Michelle Goldberg discusses Anne Applebaum’s book, “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,”in which the author ponders what happened to former anti-Communist friends Applebaum once thought were “dedicated not just to representative democracy, but to religious tolerance, independent judiciaries, free press and speech, economic integration, international institutions, the trans-Atlantic alliance and a political idea of ‘the West.’”
What happened to the old right? Goldberg opines:
Like Applebaum, I’m astonished to see erstwhile Cold Warriors abase themselves before Vladimir Putin. But I think she’s working from a mistaken premise about what once constituted conservatism. Liberal democracy per se was never the animating passion of the trans-Atlantic right — anti-Communism was. When the threat of Communist expansion disappeared, so did most of the right’s commitment to a set of values that, it’s now evident, were purely instrumental.
As I keep saying (and they keep proving), the right’s commitment to those ideals was always a mile wide and an inch deep. Despite the fact that there are still some true believers in laissez-faire economics, small government, etc., for others those were simply an intellectual dust jacket hiding the pulp fiction underneath. Donald Trump tore up the jacket.
In Corey Robin’s 2011 “The Reactionary Mind,” Goldberg notes, he asserted conservatism’s true purpose was to “make privilege popular, to transform a tottering old regime into a dynamic, ideologically coherent movement of the masses.” Or, as I believe, they are at heart still committed to a system of rule by hereditary royalty and landed gentry.
The right fighting for its survival today is heir to the faction of American colonists who held that view up to and beyond the signing of the Treaty of Paris. All men (persons, these days) are created equal and government of, by, and for the people sound lofty and play well on TV. But the right does not actually believe that stuff. Men of the late 18th-century South certainly did not. No matter what high-minded documents to which they affixed their names and pledged their “sacred” honor.
There is “no mystery in the right’s surrender to authoritarianism,” Goldberg concludes, “because for many of the people Applebaum describes, it wasn’t a surrender at all. It was a liberation.”
With Communism all but a relic, and with breeding, browning masses and long-suppressed minorities asserting claims to equality and their fair share of power promised in our founding documents, American royalists are returning to their authoritarian roots.
Strip away all of the right’s ideological and sociological overlay. Strip away the trappings of state and theological pretensions. What is left is commitment to power and raw, animal dominance. (See: Mitch McConnell.) The Constitution, democracy, and rule-of-law are all disposable if they won’t deliver the rule they believe is their birthright. The LGBTQ community is not the only group now out of the closet.
For Ralph Reed and his evangelical coalition (above), the First Amendment is a gauzy formality as well. People of other faiths are welcome in America only so long as they are not too numerous and know their place. Christian prayer before football games and monuments to Confederate heroes remind the disfavored just who is in charge, lest they forget.
Trumpism, white grievance, and resurgent authoritarianism are not about high-minded values or ideas. They are about power: who has it, who does not, and who is unwilling to share.
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Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.