Choosing Sides : Right-Wing Icons in the Group Research Records

Introduction > The Conservative Eye: About the Images

Most of the iconography collected in this exhibit is as essentially nonpartisan as it is familiar. Stars and stripes, the Statue of Liberty, eagles, and the US Capitol frequently appear. These are stock icons of US politics and patriotism, images colored in red, white and blue. Alongside and sometimes paired with these patriotic icons are ones from popular culture that are nearly as recognizable, like an old-fashioned “Wanted” poster or an advertisement for the movie Jaws.

But the appeals embodied in these works are themselves highly factional. Even a modest student of the US right wing in the mid- to late-twentieth century should hardly be surprised at the issues represented here. The promotion of private enterprise and evangelical Christianity, unease over race relations and popular culture, and attacks on communism, taxes and the federal government all appear here, frequently in combination. These are all combative ideologically-defined issues that divided and continue to divide the United States.

The disjuncture between the ambiguity of the icons and the argumentative nature of the way partisans portrayed them highlights one of the few aspects clearly shared by all of the items in this exhibit: the certainty with which their creators felt their arguments were correct. This was no less true of the watchdog group devoted to exposing “liberal bias” in the news media than it was of the gay neo-Nazi organization seeking acceptance for its strange bedfellows. Apart from being politically to the right of center, groups like these had little in common but a fierce belief that their views were just and worthy of wider adoption. For the artists who produced their visual propaganda, there was no distinction between their own political views and those that were best for the US. More than simply asserting that their politics made them patriots, they stated that the only patriotic political positions were their own.

This certitude led right-wing artists to develop two basic tropes with which they expressed their righteousness: celebration and warning. The celebratory works on display here singled out for praise the right-wing individuals, organizations, and ideas that were upholding whatever values the artists felt were truly American. The works that warn documented the enemies, both specific and general, that threatened the righteous and their vision of the US.

More nuanced approaches contributed to each of these broad themes. A warning could take the form of a humorous satire of left-wing protesters as easily as it could picture the hairy hand of Communism setting fire to a church. A celebration might feature the triumph of a US flagpole spearing a Communist snake or the smiling face of a politician. Two artists might use a similar icon for different effect: a crying girl could signal a warning about the future, while young boys at play could indicate the proper path for the country. But throughout all of these variations, one message was the same: the world was divided into the righteous and the pernicious, and the viewer needed to choose which side to join and which to fight against.

This sense of appeal, the effort at recruitment that is inherent in all of these images, betrays the fact that most of the groups that produced these works were not part of either mainstream political discourse or society. The fact that more of their images take the form of warnings rather than celebration suggests self-awareness of the fact that they were outnumbered, and helps to explain why the iconography of the American Revolution appealed to them: like the original patriots, these right-wing artists were part of a small group of highly-motivated activists fighting against established ruling powers. A few Congresspeople might have been members of a group like the John Birch Society, and still more were sympathetic to some of its causes; but hundreds of others would have nothing to do with it. The fact that many of the positions (and a few of the individuals and groups) represented here have become mainstream--or have at least failed to completely disappear--over the years should suggest the effective nature of their appeals rather than the fact that they have always dominated.

The artists whose work appears here produced advertisements and arguments designed to win supporters for organizations, individuals, events, or causes by any means possible, and they embraced as many media as possible in this quest to spread their messages. They illustrated mailings, leaflets, newsletters, bumper stickers, and the covers of books, pamphlets, and record albums. Collectively, this multimedia saturation spread across hundreds of local and even some national movements. They helped to build a formidable body of right-wing political and social partisans in the United States predicated in part on a belief that the world was irreparably divided.

That right wing politics in the United States today would be based on a vision of a polarized world of principled division was not inevitable. But to view these images of past movements of the right reveals an intellectual legacy for such a vision that endured even at a sometimes marginalized level for decades. If not demonstrating that an ideology of division had to define the contemporary American right wing, the works on display here do show how such a development did come to pass.

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