"To some on the Right, Japan is a paradise of racial purity..."
Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people.
If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist?
> Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists?
Racial/ethnic/national/cultural (including religious) chauvinism has been an attribute of Conservatism/Right politics forever (also, class chauvinism, though over time that's become less pronounced, or at least less overt, faster than the others, probably because it's one of the things you can't really get away with out loud in systems of universal suffrage.)
> If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist?
If the not racist extends to excluding most of the other chauvinisms of the right, “neoliberal” is probably the best label. If it's just specifically the absence of racial/ethnic chauvinism, just “Right”; that racism is a characteristic of the faction as a whole doesn't mean it's essential for each member (the fallacy of division is a popular fallacy, but still a fallacy.)
'Neoliberal' has embedded assumptions about the ordering of society and role of the state on both domestic and international stages that many antiracist rightists would vociferously oppose (whatever Palladium Mag's smoking, or the boogaloo libertarians, for example - though they often pretend to exist outside of the left/right dichotomy).
As easy as it is to reduce 'the right' into the buckets of proto-fascism, and the Clinton-era uni-party consensus - it makes the category of little use as anything other than an ad-hominem.
The right is, and so far as I can tell, has always been defined in opposition to the politics of the political left, which having a coherent intellectual lineage, and a cohesive network of political philosophers, has been free to define itself. As a result, the right-wing tends to be a hodge-podge of largely unaffiliated political factions whose antipathy to one-another is only constrained by their unified foe.
> As a result, the right-wing tends to be a hodge-podge of largely unaffiliated political factions whose antipathy to one-another is only constrained by their unified foe.
That is the best description I've ever heard for the US political right.
It has also been an attribute of “left” politics since forever, by which I mean that one one might call “left” an “right” both had some very noticeable politicians that championed it.
But it is always effective sport to compare the moderate, reasonable parts of one's own “camp” with the fundamentalists and extremists of the other.
It's really quite simple: you see, masculinists are reasonable people who wish to simply discuss some of the hardships males face, but feminists are all gender Nazis that are utterly unreasonable, for look at these examples I drummed up! just so vice versā, of course.
"Chauvinism" isn't incorrect, but a very loaded framing. Conservatives believe that culture is of overriding importance to the prosperity of a society, and do not embrace cultural relativism.
What makes the United States rich and Bangladesh poor? A liberal would immediately go to explanations involving colonialism, etc. A conservative is much more likely to go to explanations involving bribery, political corruption, etc. Liberals tend to be cultural relativists, so they perceive those cultural explanations as being "chauvinist" or "racist." But there are plenty of Bangladeshis who would give the same explanation. Among other Bangladeshis I know (I'm from the country), especially ones back home, they're much more likely to blame cultural/political institutions rather than colonialism.
I'm not sure how to read that as mocking the left - unless the author is saying that liberals commonly overstate Japan's isolationist ideals and tendencies for xenophobia. Even if that was the author's intent, it's a pretty minor mock compared to being associated with ideals of racial purism.
If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist?
"Conservative".
But in the US for instance, there are very few, say, fiscal conservatives. "Fiscal Conservatism" simply doesn't exist the way that we might have been used to seeing it in the 70's or even 80's. Modern administrations on the right consistently outspend modern administrations on the left for example. Which would have been unthinkable 50 years ago, but happens regularly today because on the right there are now different driving priorities.
All of which is fine. There's nothing wrong with any of that so long as those on the right are representing the interests of their supporters. Like it or not, that's what democracy is about. But it leaves many, many people in society with no "political home" so to speak.
Conservatism is a lot more expansive than just "fiscal conservatism." The Republican Party as originally constituted wasn't even fiscally conservative.
Most center-left people and center-right people just don't meaningfully disagree on, e.g., whether we should still have Social Security. Social and political conservatism are the flashpoints.
For examples consider the 1619 Project. It freaks out social and political conservatives because veneration of society's history and institutions is a basic precept. This is not something unique to American Republicans. I once had a Japanese acquaintance go through several hundred years of history to explain to me why Japanese culture is less susceptible to political corruption than Chinese culture. Conservatives internalize the saying that "90% of everything is crap." They believe that our current prosperity is the product of a set of societal choices, and we need to install respect for those choices because if we try something new, there is a 90% probability it will be bad and harmful.
Liberals are, by their nature, don't venerate history, and are optimistic about new ideas. It doesn't matter to them that there are almost no examples of successful countries that cast an intensely critical eye on their own history. They don't think we need to venerate Jefferson, the Constitution, etc., to preserve our democracy. They're optimistic that we can replace reliance on history and tradition with new frameworks and new ideas. And they're confident that those things will turn out well.
If your dividing line is "who venerates history?" Then there are no differences between the lefties and the righties. It's just my observation, but the issues lefties and righties have with each other spring mainly from which aspects of history they venerate?
Do you beleive the most important thing about the Civil War is the Confederacy and their right to self determination even on matters of slavery? Or do you think the most important thing about the Civil War is the defeat of said Confederacy and the abolition of slavery in every land under our dominion, no matter the determination level of its people?
"Both may be, but one must be, wrong."
Is the Trail of Tears important? Or is the defeat of the Nazis important? If it's the defeat of the Nazis, do we tolerate the people hoisting Nazi flags? Lefties and righties differ on these issues.
Believe it or not, we have a mechanism to handle all these contradictions. The US Constitution. Which brings us to the second major issue that lefties and righties make in society.
Their selective interpretation of the Constitution. Again, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment that these people respect the Constitution. Neither lefties, nor righties, really respect the US Constitution. If they did, we wouldn't have people frothing at the mouth at the sight of the nazis/confederates/whatever-they-ares with their flags. Nor would Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes have people frothing at the mouth when they kneel. Nor would "stop and frisk" have ever even been conceived. Nor would privacy violations be done by the state at such scale in the name of security. Nor would minorities be discriminated against. Etc etc etc and on and on and on.
The issue with lefties and righties is precisely that they don't believe in the Constitutional rights of whatever group it is they don't like. That, more than anything, is what has caused all of the problems in our society lately.
Politics and political people have simply changed considerably over the years. Very little is what it was like 50 years ago. But again, as long as these people represent the beliefs of their supporters, what can you do? That's how it's supposed to work.
You’ve missed my argument. Almost all cultures venerate their history in the sense of socializing the idea that their country is basically good, and founded in ideals that are basically good. That’s very important to conservatives, because they believe 90% of everything is bad. If your society is successful, then you have to teach each generation to respect what came before, because whatever prosperity you enjoy is a product of those things. Moreover, teaching people that their country is basically good gives disparate groups common ground to stand on.
The traditional American approach (my education in Virginia) reflects that. We learned about slavery, the trail of tears, etc., as bad things that happened in the process of living up to fundamentally good ideals.
Calling the US a “slaveocracy” or the Constitution a “racist document” (as the 1619 Project does) is a radical departure from that.
To a conservative, its obvious you can’t build a functional society on the notion that the country and its shared history is fundamentally bad, and by reframing shared traditions ranging from Independence Day to Thanksgiving as “racist.” Maybe that’s wrong and liberals are right. But that’s why stuff like the 1619 Project causes conservatives to flip out.
I think you may have missed my point. Whatever people you disagree with believe, is the business of people you disagree with. There is no need to "flip out" about it. Someone wants to take a knee, that's his decision. Someone wants to fly a nazi flag at his own home, that's his decision.
If a group wants to believe that America is fundamentally "good", that is the decision, and the right, of the people in that group. If a group wants to believe that America is "bad", that is the decision, and the right, of the people in that group.
For instance, I believe the fundamental "goodness" of America is this ability to believe what you please so long as you don't bother anyone else and play well with others. As an example, people are free to dislike black people. That is what is "good" about the US. However, people should not be free to stop and frisk every black kid that comes along due to a bias stemming from that dislike. Why? Because that infringes on the rights of the black kid. Who, in turn, should be free to like or dislike you.
It's a "circle of like" kind of thing. Or a "circle of dislike" if you prefer. It can be whichever! That's the beauty of America.
I explained all that so that maybe you might have a better idea of where my belief that lefties and righties are problematic is coming from. You can believe that America is "good". You can believe that America is "bad". Where I part company with you is if you "flip out" and attack people who believe the opposite. As that is as clear an indication as any that you don't really believe in America as envisioned in the Constitution.
I understand the point of view, but it's one that makes no sense to conservatives. How can you have a democracy and agree to respect each other's votes if you don't have a shared view of the goodness of your basic institutions?
Put differently, I tend to agree with you that this vision of extreme pluralism is closer to how America was intended to function, and I agree that would be preferable. But if you're going to force my kids to school where you're going to teach them A or B, and if people in California and New York are going to have so much federal power over people in Iowa, that makes that sort of radical pluralism hard to achieve.
The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that.
Growing up, my family were blue collar Catholics. They were fairly conservative from a personal lifestyle perspective, but didn’t care about most of the “Conservative” issues of today. Today middle class Hispanics are probably the closest analog.
> The average, vocal, “conservative” that you’ll find in US media or politics is a reactionary whose bona fides consist of a few narrowly focused issues that pander to a few core constituencies including now, racists and nativists. They often don’t share conservative ideals beyond that.
I don't watch much TV (especially "news" channels) so I might just be out of the loop here, but how has US conservative media been pandering to racists?
"America First" is just the principle that the US government should prioritize US interests over the interests of other nations and people. It's about nationality, not race.
Anti-gun-control and pro-Christianity are just popular subjects for conservatives. Again, not about race. In fact, those are principles that you just claimed they don't talk about.
How are those "dog whistles for those types of people"?
Isn't that like saying "defund the police" and "black lives matter" are dog whistles for communists?
Former prime minister Abe Shinzo is famous right-wing politician but interestingly, he introduced limited term immigrants(?) program in weird way due to shortage of lower salary worker.
A lot of this worldview isn't unwarranted. Conservative opposition to the federal government is perceived very differently among say Black people, who relied on the federal government to protect their Civil Rights. A conservative might point out, "many homogenous countries have weak federal governments--it's a general principle that's valid irrespective of racism." And at the same time, the view of a Black Democrat on that point is totally valid too.
Your rank-and-file conservative doesn’t articulate it in those terms, obviously. But my family in Oregon doesn’t like the federal government ruling them from 3,000 miles away for concrete reasons. (In their case it’s long-standing family bitterness at the government seizing their homestead to build the pacific coast highway.) Those same social and political phenomena are present the world over, and are the reason federal systems exist all over the world.
Yes, it’s a William F. Buckley type that might make the comparison to Switzerland to explain how federalism is a neutral principle. But that doesn’t mean that what the folks in Oregon feel is merely pretext for racism. Just because someone can’t articulate their attitudes in terms of political theory (in this case, the resentment people have for being governed from afar and the governmental structures created to mitigate that) doesn’t mean that those attitudes can’t be explained in terms of that political theory. The Buckley type is just articulating and explaining concrete social phenomena on the ground.
That's all fine. But I don't think social science research supports the idea that rank-and-file (or self-identified, if you prefer) conservatives in the US are actually motivated by a devotion to, say, Federalism (as opposed to, say, hegemonic masculinity, white nativism, etc).
> The Buckley type is just articulating and explaining concrete social phenomena on the ground.
"Explaining", or "dressing up"? You're speaking in good faith, but personally I don't think that's the case for most of the rank-and-file, or the people who represent them.
> conservatives in the US are actually motivated by a devotion to, say, Federalism
"Federalism?" No, that's an abstract political construct. But ask them how they feel about folks in Washington D.C. deciding what goes in the school curriculum in Sibley, Iowa.
> That's all fine. But I don't think social science research supports the idea that rank-and-file (or self-identified, if you prefer) conservatives in the US are actually motivated by a devotion to, say, Federalism (as opposed to, say, hegemonic masculinity, white nativism, etc).
There is newer social science research suggesting that tests used to measure for attitudes such as "white nativism" (e.g. racial resentment tests) instead measure for conservative beliefs. Thus, the results don't change if you change the survey questions to ask about white people or other groups instead: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/renos/files/carneyenos.pdf (p. 17) ("Three important features are prominent in this figure: First, conservatives respondents (white boxes) show more resentment toward all groups than do liberals (gray boxes). Second, for conservatives, the distribution of resentment is nearly identical when asked about a white and Black target group to the distribution when asked about any alternate group, except with a slightly lower median.").
Questions purporting to measure "racial resentment" often presuppose a larger societal or government role for addressing racial inequality. Opposition to such programs is deemed "racism" but could also just be opposition to government programs generally. Only about half of Black people themselves support government programs to address the economic conditions of Black people: https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/the-roots-of-black-politic... (see Figure 0.5 a-c). 62% of Black people say that race should not even be a "small factor" in college admissions: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...
To use your examples: what does "hegemonic masculinity" mean in this context? Is your test for "hegemonic masculinity" also going to return positive results for people who just believe in traditional gender roles (including women)?
What does "white nativism" mean in this context? My in laws in exurban Oregon are frustrated that their school is suddenly 30% immigrants who speak a variety of Latin American languages that aren't even Spanish. They want Trump to enforce the border. Are they white nativists?
Or are you just defining "white nativism" to mean "anyone who opposes mass immigration that changes their community's culture?" If my family back in Bangladesh was faced with the same sort of mass immigration (from say Myanmar) as my Trump-voting in laws in Oregon, their reactions would be identical! What a lot of people deem "white nativism" is the pervasive belief among people around the world that they have the right to preserve the culture of their communities.
Oh, come on. The Democratic left also opposes the ACA. I'm sure somebody on Twitter or in The American Prospect managed to write the sentence implying that opposition to the ACA is somehow "racist", but nobody actually believes this, the same way nobody actually believes a lot of crazy things right-wingers have claimed. There has to be room for people to say stupid stuff without the constant risk that the entire debate will be characterized by those stupid things.
I can't count then number of articles I've read since January 6 characterizing conservatism generally as basically racism.
Which is fine. Progressives are hurtling toward an Ibram Kendi definition of "racism" and under that definition, pretty much all of conservatism is "racist" in the sense that it's not anti-racist. You're probably not going to correct the structural economic differences between Black and white people without some sort of big-government intervention, large-scale redistribution, etc. (The Black-white income gap has not changed in decades, while e.g. Latino incomes have converged to white incomes within a few generations.) You can redefine pretty much every conservative policy a racist in that framing: gun rights--Black people disproportionately suffer from gun violence, etc. Kendi specifically uses the capital gains preference as an example of a "racist" policy. And based on his axioms, he's not wrong. As I've said before, while I don't share Kendi's premises, I don't really disagree with his reasoning within the framework he's constructed.
Now, I think only a minority of rank-and-file Democrats actually view "racism" that expansively. But (1) these people are disproportionately represented in policy-making circles, media, and academia; and (2) Democrats have no institutional reason to push back on that since they control the media and academia.
So I expect these definitions to continue to gain purchase. When Don Lemon called all Trump voters racists, at least Chris Cuomo pushed back: https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1349672644455575554?s.... I don't think that will be the case in 10 years. I'll be pleasantly surprised if it is.
If you had simply said that liberals frequently accuse conservative ideas as being racist, I'd have nodded (and not commented). But you said that liberals widely consider opposition to the ACA racist. They do not. Again: you will find someone that said that; we can play that game all night. We have to stop allowing discussions among reasonable people to be hostage to the stupidest things other people have said.
I said, “many liberals consider conservative beliefs to be inherently racist.”
I don’t know if the opposition to the ACA specifically is widely perceived as racist, but the racial dimension was constantly injected into articles on the ACA repeal. (As if Republicans would want to repeal a big new entitlement only because the President who enacted it was Black?) More generally, it’s injected into pretty much every policy debate in the press outlets (Politico, Vox, etc.—which I consider pretty good news sources). Apparently run-off elections are racist. (Somebody should tell almost every country with an elected President.)
I try to filter out stuff I read on tweets, because I think you’re correct that Twitter is highly unrepresentative, but it turns out that those blue check marks on Twitter are also writing on a lot off the outlets that cover policy issues.
As I said, it’s a self-consistent world view, so it’s gaining purchase. It does, however, make policy debate almost impossible. It’s used to attack basic American tenants. Opposing DC statehood, for example, is deemed racist. Forget the deep American tradition of skepticism about the capital, or the increasingly Hunger Games-esque ascension of DC. I strongly suspect most Republicans are more mad about the white bureaucrats working in the federal government getting two Senators on top of running the unelected fourth branch, than anything to do with the (shrinking) Black population. But it’s an effective rhetorical tactic for sure. The Senate is racist. Opposition to public unions is racist. Support for limited government, guns, individualism, free speech, etc. (These are just the real conversations I’ve had with real people.)
I strongly suspect that conservatives aren’t just going to give up on the idea of limited government, or opposing centralized bureaucracy in DC. They’ll just grow a thicker skin with respect to accusations of racism, which is probably a bad thing for everyone.
You keep citing things that aren't the ACA that someone at Vox or Politico reported someone said was racist. But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that. Clearly, there are people who believe everything is racist, but you set a higher bar for that, and I don't think you can clear it.
For what it's worth: I don't want conservatives to give up on the idea of limited government; I think Republicans are right about some things, Democrats about others, and we need both perspectives.
> But I'm stuck on the ACA. It's the example you provided. In reality, no normal person on my side of the aisle thinks that opposition to the ACA is racist, nor do I think you can find credible mainstream Democratic sources saying that.
Who is a normal person? The Forbes article I posted is from a Duke MD. The article appears to be based on Senator Jay Rockefeller’s contemporaneous claim that opposition to the ACA was because Obama was the “wrong color.” It looks like no other Congressional Democrat backed that idea, so you’re right in that respect.
> One of the greatest triumphs of liberal politics over the past 50 years has been to completely stigmatize open racial discrimination in public life, a lesson that has been driven home over decades by everybody from Jimmy the Greek to Paula Deen. This achievement has run headlong into an increasing liberal tendency to define conservatism as a form of covert racial discrimination. If conservatism is inextricably entangled with racism, and racism must be extinguished, then the scope for legitimate opposition to Obama shrinks to an uncomfortably small space.
Though in the same piece he writes:
> America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable (as I recently argued) from the legacy of slavery.
Chait, at least six years ago, correctly observed that these arguments are fallacious:
> And yet—as vital as this revelation may be for understanding conservatism, it still should not be used to dismiss the beliefs of individual conservatives. Individual arguments need and deserve to be assessed on their own terms, not as the visible tip of a submerged agenda; ideas can’t be defined solely by their past associations and uses.
More recently, however, Chait has embraced the trend he was skeptical of in the above passage.
A few months later he writes, without a hint of irony:
> Why Are Conservatives So Angry Biden Denounced White Supremacy?
Now maybe I read too much Jonathan Chait. But I truly find his rhetoric truly perplexing, for someone I perceive as being maybe solidly left wing, but within the Overton Window. I thought that anti-statism was something the left and right broadly agreed on. (During the Obama era, polls showed that even half of Democrats listed “big government” as the “biggest threat to America.”)
I like Chait. I also don't think any of these people are wrong about the culture war issue you're talking about, and if that had been all you said, we wouldn't be 2000 words deep into this thread. But that's not what you said.
The article you posted is from a health policy "take machine" (check his Twitter, he's like a JV Ezra Klein) who concludes that opposition to the ACA is mostly not racist, and is using the idea as a framing device for a post summarizing a journal article about racial disparities in health care, which are obvious and real. The use of the word "racist" to describe the status quo ante of the ACA is counterproductive and stupid (see: "takes"), but it's also not part of the mainstream conversation.
You suggested otherwise. I suggest you concede the point, because, again: we're being held hostage by stupid things people say. Even smart people will say some stupid things, and we can let whole debates be defined by stupidity.
(We have another big health policy debate coming up, and as a liberal Democrat who opposes single-payer, I'm dreading the amount of stupidity we're all going to have to wade through to get to any kind of engagement with the real issues).
Is it now considered a de facto truth that people identifying as "Right" are racists? If not, why bring up the Right in this sentence? When I was growing up, Right overlapped with Conservative, but racists were a discrete group of people.
If Right now means racist, what is the label for someone with the political attributes of Right, but who is not racist?