The New Right began in 1964. It has never since then been right about anything at all, and it has never accomplished anything that was not harmful to the nation -- least of all the Reagan Administration. Tear Down This Myth! What started as anticommunism morphed into the Tea Party and Trumpism -- which is a form of fascism, and even Communism is always to be preferred to that.
Mike Lofgren writes:
I am referring to extreme right-wing or fascist ideology, which for all its local varieties has a common core of beliefs or, more accurately, attitudes and poses. In the multiparty systems of Europe, it is usually represented by recently created parties to the right of traditional conservative parties. In the U.S. two-party system, it has swallowed one of the two existing parties, usurping the role of conservatism and exploiting traditional party loyalties.
Thus it is, in the United States at least, whether through merger or hostile takeover, that there is now no meaningful distinction between conservative, far-right and fascist; they are also identified with the Republican Party. I shall use all these terms interchangeably, because they have become synonymous.
Some former followers of the movement (often in organizations like the Lincoln Project) claim that that the current dogmas of the GOP are a betrayal of “true” conservatism. This is a fundamental error: Ideologies are not platonic essences, existing unchanged beyond time and space. Like the biological process of life, they evolve according to need, opportunity and contingency. Conservatism coevolved with the opportunism of its leaders and the character of the American people who voted for its politicians.
Nevertheless, American conservatism would not have become what it is now (authoritarianism or fascism or Trumpism, or however political scientists choose to describe it) unless it was capable of developing in that direction, unless it already contained the seed of its present form in its ideological DNA. And unless it had a receptive audience.
Mike Lofgren writes:
I am referring to extreme right-wing or fascist ideology, which for all its local varieties has a common core of beliefs or, more accurately, attitudes and poses. In the multiparty systems of Europe, it is usually represented by recently created parties to the right of traditional conservative parties. In the U.S. two-party system, it has swallowed one of the two existing parties, usurping the role of conservatism and exploiting traditional party loyalties.
Thus it is, in the United States at least, whether through merger or hostile takeover, that there is now no meaningful distinction between conservative, far-right and fascist; they are also identified with the Republican Party. I shall use all these terms interchangeably, because they have become synonymous.
Some former followers of the movement (often in organizations like the Lincoln Project) claim that that the current dogmas of the GOP are a betrayal of “true” conservatism. This is a fundamental error: Ideologies are not platonic essences, existing unchanged beyond time and space. Like the biological process of life, they evolve according to need, opportunity and contingency. Conservatism coevolved with the opportunism of its leaders and the character of the American people who voted for its politicians.
Nevertheless, American conservatism would not have become what it is now (authoritarianism or fascism or Trumpism, or however political scientists choose to describe it) unless it was capable of developing in that direction, unless it already contained the seed of its present form in its ideological DNA. And unless it had a receptive audience.
