> Tellingly, in the midst of the Tea Party rebellion a decade ago, Newt Gingrich quoted The Plague while on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The former speaker of the House tried to co-opt Camus into his denunciation of “Obamacare” as the mark of a tyrannical, secular, leftist government. Camus was, in fact, a European social democrat who backed universal health care and was deeply skeptical of organized religion. Such disinformation—a prelude to the rise of Trumpism—was precisely among the pitfalls of ideologies that revolted Camus.
I've seen this kind of thinking before, with Orwell, and I don't understand it. The quotes and ideas of these people are not some kind of intellectual property that the left collectively inherited and that the right isn't allowed to use.
EDIT: Quoting people is about giving them credit, and pointing your readers and listeners to further material, not about implying that they would have agreed with you.
I've seen this kind of thinking before, with Orwell, and I don't understand it. The quotes and ideas of these people are not some kind of intellectual property that the left collectively inherited and that the right isn't allowed to use.
EDIT: Quoting people is about giving them credit, and pointing your readers and listeners to further material, not about implying that they would have agreed with you.