Monkey See, Monkey Do

I'm always interested in center-right perspectives on the mainstreaming of far-right extremism.  

But the self-analysis always seems to stop short of a deeper probe into what it is about the right wing, from a psycho-social perspective, that leads/has led to this.  In todays op-ed by the NY Times columnist David French, he starts off by noting:

It keeps happening. Since the ascendance of Donald Trump, with depressing regularity, right-wing men have been outed for using the most vile rhetoric.

He goes on to provide a litany of examples.  Then asks:
What is going on? Why are parts of the right — especially the young right — so infested with outright racists and bigots?

He then admits that there have always been bigots on the right, but goes on to claim that this is something new, and chalks it up to "hatred, combined with masculine insecurity and cowardice",  pointing to examples of how these have led to extremism, especially online.  He briefly argues the way back from here is real world experiences with the joy of family life.
It’s difficult to break the hold of bigotry and fury on the online right, but as is so often the case, the solution to online evil can be found in offline relationships, the family and friends who keep us grounded to the real.

Do they feel that it isn't inevitable?  That these are just extreme cases in an otherwise perfectly reasonable ideology -  that just as extreme leftists might embrace a violent, anti-democratic stalinism, but in general there is nothing particularly violent or anti-democratic about the left?

The problem with that framing is that anti-democratic communist left has essentially been non-existent for many  decades, while huge networks on the right, with hundreds of millions in funding, have only been building during that time and earlier.

The desire to carve a line between ideology and personal psychology is maybe comforting, but blinkers one to what drives mass movements.  There are clear lines to be drawn from basic right-wing ideological assumptions to its current extreme mainstream form.  Fundamental beliefs about  in- versus out- group circles of morality and appeal to traditional hierarchies inform deeply the MAGA phenomenon.  

I would like to see more - any - explorations of the ways in which these core beliefs of the right lead logically to where we now find ourselves.  French starts at hatred and toxic masculinity, but these should have been end points.  Of course those are bad things.  What's important is how we get to them.  

This allergy to look more deeply into why the right has always been fertile soil for bigotry - racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria - can partially be explained by a simple aversion by anyone to take personal responsibility for one's toxic baseline assumptions. 

But the more fundamental aversion to this line of inquiry is rooted in the right's epistemological embrace of the fallacy of appeal to tradition and its adherence to a limited moral circle.  If believes in the superiority of one's in-group, capacity for empathy for other perspectives is limited.  Other nations, religions and ethnicities are to a degree written out of moral consideration, while at the same time limiting one's ability to critically examine one's in-group.  The appeal to tradition then becomes a kind of self-preserving cocoon of ignorance in which progressive deconstruction and objective analysis of internal belief is waved away.  Existing hierarchies are in this way viewed, if not as beneficent, then at least as unimpeachable for fear of what may be worse to come.  Much right wing rhetoric is explicitly about this very anxiety: the left (in opposition to the right) is always seeking to "tear down" or "destroy" society.  At its best, conservatism cautions that change can lead to outcomes even worse than what they replaced.  (Stalinism and Maoism being the prime historical example).  But at its worst, conservatism serves to concretize hierarchies with great social harm - almost by definition to marginalized groups. 

But for the "best" version of the conservative impulse - a pointed reminder of unintended consequences - requires good-faith engagement with both the critiques and suggested solutions put  forward by progressive change.  The track record of conservatism on this front is dismal.  The  engines of progressive change can be found in three pillars of democratic society: the university, journalism, and worker unions.  These institutions are at their core instantiations of hierarchical deconstruction. 

In academia, subject matter expertise is fostered via robust collaboration within and across fields in the form of research and peer-review.  In journalism, power is held to account when sectors of power in society are examined in current events and historical context is provided.  In unions, workers come together to create power in solidarity in a context in which capital would otherwise hold  absolute power.  While not perfect, they are integral to maintaining a healthy opportunity not only of equitable power relations in society but also an expansive epistemology that maintains avenues for multivalent discourse through pluralistic empowerment.

The absence of conservative support for these three institutions speaks volumes.  Conservatives have no real presence in academia or journalism, aside from the more apolitical fields where critical discourse is most infrequent, and conservatives are essentially opposed the very concept of unionization.  Instead, what we have are a smattering of token conservative academic thought that trots into the discourse almost exclusively in reactionary form, without good-faith conversation with progressive thought, and seemingly existing only to brandish credentials instead of serious arguments.   Conservative journalism is even worse.  With almost no investigative reporting, reactionary articles provide cherry-picked anecdotes designed not to explore uncomfortable realities and critically dissect social systems and and their actors, but principally to justify the current status quo or attack ideas or actors that have already been assumed to be malevolent.  

The result is a conservative movement that has become ever more isolated from critical thought and ultimately even ideological coherence.  Having given up on basic tools of objective analysis, it exists in a self-contained vacuum.

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