Sunday reading: Rightwing Dreams of American Reconquista
A counter-revolutionary zeal, desire for vengeance, and lust for radicalism characterizes today’s Right.
Thoughts on what unites Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Christopher Rufo, and Nate Hochman:
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/rightwing-dreams-of-american-reconquista
A desire for radical measures to defend the “virtuous minority” – and with it the laws of God and/or nature as they supposedly manifest in traditional hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth – against the “Un-American” forces of “woke” leftism is shared across the Right. 2/
The general sentiment that “Conservatism is no longer enough,” that “We need to stop calling ourselves conservatives,” is being echoed over and over again within the reactionary intellectual and pundit sphere. 3/
This manifests most clearly in the open rejection of “small government” principles: Reactionaries don’t fear the authoritarian state – they want to mobilize its coercive powers to impose a return of the traditional order onto the country and defeat their enemies within. 4/
The rightwing counter-revolutionaries intend to be ruthless in making use of all the levers of power to which they still have access - and desire to re-capture the institutions the Left has supposedly hijacked so they can transform them and turn them into weapons. 5/
That is, for instance, Christopher Rufo’s openly stated end goal. He wants us to believe radical leftism is so ubiquitous, so dangerous, that nothing but an equally radical counter-revolution to seize control of the state and all major institutions will do to save the United States. 6/
@tzimmer_history Rufo’s argument is a variance of the equivalence argument, in this case making a false case how liberalism is evil requires me to actually be an evil conservative to defeat it. Not my argument that conservatism is inherently evil, but it’s inherently selfish, about holding on to my advantages at your expense. This premise questions the ability of conservatism to actually embrace democratic principles, standards of equality and EO upon which the USA was founded.
