IREHR in Daily Kos: “Study offers clearer picture of how extremism has seeped into halls of power, and it’s not good” – May 18, 2022

IREHR’s newest report, Breaching the Mainstream, was cited by Daily Kos;

Daily Kos staff writes, “the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights decided to get a clearer picture of the reach of extremist influences in official halls of power by examining how many elected officials participate in extremist Facebook groups. What it found was deeply troubling: 875 legislators in all 50 states, constituting nearly 22% of all elected GOP lawmakers, identified as participating members of extremist Facebook groups.”

Devin Burghart, IREHR’s President, was quoted by the Daily Kos;

“The ideas of the far right have moved pretty substantially into the mainstream. Not only as the basis for acts of violence but as the basis for public policy.” Said Burghart

“All of that stuff has been incubated in these networks,’’ Burghart said. “That rhetoric in this context becomes public policy quite quickly and those ideas not only move from the margins to the mainstream but now they’ve been codified into law in some places.”

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