The far right fabricates quotes because its preferred authorities rarely support its positions

Evidence

Professors Boller and George note this right-wing gift for distortion in their preface (p. x): “For some reason, American reactionaries have gone in more for quote-making than American radicals. This is possibly because the former feel more of a need for authoritative quotes than the latter. Radicals have plenty of quotations from Karl Marx, anyway, and probably see no need to add to the Marxist treasure-house. Extreme rightists in America have a real problem, in any case; they would like to cite the Founding Fathers, but rarely find what they want in Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. Hence the quote-faking.” — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4319

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the author’s authoritarian-follower model: right-wing authoritarians crave authoritative citations and will invent them when reality falls short.
• SEED: A framework for analyzing why fabricated quotations cluster on one side of the political spectrum — scarcity of usable authority in the canon itself.