Kathryn Olmsted is a professor of history at the University of California Davis and the author of multiple books, including Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism. Her latest book is The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler.
In the 1930s, six right-wing oligarchs used the US’s and UK’s largest newspapers to spout sensationalist xenophobia, and at times even boost fascist propaganda. Today, Fox News and other right-wing mass media outlets are using the very same blueprint.
The roots of the modern US right lie in the California fields of the 1930s, where large growers ferociously resisted farmworker organizing. It’s a reminder that opposing working-class power has been central to the US right from the very beginning.