Devil, Deceiver, Dupe: Constructing John Dewey from the Right

Abstract

The far right in the United States has gained international visibility and power by promulgating its ideas using multiple media sources. This paper considers contemporary right‐wing representations of John Dewey as found on English‐language internet websites. The author employs discourse analytic methods to address the questions—‘How is John Dewey constructed in right‐wing internet discourse?’ and ‘By what means has the Right come to construct Dewey in this way?’ Elements of the internet discourse are related to texts that helped shape it. The paper demonstrates that far right‐wing websites construct Dewey and his ideas as the antithesis of American values and as a political and existential threat of the highest order. In this discourse, Dewey is connected to Satan, communism and global conspiracy theories. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these beliefs for current educational and political philosophy and praxis.

Frame Genealogy as an Approach to Tracing Ideology in Education Policy Discourse

“…This work began with two studies of the construction of John Dewey in right-wing discourse (King, 2015(King, , 2018, which A1 is expanding to consider the educational discourse of the Christian Right for a monograph. As A1 read the historical educational arguments of key Christian right thinkers and policy actors, they sensed regularities in the discourse over time but struggled to articulate the network of relations convincingly.…”