversed.
The Republicans Have Become an Extremist Party
The Republican Party has shifted so far to the right that it is now unrecognizable as a political organization. At long last, its extremism and intransigence has become undeniable even by centrist figures such as David Brooks, Peggy Noonan and Colin Powell, who have each acknowledged that they are no longer members of what was once America’s mainstream conservative party.
The evidence for their claims is overwhelming. In fact, in recent months we have witnessed an extraordinary and unprecedented event. A radical insurgency has captured control of one of America’s two major political parties.
