Understanding the Moment We’re In | Explainer | Dr. Heather Cox Richardson | Dec 4, 2025, from Politics Chat, November 4, 2025
Now, the reason I gave you that very long history there was because if you have that background, an awful lot of what is going on right now makes a lot more sense.
—Heather Cox Richardson, PhD
Dr. Heather Cox Richardson gives a quick, but enlightening, history lesson from the 1930s to the present of the evolution of the far-right movement, in order to provide context regarding how we got to today's autocratic, anti-regulation, anti-social safety net, racist, sexist Trump administration. Below are illustrated summaries and excerpts of Richardson's major points. [Note. The excerpts below from the video transcript are lightly edited for clarity. All emphasis is mine.]
1933 TO POST-WWII: The New Deal and the beginning of the "liberal consensus"
Richardson explains that in the 1930s, FDR’s New Deal gave us the beginnings of the social safety net (e.g., the Social Security Act of 1935), and established the importance of the federal government's role in regulating business, building infrastructure (e.g., the Tennessee Valley Authority Act in 1933), and promoting greater equality. Richardson claims that the New Deal programs, especially Social Security, "changed the relationship between individuals and the government."
RICHARDSON: People really liked this government. It stabilized the country. It stabilized the economy. Gave people a sense that they could work their way up. And the country--especially after World War II... the economy booms. It really convinces people that this is the kind of government we need.
And it's called the “liberal consensus.” “Liberal” meaning the idea that in order for individuals to be able to have the opportunity to create their own futures, you need to have a government that makes sure they're not going to get squished by big business or by starvation. That they get educations; that they have access to health care; that there is a way to protect the individual.... And Americans since then, of all political parties, for an overwhelming majority of them have liked that system.... And many of them thought it... was here to stay.
So... when Democrats used to say, "Well, you know, the Republicans are trying to take away Social Security," there was a lot of people saying, "Oh, that's just ridiculous. You're fear-mongering. They'll never do that." Right? Okay.
[See below the cut for more illustrated historical summaries & excerpts from Richardson's history lesson. Below the cut is also information about image sources.]
1948 TO 1965: Civil rights gains, backlash, accusations of "socialism," and blaming the "undeserving" for social programs
Richardson discusses how a group of wealthy businessmen (i.e., the Elon Musks & Peter Thiels of their day) did NOT like the "liberal consensus" created by the New Deal. They started mobilizing in the 1930s, but became more active after Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948 and after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 desegregated the schools.
These wealthy right-wing businessmen wanted to dismantle the kind of government created by the New Deal; consequently, "they begin to argue that this system is a form of socialism.” By doing so, Richardson claims they played into people's post-WW II fears that communism and socialism were spreading as political-economic systems. They also figured out a way to tarnish the government provided social safety net in the eyes of many White people.
RICHARDSON: And they start to argue then that the whole point of there being this government... that does all these things, is to funnel the tax dollars of hardworking Americans--you defined usually as White men in in the literature of the time--to undeserving people of color, Black America and Black Americans. Women are going to come in the 1960s, late 1960s, 1970s. That idea that the government that is serving everybody is a reflection of the the demands of undeserving sort of un-Americanish people of color, and as I say later, women, really takes off after 1965 with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guarantees that people of color can vote.
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THE 1960S-1970S: The Second Women’s Rights Movement, abortion & the push to restore a traditional hierarchical system of race and gender
Richardson claims that as the Second Women's Right's Movement progressed, concerns about "women who want to work outside the home" became woven into the right's anti-government arguments, as did the issue of abortion, which brought "religious traditionalists" into the movement. Although surprisingly, objections to abortion back then, according to Richardson, had more to do with the fear of women moving out of their "traditional" roles, than to do with the welfare of "fetuses."
RICHARDSON: There is the argument beginning in 1972, 71/72 before Row v Wade that women who want to work outside the home, known as “women's libers” by those people who don't like them, are trying to destroy the American family and trying to insist on benefits from the federal government... that they don't deserve, and that they want to use benefits for things like abortion.
And this is where abortion starts to become a really big rallying cry for that reactionary right-wing movement. Because it begins to pull into that Republican coalition that stands against business regulation, religious traditionalists who really begin to talk about abortion, not as having anything to do with fetuses, but rather with freeing women from traditional marriages and from traditional hierarchies.
And that's going to be really key because going into the 1970s, then you're going to see a reemphasis or an emphasis on traditional hierarchies of race and hierarchies of gender getting linked together to this idea of getting rid of that government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure and protects civil rights and also works in the international level to to create all these alliances.... You see all of those things coming together in this idea of reinstating a hierarchical system that got overturned all the way back there in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act, but even before that in 1935 with the Social Security Act.
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THE 1980s: Ronald Reagan, “Voodoo economics” & a 1920s fantasy
Richardson discusses how Reagan embraced the idea that if we could just go back to an anti-regulation, small-government time before the New Deal, such as in the 1920s, America would be prosperous. Unfortunately, Reagan & others who pitched the now discredited supply-side (or aptly named "voodoo economics") seem to have forgotten about how income inequality & lack of regulation set us up for the Stock Market Crash of 1929 (and the Great Depression that followed).
RICHARDSON: What you see in the 1980s is the rise of that radical right in, and their takeover of, the White House and Congress under Ronald Reagan. And Ronald Reagan is the first president really to embrace this theory. And mind you, he does it more rhetorically than he does in in real life.... But he embraces... this idea that the way that you create a good America again is to go back to the time before we had this new kind of government-- back before 1935--is really part of his argument for... the idea of getting rid of business regulation and getting rid of taxes....
You might remember George Bush the First talking about “voodoo economics.” What they argued was that if you got rid of business regulation and you got rid of taxes, what that would do is it would free up investment capital for investors, for those big businessmen to pour back into the economy. And when it did that, they argued, what would happen was that everybody's lives would get better because the economy would grow so dramatically. And when that happened, you wouldn't need things like a social safety net, and private industry would invest in infrastructure, and you certainly wouldn't need business regulation because those people who had all this money would be investing it in businesses that worked terrifically well.
What they were essentially arguing was that the United States should go back to a fantasy version of the 1920s, which on paper, for a while looked really good. But then of course it turned out that the benefits of the economic growth of the 1920s were not going widely throughout society. They were only going to a very small group of people, and as a result, you're going to see in October of 1929 the Great Crash.
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LATE 1980S TO 1990S: “Reactionary” Republicans set agenda of consolidating executive power, stacking courts, voter suppression & claiming that Black & Brown people, women, and later, LBTQ+ people, want to use tax dollars for services they don’t “deserve.”
Richardson says that the "reactionary" Republicans who took over the GOP in the late 1980s/90s knew that their policies of deregulation & limited government services were not popular, so they doubled down on the strategy that brought them power under Reagan, to ensure they would be able to stay in power and implement their policies. In doing so, they "indoctrinated a generation of (mostly White) Americans (and Richardson suggests maybe even two generations) into a set of beliefs that are actually against their own best economic interests
RICHARDSON: From the very beginning, in the 1980s, American voters didn't like.... the deregulation. They didn't like the union busting. They didn't like the cuts to the social safety net and to education. And so, in order to stay in power, that reactionary group of the Republican party... this is not the original Republican party... this is a faction that's going to take it over, especially in the 1990s.
What they began to do was to focus on the idea of concentrating power in the executive branch. And you see this under Ronald Reagan when his attorney general Edwin Meese says... we're going to stack the courts so that no matter what voters do, we are going to be able to stay in power. And you see it in 1986 with the idea of ballot integrity. They're going to start to... argue that the only way Democrats win office is by cheating. And so, they say we've got to get rid of some of this Democratic voting. And you can see them trying to concentrate power with this very small group of people in the executive branch with a very strong president.
And part of... staying in power to do that, at a time when people really don't like what they're doing, is constantly to hammer on the idea that Black Americans and Brown Americans and women who want to work outside the home--and later on they're going to argue LGBTQ plus people--that those are individuals who are demanding tax dollars without deserving them. And that's a really important construction because you can see the constant dog whistles in the 1980s.
But then by the 1990s, you're quite visibly going to get that coming much more to the surface in politics through things like the Willie Horton ad under George Bush in the election where he uses that hideously racist and misleading ad to try and turn White voters away from the Democrats by arguing falsely that it was Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee that year, who had let this murderer and rapist out. That wasn't actually at all what happened. But you see increasingly this focus on Black Americans, Brown Americans, and women who want to work outside the home, as people who want something for nothing, as people who are socialists, as people who are, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, “feminazis,” as people who are embracing socialism or communism.
And that focus on voters--telling their voters that they must stick with the Republicans and their tax cuts and their deregulation to create this system that is going to work for them--goes on for a couple of... decades, a couple of generations even.
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2015 TO THE PRESENT: The rise (and perhaps inevitability) of Donald Trump
Richardson maintains that Trump's ascension a decade ago makes perfect sense in the light of how wealthy, reactionary Republicans had worked hard to make their agenda of deregulation and low taxes possible. They did so (and continue to do so) by convincing many Americans that Black & Brown people (and recently, especially immigrants), women, and LGBTQ+ people want government "handouts" and are not deserving of them--hence, we need to have a new pro-corporate government structure, without all those "welfare" programs.
RICHARDSON: And you end up in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump, who very clearly turns that sort of uneasy marriage between the very wealthy businessmen who want tax cuts and deregulation to, that marriage to, the racism and the sexism and the homophobia of the base that they have created.
So, and then, you know, I've talked about this before, how Trump actually gets rid of the establishment Republicans who have been in power--and basically courting that base without expecting to give them power--and he actually gives power to the base, and so on.
Now, the reason I gave you that very long history there was because if you have that background, an awful lot of what is going on right now makes a lot more sense.
[edited]
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Image sources (before edits): New Deal Images: TVA: 01 + 02, SSA of 1935;
Civil Rights Collage: Truman: Army desegregation, Brown v Board of Education, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965; Women's Rights: A New Era for Women; Reagan Era Economics/Roaring 20s: Reagan economic quote, Voodoo economics, Roaring 20s, Stock crash; Reactionary Republican Collage: Willie Horton ad, Dukakis on crime, Welfare queen, Limbaugh/Feminazi, Black vote cut, Scalia sworn in as justice; Trump & the golden escalator: Video source for GIF
