The radical right and the coming of fascism to America

This much talked-about essay in The Federalist is precisely correct about the nature of Trumpism in particular and the right wing in America today in general. These movements are not “conservative” in any meaningful sense, because conservative politics have always been based on the idea that the status quo should be maintained, with perhaps some meliorist tweaking at the edges. By this definition, the conservatives in America today are Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the “liberal” wing of the SCOTUS, etc.

These people want to preserve a thorough-going capitalist economic order that tolerates fantastical levels of economic inequality, a modest welfare state, no-fault divorce, legal abortion, a criminal law regime that will not arrest drag queens or take children away from parents who teach their children that drag queens are basically harmless, etc.

In America in 2022 those are all fundamentally conservative positions. They represent the maintenance of a social status quo that is in most respects at least a half century old and in some respects much older (The New Deal is coming up fast on its 100th birthday).

The radical right in America today — a movement that is now in almost total control of one of our two major parties — is opposed to all this, root and branch. That’s why they’re radicals. Calling them “conservatives” is like calling someone who wants to abolish the franchise for women “conservative.” That’s a bizarre misnomer for people who are radical reactionaries.

Hence:

So what kind of politics should conservatives today, as inheritors of a failed movement, adopt? For starters, they should stop thinking of themselves as conservatives (much less as Republicans) and start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not. . .

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.

In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.

Conservatives had better be ready for it, and Republican politicians, if they want to stay in office, had better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions they would support. The answer is: none, for the same reason they would not support reasonable limits to restrictions on premeditated murder.

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

I don’t think it can be emphasized enough that, given the basic world view these people hold, the consequent belief that an authoritarian and/or fascist government should enforce radical reactionary laws prohibiting abortion, no-fault divorce, deviations from traditional gender norms, intellectual freedom in universities etc. is something that is in every way entailed by that world view. If God is giving you orders to stop genocide, whether cultural (“Western civilization”) or literal (“unborn babies”) then you must march, and you must kill your enemies if necessary.

And how ludicrous is it in such circumstances to care about democracy? If a bare majority of your fellow citizens (plus millions upon millions of illegal non-citizen voters; remember how these people think and what they believe) vote to kill tens of millions of babies and destroy the sanctity of marriage and kidnap homeless kids and foster children to force gender-reassignment surgeries on them, does that make those things OK?

Also, the Jews:

Get ready to fight. Vote, obviously, but “vote harder” is a pitifully inadequate response to radical reactionaries, because they don’t think your vote should count, and if it does count they will disregard it, because that’s what God wants.