“The Friends of Abe has acted as a clandestine club for Hollywood conservatives for more than a decade, hosting secret events where they could vent rightwing views and hear speeches from visiting Tea Party luminaries.
But on Thursday the organization – which counts Jon Voight, Jerry Bruckheimer and Kelsey Grammer among its 1,500 members – made an abrupt announcement: it was dissolving.
“Effective immediately, we are going to begin to wind down the 501 c3 organization, bring the Sustaining Membership dues to an end, and do away with the costly infrastructure and the abespal.com website,” the executive director, Jeremy Boreing, told members in an email, a copy of which the Guardian has seen.”
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“The announcement caught members by surprise and fueled speculation that infighting over Donald Trump’s candidacy, among other factors, had drained commitment. Others said the group had been losing steam for years.
Instead of electrifying the organization, California’s 7 June primary, a final and potentially decisive showdown between Trump and his GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, appeared to frazzle it.”
www.theguardian.com/...
“It’s a civil war in slow motion,” said Lionel Chetwynd, a producer and screenwriter and co-founder of FOA. “It’s too volatile. I’ve never known an election to be so personal. People don’t really sit around any more and talk about their preferences because it’s a time of inflamed passions. Now I don’t talk much to my Republican friends.”
Instead of unity against a common liberal foe, many rightwing actors, writers, producers and directors are exchanging insults, branding each other Nazis, nuts and cucks, the latter derived from cuckold, and used to demean fathers with adopted children of color.
David Cole, who used to run a bacchanalian group called Republican Party Animals, said the various splintering factions were “one primary away from needing a benzodiazepine drip”.
The “alternative right” had a racial animus now emboldened by Trump’s xenophobia, Cole said. “The base as I know it is fractured. People are at each other’s throats.”
www.theguardian.com/…
Branding each other Nazis, nuts and cucks. Yikes!
