Ideological parallels between the New Left and the New Right

Abstract

Antagonistic ideologies often exhibit parallels of thought and action. New Left and New Right ideologies, for example, both attack the bureaucratization of society and an inequality of social and political power. And both the New Left and the New Right call for an end to pervasive alienation and for the re-creation of a genuine community. These ideologies then show striking similarities in their critiques of American society and in their preferred states of affairs. Possible explanations of this parallelism—that the two ideologies are variants of extremism or that both movements emerge from the same class background—are examined and found wanting. Taking a cue from Seliger, I then suggest that this instance of ideological parallelism instead occurs because the New Left and the New Right both confront the basic social and political problems of an advanced industrial society.