Paleoconservatism

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Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and strain of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, traditionalist conservatism, and non-interventionism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s [1] as well as with paleolibertarianism [2] [3] and right-wing populism. [4] By the start of the 21st century, the movement had begun to focus more on issues of race. [5]

Contents

The terms neoconservative and paleoconservative were coined following the outbreak of the Vietnam War and a divide in American conservatism between the interventionists and the isolationists. Those in favor of the Vietnam War then became known as the neoconservatives (interventionists), as they marked a decisive split from the nationalist-isolationism that the traditionalist conservatives (isolationists) had subscribed to up until this point. [6] [7] [8] Paleoconservatives press for restrictions on immigration, a rollback of multicultural programs and large-scale demographic change, the decentralization of federal policy, the restoration of controls upon free trade, a greater emphasis upon economic nationalism and non-interventionism in the conduct of American foreign policy. [9] Historian George Hawley states that although influenced by paleoconservatism, Donald Trump is not a paleoconservative, but rather a right-wing nationalist and populist. [10] Hawley also argued in 2017 that paleoconservatism was an exhausted force in American politics, [11] but that for a time it represented the most serious right-wing threat to the mainstream conservative movement. [11] Regardless of how Trump himself is categorized, others regard the movement known as Trumpism as supported by, [12] if not a rebranding of, paleoconservatism. From this view, the followers of the old right did not fade away so easily and continue to have significant influence in the Republican Party and the entire country. [13]

Terminology

The prefix paleo derives from the Greek root παλαιός (palaiós), meaning "ancient" or "old". It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and refers to the paleoconservatives' claim to represent a more historic, authentic conservative tradition than that found in neoconservatism. Adherents of paleoconservatism often describe themselves simply as "paleo". Rich Lowry of National Review claims the prefix "is designed to obscure the fact that it is a recent ideological creation of post-Cold War politics". [14]

Samuel T. Francis, Thomas Fleming, and some other paleoconservatives de-emphasized the conservative part of the paleoconservative label, saying that they do not want the status quo preserved. [15] [16] Fleming and Paul Gottfried called such thinking "stupid tenacity" and described it as "a series of trenches dug in defense of last year's revolution". [17] Francis defined authentic conservatism as "the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions". [18] [19]

Ideology

Paleoconservatives support restrictions on immigration, decentralization, trade tariffs and protectionism, economic nationalism, isolationism, and a return to traditional conservative ideals relating to gender, race, sexuality, culture, and society. [20]

Paleoconservatism differs from neoconservatism in opposing free trade and promoting republicanism. Paleoconservatives see neoconservatives as imperialists and themselves as defenders of the republic. [21] [22]

Paleoconservatives tend to oppose abortion, gay marriage, and LGBTQ rights. [20] [23]

Human nature, tradition, and reason

Paleoconservatives believe that tradition is a form of reason, rather than a competing force. Mel Bradford wrote that certain questions are settled before any serious deliberation concerning a preferred course of conduct may begin. This ethic is based in a "culture of families, linked by friendship, common enemies, and common projects", [24] so a good conservative keeps "a clear sense of what Southern grandmothers have always meant in admonishing children, 'we don't do that'". [25]

Pat Buchanan argues that a good politician must "defend the moral order rooted in the Old and New Testament and Natural Law"—and that "the deepest problems in our society are not economic or political, but moral". [26]

Southern traditionalism

According to historian Paul V. Murphy, paleoconservatives developed a focus on localism and states' rights. From the mid-1980s onward, Chronicles promoted a Southern traditionalist worldview focused on national identity, regional particularity, and skepticism of abstract theory and centralized power. [27] According to Hague, Beirich, and Sebesta (2009), the antimodernism of the paleoconservative movement defined the neo-Confederate movement of the 1980s and 1990s. During this time, notable paleoconservatives argued that desegregation, welfare, tolerance of gay rights, and church-state separation had been damaging to local communities, and that these issues had been imposed by federal legislation and think tanks. Paleoconservatives also claimed the Southern Agrarians as forebears in this regard. [28]

Opposition to Israel

Paleoconservatives are generally strong opponents of Israel and supporters of the Arabist cause in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; they have argued that supporting the country damages foreign relations with the Islamic world and American interests abroad. [29] Buchanan has asserted that "Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory". Kirk argued that "Not seldom has it seemed... as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States". [30] During the 2023 Israeli-Hamas War, paleoconservative Tucker Carlson argued Israel was guilty of war crimes, and that President Joe Biden's support of the country risked American complicitness in the actions. [31]

Notable people

Philosophers and scholars

Commentators and columnists

Notable organizations and outlets

Organizations

Periodicals and websites

See also

Related Research Articles

Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1960s during the Vietnam War among foreign policy hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and counterculture of the 1960s. Neoconservatives typically advocate the unilateral promotion of democracy and interventionism in international affairs, grounded in a militaristic and realist philosophy of "peace through strength." They are known for espousing opposition to communism and political radicalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Gottfried</span> American political philosopher (born 1941)

Paul Edward Gottfried is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He is an associated scholar at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and the US correspondent of Nouvelle École, a Nouvelle Droite journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lew Rockwell</span> American libertarian author, editor, and political consultant (born 1944)

Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell Jr. is an American author, editor, and political consultant. A libertarian and a self-professed anarcho-capitalist, he founded and is the chairman of the Mises Institute, a non-profit promoting the Austrian School of economics.

Paleolibertarianism is a libertarian political activism strategy aimed at uniting libertarians and paleoconservatives. It was developed by American anarcho-capitalist theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell in the American political context after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 1995, they sought to communicate libertarian notions of opposition to government intervention using messages accessible to working and middle-class people of the time, and combining libertarian free market views with the cultural conservatism of Paleoconservatism, while also opposing protectionism. The strategy also embraced the paleoconservative reverence for tradition and religion. This approach, usually identified as right-wing populism, was intended to radicalize citizens against the state. The name they chose for this style of activism evoked the roots of modern libertarianism, hence the prefix paleo. That founding movement was American classical liberalism, which shared the anti-war and anti-New Deal sentiments of the Old Right in the first half of the 20th century. Paleolibertarianism is generally seen as a right-wing ideology.

<i>Chronicles</i> (magazine)

Chronicles is a U.S. monthly magazine published by the Charlemagne Institute and associated with paleoconservative views. Its full current name is Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. It was founded in 1977 by the Rockford Institute. Today, the journal is published by the successor organization Charlemagne Institute. Since 2021, Paul Gottfried is the editor-in-chief.

<i>The American Conservative</i> American Ideas Institute magazine

The American Conservative (TAC) is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has been published once every two months.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mel Bradford</span> American politician (1934–1993)

Melvin E. Bradford was an American conservative author, political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas.

In the United States, conservatism is based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative and Christian media organizations, along with American conservative figures, are influential, and American conservatism is one of the majority political ideologies within the Republican Party.

National conservatism is a nationalist variant of conservatism that concentrates on upholding national, cultural identity, communitarianism and the public role of religion. It shares aspects of traditionalist conservatism and social conservatism, while departing from economic liberalism and libertarianism, as well as taking a more agnostic approach to regulatory economics and protectionism. National conservatives usually combine conservatism with nationalist stances, emphasizing cultural conservatism, family values and opposition to illegal immigration or opposition to immigration per se. National conservative parties often have roots in environments with a rural, traditionalist or peripheral basis, contrasting with the more urban support base of liberal conservative parties.

The Old Right is an informal designation used for a branch of American conservatism that was most prominent from 1910 to the mid-1950s, but never became an organized movement. Most members were Republicans, although there was a conservative Democratic element based largely in the Southern United States. They are termed the "Old Right" to distinguish them from their New Right successors who came to prominence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Neoconservatism and paleoconservatism are two major branches of the American conservative political movement. Representatives of each faction often argue that the other does not represent true conservatism. Disputed issues include immigration, trade, the United States Constitution, taxation, budget, business, the Federal Reserve, drug policy, foreign aid and the foreign policy of the United States.

The Rockford Institute was an American conservative think-tank associated with paleoconservatism, based in Rockford, Illinois. Founded in 1976, it ran the John Randolph Club and published the magazine Chronicles. In 2018 the Rockford Institute merged with the Charlemagne Institute, which became the new publisher of Chronicles. The Charlemagne Institute describes itself as "leading a cultural movement to defend and advance Western Civilization, the foundation of our American republic."

In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.

Taki's Magazine, called Takimag for short, is an online magazine of politics and culture published by the Greek paleoconservative commentator and socialite Taki Theodoracopulos and edited by his daughter Mandolyna Theodoracopulos. It has published articles by far-right figures such as Gavin McInnes and the white supremacist Jared Taylor; the white supremacist Richard Spencer was an early Taki's editor.

Movement conservatism is a term used by political analysts to describe conservatives in the United States since the mid-20th century and the New Right. According to George H. Nash (2009) the movement comprises a coalition of five distinct impulses. From the mid-1930s to the 1960s, libertarians, traditionalists, and anti-communists made up this coalition, with the goal of fighting the liberals' New Deal. In the 1970s, two more impulses were added with the addition of neoconservatives and the religious right.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alt-right</span> Far-right white nationalist movement

The alt-right is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has been declining since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.

The alt-lite, also known as the alt-light and the new right, is a loosely defined right-wing political movement whose members regard themselves as separate from both mainstream conservatism and the far-right, white nationalist alt-right. The concept is primarily associated with the United States, where it emerged in 2017. The term remained in vogue during the Trump administration, as observers assessed all sources for right-wing populism, but has mostly faded from popular discourse as of 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Responses to the alt-right</span>

Opponents of the alt-right have not reached a consensus on how to deal with it. Some opponents emphasized "calling out" tactics, labelling the alt-right with terms like "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "white supremacist" in the belief that doing so would scare people away from it. Many commentators urged journalists not to refer to the alt-right by its chosen name, but rather with terms like "neo-Nazi". There was much discussion within U.S. public discourse as to how to avoid the "normalization" of the alt-right. The activist group Stop Normalizing, which opposes the normalization of terms like alt-right, developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension. The extension went viral shortly after the release of Stop Normalizing's website. The extension changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". The extension and group were founded by a New York-based advertising and media professional under the pseudonym George Zola.

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Bibliography