Confederate Flags, Conspiracies, and the Ghost of JFK Jr.: What I Saw at Trump’s Bananas Texas Rally – By Steven Monacelli (Rolling Stone) / January 30, 2022
It’s part roadshow and part religious revival, but the show is a grift and the religion being revived is fascism
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Conroe, Texas — The Donald Trump train made its second stop here this Saturday with a coterie of politicians, conspiracy theorists, and grifters in tow. It came on the heels of a Lara Trump rally in north Texas this past Thursday and just two weeks after a similar rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Meanwhile, six hours south at the border, the disgraced QAnon peddling general Michael Flynn and other far-right figures held an event at the exact same time followed up by a caravan to the border on Sunday. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas last July, was featured as a speaker at both events.
This confluence of events in Texas demonstrates the sort of far-right politics that is coalescing here: paranoid, obsessed with or tolerant of bigoted conspiracy theories, eager to appeal to violence, and convinced they’re fighting against a secret Marxist plot. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar politics emerged during the Weimar period in Germany, were honed by the Nazis, and later trafficked into mainstream politics via the John Birch Society — one of the sponsors of the event at the border.
Dozens of politicians from across the state and country turned out for the rally, seeking to ride on Trump’s political coattails. Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and State Senator Dawn Buckingham all spoke glowingly of Trump and touted their endorsements from the former president.
