Young Americans for Freedom Hates Freedom | Time of Monsters

<p>There’s an old joke that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. The right-wing student group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), founded in William F. Buckley’s house in 1960, is similarly misnamed. It’s not young; the current head, Scott Walker, is 55. It’s definition of American is very narrowly partisan and reactionary in ways that most Americans would reject. And as for freedom, it has a long history of aligning with administrators and government authorities to suppress its political foes– something I wrote about <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/young-americans-freedom/" rel="nofollow">in a recent column</a>. Most recently, YAF launched a vexatious lawsuit designed to cripple <em>Dissent</em> magazine and its affiliated podcast, <em>Know Your Enemy</em>.</p><p>To talk about YAF, I spoke with historian Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, author of the forthcoming book <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469674490/resistance-from-the-right/" rel="nofollow"><em>Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America</em></a>. In that book, Lauren documents how groups like YAF groomed the ideological extremists who have taken the GOP into authoritarianism. In our talk, Lauren and I look at the group&#39;s ties to powerful plutocrats and politicians as well as their strategy of using legal power as a political tool. </p><br/><br/>Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a><br/><br/>Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>