The New Right: its hour come round at last.
And now, to relate what has replaced the Old Conservatism. (updated 8/9/21)
This raw, screaming rage was the essence of Trump rallies during his prime. Their Leader never had anything positive to say about anyone besides himself, the occasional pro forma congressional endorsement aside; he just had petty insults for Democrats, journalists, and even Republicans whom he deemed insufficiently submissive. His negativity was more than matched by his base who needed little encouragement to shout furious slogans and curses at immigrants, the media, or liberals. The former president did not come offering morning in America; he spent each rally shouting that this was America in a terrible, abysmal midnight.
Outside another rally, we see this specimen with one of MAGA’s favorite slogans. (They took Ben Shapiro’s motto “facts don’t care about your feelings” and Trumpified it further.) Note that they only mean fuck *your* feelings, not their own, which are quite sensitive to the idea of minorities moving into their neighborhood, thank you very much.
It is impossible to exaggerate how much hatred of liberals — meaning hatred of the people who vote Democratic, not just their politicians or their policies — serves as the foundation for everything else in the New Right. Even the cult of personality surrounding Trump is fed by this animus towards ordinary people who supported Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. Any time a culture warrior or politician of the New Right might feel shock or horror at the latest Trumpian violation of common decency, their fanatical hatred of the Left will soon allow them to make yet another excuse.
Benny Johnson was once a popular writer for the liberal site Buzzfeed before getting fired for plagiarism. Rather than try to reform himself ethically, Johnson soon discovered that the world of the New Right did not bother itself with such irrelevancies as “ethics.” He quickly refashioned himself along the lines of Charlie Kirk but with better memes, where owning libs is everything, and principles, including conservative principles, are nothing. He is now a leading print “journalist,” to stretch that word to its breaking point, of MAGA media. This is not exactly the era of Bill Safire or Whittaker Chambers.
You didn’t think we could get through this without a Tucker still, did you? While the talking heads of FoxNews (and its print imitators such as The Federalist, including this contributor here) try to outdo one another in lib-owning and undermining the democracy, none have quite the knack for it as Tucker Carlson. It bears passing mention that Tucker, like his guest here, once considered himself a stalwart defender of democracy and the old conservatism of Reagan before sensing a change in the wind.
I would say that this is all you need to know about the latter-day Religious Right, but this is not quite complete.
Ok, there we go. This demonic-looking fellow and one of his private jets give us the complete picture of today’s evangelical leader. Or wait. Does he? I feel like there’s still something missing.
Ah, now we’re done. I’ll have to use some unpleasant terms to caption this, so forgive me; but it is impossible to describe the evangelical church of 2021 without coarse language. An evangelical leader, on the left, had his pool boy, on the right, bang the leader’s wife, who’s in the middle, while said evangelical leader watched, and jerked off. While the scandal did temporarily diminish Jerry Falwell Jr.’s influence, he is still broadly popular and is correctly seen as remaining one of the most important voices in the evangelical church and, informally for now, Liberty University. I expect him to seize back control of his erstwhile property within the next few years.
Some people really do look exactly like who they are. This is the greasy, servile nonentity who conspired with Donald Trump to stab his more statesman-like (and statesman-like-appearing; see previous entry) boss in the back to steal his job in return for working to make Trump a dictator. Just look at his slovenly, disgusting appearance — that is exactly who this little toady is.
Here’s another example. Just look at those porcine, darting eyes; a person exactly as ugly as his message. Replace “leftists” with “Muslims” or “Blacks” and you get an idea of how rancid people like this are. His crude painting of the evil Left would be a joke if this opinion weren’t so widespread. The point, of course, is that he wants Fox News viewers to hate liberals — all liberal Americans, not just the politicians — just as much as they supposedly hate them. (Hate politicians as much as you want, but most regular people will never be as awful as Fox News wishes they were.) He finished his segment by praising the regime of a dictator named Viktor Orbán.
Hungary these days is an absolute dictatorship ruled with an iron fist by Viktor Orbán, who has emerged as the New Right’s next ideological hero; they seem to be at least partially moving on from Trump. Your average Hungarian citizen no longer has freedom of expression or a meaningful vote. Hungary’s economy is mired in corruption and graft because Orbán skims a sizeable chunk of transactions for himself and his most loyal cronies. All of this is an acceptable price for the New Right because liberalism has effectively been outlawed in Hungary; LGBT people are increasingly criminalized; and, well, he just makes the leftists angry. That and obedience to an all-powerful Leader are all that really matters at the end of the day to MAGA.
This series would not be complete without an image from the Jan. 6, 2021 failed coup attempt. (It came apart largely from lack of direction — their Leader enjoys getting people to do his dirty work for him while he sits comfortably at home, maintaining plausible deniability, and it was no different here.) While the images of violence within the Capitol building are striking, it is really this noose that most powerfully conveys the mindset of the New Right. Among the intended victims these people had marked for murder was Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence.
The terms “New Right” and “old conservatism” aren’t quite accurate as both have been around for some time. MAGA is the “new right” only in the sense that this is the first time that America’s long-standing fascist subculture has gained total ascendancy over their more traditional cousins. Here, we see one of their forebears, Sen. Joe McCarthy, enjoying his latest owning of the libs.
This billboard came courtesy of the John Birch Society, whose only difference with today’s Claremont Institute was that for the JBS, their time had not yet come. While conservative politicians up through Romney had to sometimes dog-whistle to this kind of voter, they never had to regard them as the mainline Republican base until 2016. Note: “New Right” is not a synonym for white supremacist, KKK, or alt-right. While racism is baked deep within the movement, they would never call MLK a “n***er” the way the alt-right would. They don’t want minorities massacred. They just want minorities living far, far away from them.
MAGA’s ancestors from the 1930s, similarly, would never chant “Heil Hitler.” They just had questions on why America had to get mixed up in another European war where both sides had valid points. Father Coughlin was another example why, then and now, American fascism is not the Klan, who would never accept a Catholic into their movement no matter what they said. Right-wing Catholicism remains a vital component of the New Right.
Finally, let’s end with this cover image from one of the most comprehensive blueprints for the fascism of the New Right of recent memory. Rather than the usual limp-wristed euphemisms and anti-anti-Trumpism (attacking the libs while not saying a word in defense of fascism), the writer lays out why a fascist state is necessary and why it’s all the libs’ fault. It’s all here: a fervent will to dismantle democracy; strip the citizenship from anyone who did not vote for Trump; the dreams for violent revolution (sometimes called “counter-revolution” or “refounding.”) It’s the most explicit rejection of the Old Conservatism I’ve seen from the right, arguing that the movement that stared down the Soviet Union is somehow too soft to deal with lefty academics and BLM. The “old America” is already gone, so a new one must be created.
While the writer appreciates Trump, he allows himself to touch on Trump’s various failings and conclude that he was not the true Leader his movement requires — which partly explains MAGA’s new fascination with Orbán; see above. Furthermore, he states no such figure has emerged stateside — tacitly acknowledging that one of the two historical requirements for fascism, alongside hatred of the Other, is an iron-willed male dictator.
I agree that no such strongman has emerged, yet. No regular politician like Kevin McCarthy, Mike Pence, or even Ted Cruz could thrill the masses and command the base. On the other hand, Trump was too addled, too undisciplined, and too self-obsessed to effectively lead, or crush liberal democracy — his defeat by old man Joe Biden is all the proof we need.
Who could finish off the Republic, then? We may dismiss out of hand pols like Pence, who are still too invested in democracy (i.e. what the base would call “weak”) even if they do win the presidency. We may also immediately disqualify women, as the male-dominated base would. Who does that leave? The two most prominent candidates I see in 2021 are Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson. DeSantis’ problem, though, is that he is too genteel, too subtle, even if he is fully committed to the ideals of the New Right — the base doesn’t want someone to slip a knife into democracy’s back; they want someone to bash its face in with a tire iron. And Tucker’s schtick of being even nastier than Trump will scare away swing-state suburban voters.
That is, unless said swing states had their votes fixed in advance. We are now approaching the endgame, where the GOP in states such as Georgia and Arizona are working to abolish fair elections and ensure their state goes to the correct candidate from here on out. Review the above for a taste of what they want to turn America into. Is this what we want?
