and the need to have an "enemy":
<<snip>>
Political Research Associates works to facilitate public understanding of the threat posed to human rights by oppressive and authoritarian right-wing movements in the United States. Founded in 1981, we are the premier national organization studying the full spectrum of the US Political Right - from ultraconservatives in the electoral arena to paramilitary organizations to supremacist groups. Through our research and publications, and as a national resource and support center for activists, journalists and others, PRA helps to build the movement for progressive social change and promotes democratic values and principles.
<<snip>>
Here's an excerpt:
The Politics of Apocalyptic Millennialism
...Right-wing populist movements can cause serious damage to a society because they often popularize xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating, and conspiracism. This can lure mainstream politicians to adopt these themes to attract voters, legitimize acts of discrimination (or even violence), and open the door for revolutionary right-wing populist movements, such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist populist movements.
According to Richard K. Fenn:
Fascist tendencies are most likely to flourish wherever vestiges of a traditional community, bound together by ties of race and kinship, persist in a society largely dominated by large-scale organizations, by an industrial class system, and by a complex division of labor. Under these conditions the traditional community itself becomes threatened; its members all the more readily dread and demonize the larger society.121
Fenn argues that apocalyptic themes that lead to this tendency can be found in all three of the political tendencies examined in this study: the Christian Right, Patriot and armed militia movements, and the fascist right.122
By understanding the apocalyptic and millennialist roots of the conspiracist narratives peddled by right-wing populist forces, we can better understand why their claims--that seem on the surface to be outlandish--nonetheless resonate in certain alienated sectors of our society.123
<<snip>>
http://www.publiceye.org/apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_2-01.html#P256_74769 And here's an excerpt discussing the "new enemy," secular humanism:
<<snip>>
From Red Menace to New World Order ...
Apocalyptic millennialism provides a basic narrative within the US political right, claiming that the idealized society is thwarted by subversive conspiracies.13 During the 1980s and 1990s, the main demonized scapegoat of the US hard right shifted seamlessly from the communist Red Menace to international terrorists, sinful abortion providers, anti-family feminists, homosexual "special rights" activists, "pagan" environmentalists, liberal secular humanists and their "big government" allies, and globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order. The relatively painless nature of the shift was due in part to the basic underlying apocalyptic paradigm, which fed the Cold War and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period.14 To understand this dynamic requires stepping back a few paces to the roots of fundamentalist belief.
One of the core ideas of the fundamentalist Christian Right during this century has been that modern liberalism is a handmaiden for collectivist, Godless communism. Many conservative Christian anticommunists believe that collectivism is Godless, while capitalism is Godly. They often link liberalism to Godless collectivism; then to the notion of a liberal secular humanist conspiracy; and finally conclude that globalism is the ultimate collectivist plot. Prior to the collapse of communism, many leaders of the new Christian Right had already embraced a variation on their long-standing fear of secret elites in league with Satan: the secular humanist conspiracist theory.15 According to George Marsden, the shift in focus to the secular humanist demon:
"...revitalized fundamentalist conspiracy theory. Fundamentalists always had been alarmed at moral decline within America but often had been vague as to whom, other than the Devil, to blame. The "secular humanist" thesis gave this central concern a clearer focus that was more plausible and of wider appeal than the old mono-causal communist-conspiracy accounts. Communism and socialism could, of course, be fit right into the humanist picture; but so could all the moral and legal changes at home without implausible scenarios of Russian agents infiltrating American schools, government, reform movements, and mainline churches."16
A number of contemporary Christian Right ideologues promote the secular humanist conspiracist theory, including: Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition; Beverly LaHaye, leader of Concerned Women for America; her husband, the Rev. Timothy LaHaye, a well-known Christian author; and Dr. James Dobson, founding President of Focus on the Family, whose syndicated radio program is on thousands of stations.
<<snip>>
http://www.publiceye.org/apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_2.html#P79_10755
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