The prime target of the far right is not Islamofascists; nor is it the far Left; it's the politically active centrists

More and more, the far Right is starting to function like a cult. First job of a cult is to separate you from conflicting ideas and people. After that, the steady stream of cult propaganda weaves members into a coherent narrative that describes the world and everyone's place in it. But cult narratives are always--always--false, whether they're Left, Right, religious, you name it.

So the cult has to silence your BS detector, and that starts with getting you to ignore, dismiss, and/or feel actively hostile towards anyone who dissents from the cult's narrative.

The average right winger isn't influenced by anything Michael Moore says--in fact, if he says anything they assume it's a knowing lie. Ditto Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama. Anyone even slightly left of center--and the center has moved waaay over to the right, though the far Rights believes the exact opposite.

Who's left? Liberal Republicans like Olympia Snowe, for one. And, right in the crosshairs, the two main fact-checking organizations: Politifact.com and Factcheck.org. Not because they always side with the Left. But because they don't always side with the Right.

That's far more dangerous to keeping cult members in line than self-identified enemies.

So the far Right narrative has to somehow explain all the articles appearing in those two factchecking sites that say Democrats and other left of center organizations and people have lied/spun/told half-truths.

And explain they do: the narrative says that these fact-checking organizations are completely in the tank for Obama and all them Lib-er-ul causes, and only criticize the Left to legitimize their criticism of the Right.

That is, you're either for us or against us, and if you aren't totally for us, you're totally against us.

And--there's no such thing as journalism. Only honest advocacy vs. deceptive advocacy. Thus if a journalist is a Democrat, everything the journalist writes is by definition Leftist propaganda. The idea of someone criticizing their own side is literally un-believable to them.

So if you wonder how people living in a democratic country can become radicalized Jihadi--look at American right wing websites, and in particular look at their coverage of Politifact.com and Factcheck.org.

The funniest part is when they say they've proven their point if fact checking sites criticize the Right, say, 59% of the time--the same argument they furiously condemn when it's used to "prove" racial/ethnic discrimination.

But also pretty ironic is the fact that the Left thinks these fact-checking organizations lean Right. This is unknown to far Right cultists because they get all their political information from right wing websites and pundits, and such information would clash with the Manichean (black & white) narrative of the cult.

The Congressional Budget Office also gets pilloried if they dare issue reports that conflict with the Republican National Committee's narrative...then cited as Gospel when they agree.

One way to tell whether a self-identified Conservative hasn't become a cultist is to ask them what they think of FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com. I wouldn't expect them to say these organizations never err. But I would expect them to say that both are committed to being nonpartisan and calling 'em as they see 'em, such that their errors, when they occur, are not part of a fiendish plot.

You can do the same with a self-identified Liberal, of course. Both organizations call out the Left frequently. I just read one of their reports on TV political show hosts and was dismayed to see how biased some of my liberal favorites were.

It's tough to commit to truth. It's easy to commit to tribe. Thus saith our DNA.