Commentary
Cultural icon and People For the American Way founder Norman Lear died on Dec. 5 at the age of 101, sparking an outpouring of respectful remembrances for his groundbreaking career in television and engaged citizenship. Right Wing Watch is proud to carry on his commitment to pluralism and equality, and to exposing and challenging the bigotry, divisiveness, and authoritarian impulses of the religious right movement and its political allies.
People For the American Way grew out of Norman’s own right wing watching. At the end of the 1970s, a decade in which his shows dominated and transformed American television, Norman began viewing televangelists connected to the emerging religious-right political movement as research for a possible television or movie project. He heard a TV preacher leading prayers for the death of a Supreme Court justice. He heard others telling viewers that you could only be a good American if you were the “right” kind of Christian, and you could only be a good Christian if you shared their right-wing politics.
Norman was appalled. It brought back memories of being a young child stumbling across the antisemitic radio diatribes of the notorious Father Coughlin—and of the fascists Norman dropped out of college to fight in World War II.
Norman understood quicker than most just how dangerous that kind of divisive rhetoric could be. He had demonstrated the potential for television to do be a force for good, and he knew that demagogues could use its power for destructive ends. Norman was so disturbed by the Jerry Falwells of the world that he set aside his entertainment career to focus on mobilizing fellow Americans to counter the religious right with an affirmation of “the American Way”— equality under the law, separation of church and state, and freedom of thought, expression, and religion.
Norman’s public challenge to the religious right made him a high-profile target. When People For the American Way used the (now defunct) Fairness Doctrine to ask for television time to respond to Pat Robertson’s politicking, Robertson fired off an angry letter to Norman, telling him that his arms were too short to box with God, and warning that God himself would punish those who interfered with his messengers. Falwell at one point declared Norman to be the single biggest threat to the American family. Norman, having successfully battled Nazis in Europe and network censors at home, was untroubled and undeterred by the threats he received.
Before the Internet era, Right Wing Watch was an internal project of People For the American Way’s research department. Researchers got on direct mail lists, subscribed to publications, and spent hours recording and transcribing religious-right television broadcasts. Librarians catalogued the information in a reference library available to reporters and scholars; much of that original source material has now been archived at the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Right Wing Studies.
People For the American Way used that material to produce in-depth reports and a series of “In Their Own Words” videos to document the religious right’s extremism for journalists, progressive activists, and the general public—a tradition that continues in Right Wing Watch reporting today.
Right Wing Watch research has also informed People For the American Way’s organizing and legal advocacy by identifying emerging campaigns and strategies that need to be countered, like far-right activists and politicians taking over school boards and dictating the contents of textbooks, undermining voting rights, and using the courts to reverse hard-won social justice gains.
As the world went online, so did Right Wing Watch. What our researchers previously reported internally became the basis for a blog and then a multimedia website and social media channels that serve as important sources of information and analysis for anyone seeking to understand the right’s agendas, strategies, and tactics. Today, journalists, scholars, activists, and public officials rely on Right Wing Watch reporting and expertise on the overlapping white nationalist, Christian nationalist, and MAGA movements that threaten our democracy.
Norman was excited and proud when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted that journalists turned to Right Wing Watch when news broke last year that white nationalist Nick Fuentes had dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Many political reporters had no idea who Fuentes was, but Right Wing Watch had documented his antisemitism and antidemocratic extremism for years, and we were cited in more than 100 articles about his dinner with Trump. Maddow praised Right Wing Watch as “a fire alarm system for the whole country” and a “great public service.”
In recent years, Norman acknowledged that when he started People For the American Way, he and his colleagues wrongly believed it would be a short-term project—they thought that when a spotlight was shined on right-wing leaders’ extremism, the movement would wither. That did not happen for many reasons. Right-wing political operatives have built a massive political, legal, media, and cultural infrastructure with billions in funding from far-right foundations and corporate donors. Right-wing media and social media have amplified far-right conspiracy theories and disinformation. Trump and his MAGA movement have thoroughly corrupted the Republican Party. Christian nationalists show a disturbing willingness to sacrifice democracy and embrace dictatorial rule to see American society forced into alignment with their religious and political worldview. The need to understand and disrupt the far right has never been greater.
In asking people to remember him by supporting People For the American Way, Norman embraced the idea that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The Right Wing Watch team is proud to honor Norman with our vigilance, and we count on your support to make that possible.
