Thom Hartmann: Will Bunch is with us, he’s the senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, senior fellow over at Media matters, MediaMatters.org and the author of the popular blog, Attytood. But most significantly and the reason I wanted to get him on is he’s the author of a new book called, “The Backlash, Right Wing Radicals, High Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the age of Obama.” MediaMatters.org the website. Will, welcome to the program and I’m sorry I don’t have call screen software here, so if somebody there can put Will on the air please, it would be much appreciated.

Will Bunch: Can you, oh.

Thom Hartmann: Hey Will, there you are, are you there?

Will Bunch: Yeah I’ll say what I just said a minute ago which is thanks for having me on and thanks for that great review that’s up on Truth Out right now, so …

Thom Hartmann: My pleasure. You wrote a great book.

Will Bunch: Thank you Thom.

Thom Hartmann: And rather than my telling the story of the book, the, and all these mind boggling stories about the Oath Keepers and the Birthers and the Tea Party and the Knob Creek Militia and the FEMA internment camps and all this other. Tell us what the right is talking to itself about right now, Will.

Will Bunch: Well I think the right is afraid, you know. I mean you know the real sense I picked up on the trail, you know when I went to the Knob Creek machine gun shoot and when I went to Arizona and places like that was the scent of fear. And unfortunately I mean it’s unfortunate that people are afraid. You know, quickly, they’re afraid I think for two reasons.

One, I mean, very legitimate, I think we’re all worried about where the American economy is headed right now, that’s one thing that liberals and conservatives have in common right now. And that’s one layer. But I think for conservatives it runs much deeper because there’s also this deep cultural fear. You know they’re very concerned about losing their culture, beginning with this notion about America increasingly becoming a non-white country and that feeling threatening to people. And then I think the arrival of Barack Obama in the oval office was you know kind of a punctuation mark or maybe even a punch in the gut for some people who have these fears about what’s happening to the country.

And the critical element of the book I think, and the thing that really stirs the pot and makes it so dangerous is the existence of the high-def hucksters that I write about. Led by Glenn Beck and he gets a lot of attention in the book for understandable reasons. But people like Sarah Palin and…

Thom Hartmann: Now Newt Gingrich is jumping into it. ‘Obama, he’s informed by Kenyan anti-colonial politics.’ What’s that code for?

Will Bunch: Well Kenyan I think is a predominantly African, black, dark skinned country the last time I checked. And I mean it’s…

Thom Hartmann: Yep. And it’s a Muslim country, or it’s a country with a lot of Muslims in it too.

Will Bunch: Right. You know, some of these things that have come together kind of after I finished my work on book this spring, but what we’re seeing in the country right now, this September, with the whole you know the whole Islamaphobia that’s going on. What we’ve seen over the summer in Arizona with the passage of the racial profiling law, aimed at driving brown skinned people out of that state. And the way this all ties into republican politicians trying to use this to basically whip up anger against Barack Obama. I mean it all comes down to the same thing. You know, fear of the other, you know. And you know to, to the people trying to whip this up, Barack Obama and a Mexican immigrant and a Muslim Imam are all the same, they’re all “the other.”

You know and these paranoid theories out there that you know the Birther theory of the idea that Obama is a secret Muslim is people trying to justify this deeper fear that “the other” is taking over this country which is being whipped up by people, as you said, like Newt Gingrich.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah.. now here’s, I have a political theory about this that I’m asserting as fact. You know I found in reading your book, we’re talking with Will Bunch, his new book is called “The Backlash,” and in reading your book I found the edges of this, although I didn’t, and maybe I missed it, I didn’t see it explicitly. You’ve got some oil billionaires and some very, very wealthy and powerful individuals and large transnational and in some cases even foreign corporations who are very interested in making sure that the Supreme Court maintains the Citizen’s United position that corporations have human rights, that corporations are persons, that corporations can participate in politics, etc.

That decision will almost certainly be reversed if Scalia or Kennedy retire or die, god forbid, I’m not wishing them ill, or any of the other five right wingers, but those are the two oldest ones, you know, Kennedy I believe is in his early 80s, Scalia is in his mid 70s. If they were to retire during a democratic presidency and another Sonia Sotomayor or you know another Elena Kagan were nominated to the Supreme Court, I think it’s a very safe prediction that Citizen’s United would get reversed very quickly. And they don’t want that to happen. They want to maintain that power, they want to maintain the ability to buy elections. And that means that they’ve got to take back the presidency in 2012.

And the long term strategy for doing that since Obama is absolutely certainly 10% guaranteed going to be the nominee, at least for President, I predict for Vice President he’s going to flip Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton which I think politically would be a good idea for him but that’s a whole other thing. But he’s going to be the nominee. So they’ve got two years to convince the republican base and a lot of moderates and middle of the roaders that Islam is terrible and by the way Obama is a Muslim. And, because the just hey he’s a black guy that didn’t scare enough people so they’ve got to go a step beyond that.

Will Bunch: Right. It’s interesting, Thom, I mean times have really changed. I mean in the 60s, you know we saw the overt racism where people you know would use the n-word or you know polls would find a large number of Americans would say that I don’t believe a black man is qualified to be president. You won’t get many people saying that today. One thing that’s really fascinating that’s developed over the last couple years, and I love this term, is the term para-racial. Which is the idea that the right has developed these issues which, on the surface, if you look at the words explicitly they’re not about race, but when you look at what they’re really saying, it’s about race.

Thom Hartmann: Right. It’s all about race.

Will Bunch: And some of them are more obvious than others. I mean like you said, this Kenyan remark by Gingrich is just nuts. But you know, the thing about, I mean in theory, questioning Obama’s birth certificate isn’t technically a racial thing, I mean you know he could be a white person who wasn’t born in the United States, kind of like John McCain, right?

Thom Hartmann: Right, born in Panama.

Will Bunch: But I mean the truth is the birth certificate issue is about race.

Thom Hartmann: I think it even goes a step beyond that. I think it’s about suggesting that he is Muslim.

Will Bunch: Right. Right. And a Muslim is not an American. He may or may not be dark skinned but it is somebody who is not legitimate. You know in reporting the Backlash and I traveled all over the country and I you know I talked to many tea partiers and 9-12ers and oath-keepers and I always tried to draw them out because I was trying to find out where they were coming from and what they were trying to say. And you know the kind of things they would say to me over and over again is, particularly some of the somewhat more semi-sane ones, were you know I saw Obama for the first time in 2008 and I just felt uncomfortable. Or he was saying these words like transformation and I thought that was scary, somebody said to me. And you know, I mean nobody will say I was scared because he didn’t like the 42 president who came before him, they won’t say that. But they would say that they were uncomfortable or they were scared.

And these were very gut level, kind of emotional psychological reactions to the idea of somebody like Obama becoming president. And what I think they did is you know they’ve embarked on this search for “facts” to validate this psychological idea that Obama is not American, is not somebody that they, the kind of person that they want to see sitting in the oval office. And so you get the birther theory, you get the idea that he must be a secret Muslim, and you know these massive efforts that just cast a broader seed of doubt over you know not ever this guy’s policies or whether he’s trying to take the country in the right direction, but over who this guy actually is.

Thom Hartmann: Right. Make him illegitimate for 2012. I really think that this is all about 2012 and you’ve documented it brilliantly. Will Bunch, his book, his new book is out, it’s called “The Backlash.” MediaMatters.org of course where Will works and writes as well as the Philadelphia Daily News. Any other websites, Will, you want me to mention?

Will Bunch: My blog, Attytood.

Thom Hartmann: Great, thank you very much Will. Good talking with you.

Will Bunch: Thanks Thom. Alright, great, thanks, bye.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.