Why the Study of the Right is Broken, Part II

For most of its collective existence, the study of the right in the US has suffered from an anxious, constricted set of categories and epistemological assumptions about who exactly the conservative is. Terms such as “radical right,” “Christian Right,” and “Extreme Right” provide a less than ideal set of options for describing the nature of conservative politics-making since 1945. Like the concept of “antifundamentalism,” one which describes the fundamentalist subject as always and forever regressive and lacking in modern sensibilities, the study of the American right tends to reproduce the same historical subjects by placing them within the same analytical frameworks borne out of the Cold War. This has resulted in diverse subjects being placed within a finite number of descriptive boxes suited to the chosen methodology of study: history and American sociology respectively. Once placed alongside the likes of Hall and Rogin, however, one is able to see how the standard approaches of Hofstader and Bell have been an overdetermined choice in the historiography of the right since America’s mid-century. Hall’s approach to the right assumes social totality as its primary subject matter as it relates to the “swing to the right” that unfolded across America and Great Britain during his lifetime. This meant that Hall understood the right as a fellow inhabitant of the conjuncture rather than its antithetical other. It also meant that the right ascended less because of its reactive nature, and more because of its ability to redefine common sense according to the newly emergent neoliberal logics coming into form in Thatcher’s Britain, and Reagan’s America. For Hall, the right was a dynamic subject worthy of his ruthless attention. For Hofstadter and Bell, the conservative subject defined the pale of acceptability, or lack thereof.

This is what I meant earlier by an analytical disposition when it comes to the right and its academic study. A particular methodological commitment is called for, one that may seem counterintuitive at first, but is absolutely necessary when it comes to the academic study of the right. “What I am extremely dubious of,” Hall observed, “is the attempt, especially in the moment of disillusionment (it’s a moment that Adorno faces; it’s a moment that the left has faced again and again), to avoid the troublesome problem of actually engaging with the analysis of a really contradictory field, of intervening in a real field of struggle, by simply assigning the people whom you hope to rescue permanently to one or the other of the poles.” In other words, in the most calamitous of moments, analysts tend to reduce their otherwise complex analytical models to fit their specific moments of catastrophe. This is why, in many cases, a singular word, oftentimes representative of a vast and intricate scholarly conversation, is usually assigned to a variety of conservative subjects and behaviors in hopes of capturing the rationale for their otherwise unexplainable actions in the public square. The “fascism debate,” or the discourse surrounding the concept of Christian Nationalism, are good examples of such moments in time in which complexity and appreciation for the conjuncture recede from view in favor of the hard-hitting op-ed and network tv news primetime spot.

The study of the right has not always been driven by the notoriety of its subject. In 2011, historian Kim Phillips-Fein composed the most comprehensive overview of the scholarly study of the right to date. No one has written anything close in range or in scope to date. While Phillps-Fein acknowledged the relative lack of attention to subjects of ill regard in her study of American conservatism, the “whack jobs” as many still say today, her most insightful suggestion concerned the rationale for the study of conservatism itself. “The challenge for scholars of conservatism today is no longer to revive historical interest in the Right or to convince others of its importance,” Phillips-Fein contended. “Rather, the real project is to see conservatism with a new perspective–to understand its tenacity through the liberal years, its longstanding relationship to the state and to economic elites, and how its history is intertwined with that of liberalism.” I would also add to Phillips-Fein’s account the conservative deployment of mass media, and the ways in which conservatives have overthrown the common sense of New Deal liberalism in favor of more neoliberal options found in the gospel of Reagan, or in the society-less vision of someone like Margaret Thatcher. This is part of the reason why the conservative subject has drawn so much attention since its moment of inception during the Cold War. Conservatives reflected the reactionary tendencies of their intellectual surveyors- especially in the writings of Bell and Hofstader. Not to be confused with the mindless automatons, or “radical rightists” of their time, rank and file conservatives did not necessarily reflect such hyperbolic tendencies. They certainly responded negatively to direct mail campaigns sent to their homes composed by expert conservative marketers, but they also didn’t necessarily threaten the foundations of democracy, either. It may have seemed that way from within a liberalism set against itself, but from the outside it was anything but. For Phillips-Fein, the way forward was relatively straightforward. “In a way, what we need now is the distance to think anew about the nature of conservative power in the twentieth century. This is the act that requires the real leap of historical imagination today.”

One of the most significant insights from Liberalism Against Itself is the realization that such ways of thinking were ultimately a choice. It may not have felt like one at the time because the pressure to respond to perceived existential threats seemed to be of the utmost of importance not only for the profession, but also for democracy itself. This included “radical” and “extremist” subjects such as “the radical right,” and “the radical left,” which threatened to undo the postwar consensus that helped make sense of American life. The degree to which this typological impulse continues to define and shape the study of the right is one of the many reasons why it seems to focus on the same types of historical subjects regardless of time and place. Since 2016, scholars have done their best to explain the rise of Donald Trump and his particular brand of politics. Stories about his evangelical supporters continue to fill the front pages, and his less than predictable behavior continues to make for entertaining television spots for academic talking heads and pundits. The power that conservatism wielded in the 20th century, however, was not only forged through the segregationist actions of suburbanites and the petite-bourgeoisie, but also in and through the direct mail empire of the likes of Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich. Conservatism has become a hegemonic force in American public life not simply because of the legacy of Reconstruction, or because of the subterfuge of the John Birch Society. Not unlike Thatcher’s England, conservatism became the predominant mode of thought in our times, and in this country, because it ripped up common sense by the roots and then provided the American people with a different vision of their mutual self-interest. Understanding this process over the past half century takes additional frames of analysis beyond those forged by Cold War liberals, which as Moyn and Rogin and others have argued, were overly dependent on status and anxiety for their explanatory power. Reading across the pond, as it were, allows us to see the parochial characteristics of the American study of right wing politics.

At the very least, the categories developed by Hofstader and Bell all those years ago compared to those of Hall and others were appropriate for their time. The Cold War fostered a particular intellectual disposition that reflected its divided nature. This resulted in an equally divided typology informed by an even more divided series of observations about why conservative actors behave in less than glowing terms. To Hall, the case was anything but straightforward, or so reductive in nature. Not unlike other scholars, Hall argued that the right found both discursive and material traction by way of its unique brand of populism, but it did so in a way that differed from American analysts. “This populism is operating on genuine contradictions, it has a rational and material core,” Hall insisted. “Its success does not lie in its capacity to dupe unsuspecting folk but in the way it addresses real problems, real and lived experiences, real contradictions…it works on the ground of already constituted social practices and lived ideologies.” “What makes these representations popular,” Hall concludes, “is that they have a purchase on practice, they shape it, they are written into its materiality.” This means that instead of assuming deprivation as standard practice when it comes to the study of the right, we should instead assume a level of complexity that reflects any other subject of the public square. It also reminds us that the right’s ascendance has come to a great degree at the expense of our understanding of it.

Each and every morning, I head up the New Jersey Parkway in order to begin my commute to school. The parkway runs through the state in such a way that those who live in it refer to their respective homes in the form of exits. Some may live off of Exit 114, for example, while others may live at the end of the Parkway at Exit 0. This means that on any given commute to work, or from work, I’m able to see a great deal of traffic and the ways in which such traffic lets those behind it know what they think of the current state of America, and its less than rosy future. The particular section of the Parkway I drive on is included within Ocean and Monmouth County, New Jersey- two of the more conservative counties in the state. Since 2016, I have noticed a largely unseen and thus unacknowledged revolution in ideas when it comes to bumper stickers and their respective political messages. I’ve also noticed more pickup trucks that are impossible to see into regardless of the vantage, but that’s another story for another time. The infamous Punisher sticker has appeared in more ways than one can count. Some sport Trump’s unmistakable hair flip (called “the Hair Skull”), while others blend defending the blue line with the Punisher’s relentless and bloodthirsty pursuit for revenge. A simple search on Amazon for “Trump Punisher” reveals an endless array of shirts, flags, and bumper stickers featuring Trump as the aforementioned Punisher taking his revenge against his various enemies. In the most recent of times, Spartan helmets, as well as “We the People,” have started to emerge in bumper sticker form as the predominant markers of conservative identity in 2024.

Perhaps most striking about such means of messaging and mobilization are the ways in which they appropriate liberal and progressive talking points as a way of undercutting them in the eyes of the public. While most stickers may be intended for fellow conservatives, they are just as often consumed by those who disagree with such conservative talking points- sometimes even vehemently so. This has been part and parcel of conservative organizing since the 1970s- to get the people riled up over the latest direct mail campaign. This time around, however, it’s been liberals who have lost their collective cool in the face of yet another threat to the democratic order as we know it. For example, not too long ago, the letters BLM stood for an undisputed reality. Namely, that social justice was on the horizon, and that the last may indeed become the first. Since then, the movement has been witnessed, interpreted, and described back to those unwilling to acknowledge anything positive about the events that took place that summer. As such, nestled among the Punisher stickers and references to the nation’s founding principles, read the following: “BLM: Bang Local MILFS.” While utterly repulsive, such reappropriations tell us much about where American conservatism is, and what everyday Americans may be thinking about what’s transpired in the not so distant past. Instead of focusing myopically on the radical few, why not pay more attention to the materiality of the everyday? To the ways in which conservative actors construct their assumptions, and where they look for verification. If our scholarly gazes cannot adjust to these more daily subjects and their routines, then I fear we will continue making our subjects into the bogeymen they’ve always been to our collective detriment.