Anti-, Neo-, Post-, and Proto-: Conservative Hybrids, Ironic Reversals, and Global Terror(ism)

Abstract

Conservatism has always been a reluctant ideology, more a pragmatic response to events than a coherent system of fundamental principles. The Newest Right, which has now emerged with renewed vigor in America, Europe, and beyond, is no exception. It continues to invoke powerful traditions and deeply rooted identities as the enduring foundations of social order and political authority. However, conservatives today also refuse to set limits on personal ambitions, economic programs, government activities, and even leverage their fundamental values. In America, the “War on Terror”— an undeclared war against an unknown enemy— has unleashed a global politics, indeed, a global crusade, that is redefining national borders and constitutional doctrines with astonishing speed. In this article, I draw on four prefixes—” anti,” “neo,” “post,” and “proto,”—to characterize the implications of this newest conservatism without limits for the continuing evolution of conservative ideology. I claim that the Newest Right has invoked an unprecedented concept of national community, a homeland whose borders they would secure by terror, now on a global scale. This new conservatism gone global, I argue, poses a greater threat to democracy than its presumed enemies ever could.

Notes

¹ Michael Freeden, Ideology, A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 87–90. Conservatives have long resisted the label “ideology,” a term they associate with radical philosophies and abstract principles, and preferred to describe conservatism as a “disposition,” “impulse,” or “persuasion”. See Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative” in Russell Kirk (ed.), The Portable Conservative Reader (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982), p. 569; Irving Kristol, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1999), p. ix. Some conservatives seek a middle ground. William Buckley presents conservative ideology as between “an attitude of mind” and “a series of all-fulfilling formulae,” and Samuel Huntington calls it a “nonideational ideology,” characterized by “articulate, systematic, theoretical resistance to change”. William F. Buckley Jr., “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” in William F. Buckley and Charles Kesler (eds), Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), pp. 22–32; and Samuel Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” American Political Science Review 51 (June 1957), p. 461.

² Milton Friedman resisted the label “conservatism” for this very reason, claiming that “the term conservatism has come to cover so wide a range of views, and views so incompatible with one another, that we shall no doubt see the growth of hyphenated designations, such as libertarian-conservative and aristocratic-conservative.” Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 6.

³ Manfred Steger makes an important distinction between current processes of globalization and the neoliberal ideology, “globalism,” which supports them. He regards the latter as “an impressive repackaging enterprise.” “Inspired by the liberal utopia of the ‘self-regulating market,’” contemporary neoliberals have “linked their quaint nineteenth-century ideals to fashionable ‘globalization talk.’” Steger, “Introduction: Rethinking the Ideological Dimensions of Globalization” in Manfred Steger (ed.) Rethinking Globalism, (New York: Roman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 5. Since neoliberalism is the focus of another article, I prioritize other characteristics of conservative ideology here.

⁴ Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 169–170.

^* My thanks to the editors and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments. An earlier and simplified discussion of some of this material appears in my Understanding Dogmas and Dreams: A Text, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006).

⁵ Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “What's Home Got to Do with It? (with Biddy Martin)” in Feminism Without Borders, Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 85–105.

⁶ Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, 3rd ed. (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1969), p. 9. Kirk's choice of Burke also emphasizes the Anglo-American origins of conservative ideology. To the extent possible, I will follow Kirk's lead and emphasize the responses of specific conservative thinkers to each of my opening questions.

⁸ Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, 3rd ed. (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1969), p. 9. Kirk's choice of Burke also emphasizes the Anglo-American origins of conservative ideology. To the extent possible, I will follow Kirk's lead and emphasize the responses of specific conservative thinkers to each of my opening questions, pp. 542–543.

⁷ Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot, 3rd ed. (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1969), p. 9. Kirk's choice of Burke also emphasizes the Anglo-American origins of conservative ideology. To the extent possible, I will follow Kirk's lead and emphasize the responses of specific conservative thinkers to each of my opening questions, p. 6.

⁹ James Burnham, “Communism: The Struggle for the World,” in Buckley and Kesler, op. cit., pp. 353–378.

¹⁰ Gerhart Niemeyer, “The Communist Mind,” in Buckley and Kesler, op. cit., p. 352.

¹¹ Whittaker Chambers, “The Direct Glance,” in Buckley and Kesler, op. cit., p. 430.

¹² Edward W. Said, “Origins of Terrorism,” in David Barsamian and Edward W. Said (eds), Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003), p. 110.

¹³ Edward W. Said, “Origins of Terrorism,” in David Barsamian and Edward W. Said (eds), Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003), p. 122.

¹⁴ President George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” September 20, 2001, available at: < www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html>.

¹⁵ Dinesh D'Souza, The Enemy at Home, The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

¹⁶ Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993), p. 49.

¹⁷ Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993), p. 41.

¹⁹ D'Souza, op. cit, p. 276.

¹⁸ D'Souza, op. cit., p. 274.

²⁰ For example, William J. Bennett sees 9/11 as “a moment of moral clarity—a moment when we began to rediscover ourselves as one people even as we began to gird for battle with a not yet fully defined foe.” Bennett, Why We Fight, Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (New York: Doubleday, 2002), p. 22. He thinks America needed such a moment because we had become “one nation, two cultures” and abandoned our patriotic loyalties, religious convictions, and moral traditions for the Left. Ann Coulter makes the point more sharply: “Whether they are rooting for the atheistic regimes of Stalin and Mao, satanic suicide bombers and terrorists, or the Central Park rapists, liberals always take the side of savages against civilization.” Coulter, Treason, Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Crown Forum, 2003), p. 285. According to Coulter, the Left promotes the moral bankruptcy of “Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and communists. They instinctively root for anarchy and against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason” (p. 292).

²¹ Said, op. cit., p. 116.

²² According to Rebecca Klatch, “the untold story of the 1960s is about the New Right,” whose history coincides in striking ways with the New Left. Klatch, A Generation Divided, The New Left, The New Right, and the 1960's (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 1.

²³ Irving Kristol, “What Is a Neo-Conservative?,” Newsweek, January 18, 1976, p. 17.

²⁴ Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, op. cit., p. 37.

²⁵ Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, op. cit, p. 40.

²⁶ Irving Kristol, “The NeoConservative Persuasion: What it Was, and What it Is,” Weekly Standard, 8:47, (August 25, 2003), p. 25.

²⁷ Irving Kristol, “The NeoConservative Persuasion: What it Was, and What it Is,” Weekly Standard, August 2003, p. 23.

³⁰ Norton, op. cit., pp. 169–179.

²⁷ Irving Kristol, “The NeoConservative Persuasion: What it Was, and What it Is,” Weekly Standard, August 2003, p. 25.

²⁹ Michael Parenti, Superpatriotism (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2004).

³¹ Kristol, “What Is a Neo-Conservative?” op. cit., p. 17.

³² Susan Faludi, Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999), p. 35.

³³ Susan Faludi, Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999), p. 604.

³⁴ Susan Faludi, Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999), p. 607.

³⁵ Susan Faludi, Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1999)

³⁶ Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism, Principles for a Multiracial Society (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 537.

³⁷ Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994).

³⁸ Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 479.

³⁹ Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 509.

⁴⁰ Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 535.

⁴¹ D'Souza, The End of Racism, op. cit., p. 527.

⁴² Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: The Free Press, 1994), p. 24.

⁴³ Hernstein and Murray, op. cit., p. 15.

⁴⁴ D'Souza, The End of Racism, op. cit., p. 551.

⁴⁵ D'Souza, The End of Racism, op. cit, p. 556.

⁴⁶ Mansbridge and Shames offer a non-ideological definition of “backlash” as “the use of coercive power to regain lost power as capacity.” This“power as capacity” was often “naturalized” as the exclusive and exclusionary rights of a once dominant group. Social movements, they argue, tend to provoke “backlash” when they move too far, too fast or neglect deep-seated concerns of their opponents and the general public. Non-ideological and colloquial forms of “backlash” often converge, for example, “the reaction of the Right to the feminist movement undoubtedly included not only a response with coercive power to loss of capacity but also a simple conviction that the feminist movement was wrong.” Jane Mansbridge and Shauna L. Shames, “Toward a Theory of Backlash: Dynamic Resistance and the Central Role of Power,” Politics & Gender 4:4 (December 2008), pp. 624, 627.

⁴⁷ Manning Marable, “9/11, Racism in a Time of Terror,” in Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney (eds), Implicating Empire, Globalization & Resistance in the 21st Century World Order (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 11.

⁴⁸ Manning Marable, “9/11, Racism in a Time of Terror,” in Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney (eds), Implicating Empire, Globalization & Resistance in the 21st Century World Order (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 14.

⁴⁹ Quoted in Manning Marable, “9/11, Racism in a Time of Terror,” in Stanley Aronowitz and Heather Gautney (eds), Implicating Empire, Globalization & Resistance in the 21st Century World Order (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 14.

⁵⁰ Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Inc., Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). For other discussions of contemporary conservatism as proto-fascist politics, see: Henry A. Giroux, The Terror of Neo-Liberalism, Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004); Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America (New York: M. Evans, 1980); Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens (New York: Routledge, 2000); Norton, op. cit.; Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004); and Arundhati Roy, War Talk (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003).

⁵¹ Wolin, op. cit., p. x.

⁵⁴ Bush, op. cit.

⁵² For discussions of these trends, see: Hans-Georg Betz, “The Growing Threat of the Radical Right” and Piero Ignazi, “The Development of the Extreme Right at the End of the Century” in Peter H. Markl and Leonard Weinberg (eds), Right-Wing Extremism in the Twenty-First Century (London: Frank Cass Publisher, 2003), pp. 74-93, 143-158. More specifically, the number of active hate groups in the United States rose to 888 in 2007, up 5% from 844 in 2006 and an increase of 48% since 2000. Hate crimes linked to xenophobia also increased, including a 35% rise in crimes against Latinos, who are often perceived as immigrants (Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Year in Hate: Active U.S. Hate Groups Rise to 888 in 2007,” Intelligence Report (Spring). At < http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article>.

⁵³ Martin A. Lee argues that right-wing extremists may actually deflect attention from “a more insidious and far-reaching danger. Radical right-wing populist movements with openly fascist roots have made significant inroads into mainstream politics and are now a serious force to be reckoned with in several countries around the world.” Lee, op. cit., p. xix. For a discussion of this political history, see: Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1991).

⁵⁵ Giroux, op. cit., pp. 19–20.

⁵⁶ Patricia Hill Collins, “It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation,” Hypatia, A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 13:3 (1998), p. 69.

⁵⁷ Mohanty, op. cit., pp. 98–99.

⁵⁸ Angela Y. Davis, “Rape, Racism, and the Myth of the Black Rapist” in Angela Y. Davis (ed.), Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1983), pp. 172–201.

⁵⁹ Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood, The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 70.

⁶⁰ Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 189–191. Also, see my “Privileged Intersections: The Race, Class, and Gender Politics of ‘Prussian Blue,’” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Vancouver, March 2009.

⁶¹ Timothy G., Baysinger, “Right-wing Group Characteristics and Ideology,” Homeland Security Affairs (2006). Available at: < http://www.hsaj.org>.

⁶² Mohanty, op. cit., p. 91.

⁶³ Roy, op. cit., p. 112.

⁶⁴ Roy, op. cit, p. 73.

⁶⁵ At this juncture, one might reasonably ask whether the Newest Right has strayed so far from conservative principles that it is no longer recognizably conservative and, hence, requires a new label. To simply call the politics of the Newest Right “fascistic,” however, is to neglect similarly significant transformations of fascist ideology. It also absolves conservatives of any responsibility for their self-proclaimed moral and religious commitments.

⁶⁶ Anti-Defamation League, “White Supremacists Vent Rage Over Obama's Win, Obama Election a Tragedy for America,” November 8, 2008. Available at: < http://www.adl.org>.

⁶⁷ Anti-Defamation League, “White Supremacists Vent Rage Over Obama's Win, Obama Election a Tragedy for America,” November 8, 2008. Available at: < http://www.adl.org>

⁶⁸ Kirk, op. cit., p. 539.

⁶⁹ Bernice Johnson Reagon, “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” in Barbara Smith (ed.), Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Lanthan, NY: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983), p. 357.

⁷⁰ Fred R. Dallmayr, “Globalization: Curse or Promise?” in Fred R. Dallmayr (ed.), Achieving Our World: Toward a Global and Plural Democracy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), p. 27.

⁷¹ Fred R. Dallmayr, “Globalization: Curse or Promise?” in Fred R. Dallmayr (ed.), Achieving Our World: Toward a Global and Plural Democracy (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), pp. 29–30.

⁷⁴ Judith McDaniel, Sanctuary, A Journey (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1987), p. 147.

⁷² Manfred Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

⁷³ Mohanty offers the following suggestion: “Our minds must be as ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations.” Mohanty, op.cit, p. 251. I am also indebted to ongoing conversations with Sushmita Chatterjee regarding conceptions of a mobile imaginary.