News
Street Roots • August 18-24, 2017
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P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F R IG H T W IN G W A T C H
“A t the Sum m er o f Justice, activists with ties to the mainstream conservative movement mingled with those with explicit ties to anti-abortion violence, ”
a c c o r d in g to M ir a n d a B lu e’s report “Return to Wichita,” about the 2016 revival o f a 1991 anti-abortion protest movement in Wichita, Kan.
Documenting the
RELIGIOUS RIGHT
As editor at Right Wing Watch, Miranda Blue tracks
and archives the activities o f extremist movements
BY EMILY GREEN
S T A F F W R IT E R
merica’s religious right first emerged
as a powerful political force in the
mid 1970s.
Followers of televangelists, such as Pat
Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting
Network and Jerry Falwell with his Moral
Majority, were organizing and becoming
vocal opponents of pornography, abortion,
homosexuality and other issues they
deemed immoral.
In 1980, they propelled Ronald Reagan’s
landslide victory into the White House.
Behind the movement was a new and
disturbing message: There is only one right
way to be a Christian, and that narrow
definition of Christianity should shape
public policy. You’re either with us or
against us.
In 1981, in response to the growing
influence of the Christian right, television
producer Norman Lear (“The Jeffersons,”
“All in the Family,” “Sanford and Son”),
A
along with a bipartisan alliance of
lawmakers and religious, business and civil
rights leaders, founded People For the
American Way.
In its early years, this Washington, D.C.-
based nonprofit organization ran public
service announcements warning against the
tactics of radio and TV preachers who told
their listeners that if they don’t fall in line
with their political stances, they are bad
Christians. In the years since, People For
the American Way has sought to defend the
constitutional values it perceives as under
attack by factions of the far right, such as
equality and freedom of speech, and it
continues to fund opposition to Republican
candidates and far-right judicial nominations.
It also runs a project called Right Wing
Watch, where researchers archive the
declarations and radical beliefs of far-right
extremists.
“We used to keep all our research in a
room with VHS tapes of shows we had
recorded, filing cabinets of mailers and a
whole library of books by these right-wing
M iranda B lu e
figures we had followed,” right-wing
researcher Miranda Blue said.
Today, that archive is the public online
news site and blog RightWingWatch.org.
Blue came to People For the American
Way after working on several political
campaigns, including Barack Obama’s in
2008. Before that, she wrote for
Congressional Quarterly and opensecrets.
org, a project of the Center for Responsive
Politics. Today she’s the research editor at
People For the American Way and editor at
Right Wing Watch.
Blue recently spoke with Street Roots
from her office in Washington, D.C., about
the far-right landscape as it exists under
Trump, the evangelical influence in the
White House and efforts to replace
mainstream media with far-right
propaganda.
E m ily Green: Right Wing Watch reports
on the statements and efforts o f some real
See RIGHT W IN G , page 5