Rethinking ‘The Right’

If progressives are good at anything its reshaping culture through language. Phrases that used to convey understood collective agreement such as ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘freedom of religion’ now carry malicious undertones in the public sphere. Unless a person is actively political on social media, they are only exposed to the liberal media and that means these shifts in collective consciousness impact them the most.
As such the way we describe things and identify ourselves becomes ever more relevant to our national voice. We find ourselves in a catch-22 where refusing to submit to the Left’s language manipulation creates an environment where we eventually are forced to do so in order to move beyond the prejudices and bigotry they create. A decade ago describing oneself as ‘America First’ would have been easily understood and largely supported. Today it comes with a long list of clarifications and defenses one must deploy if one hopes to engage in any kind of discussion.
The Left’s strength is in their persistence. They have been screaming with the same passionate outrage that we are all violent Nazis and White Supremacists for decades. I first became aware of the association during the Tea Party era. George W. Bush was portrayed as a Nazi and a Fascist constantly. Today their accumulation of narrative has saturated the collective mind so greatly that it is far easier to turn an event like Charlottesville into proof positive of confirmed prediction. Haven’t they been warning of this for a long time?
In their narrative the widespread white supremacy movement was only hidden just under the surface because there was no great leader to inspire them. Today Trump serves as that leader and their uprising is credited to his encouragement. Of course there is no ‘uprising.’ White supremacist thinking isn’t more popular now than it was a decade ago. We are just more aware of its nuance due to social media and the larger media’s obsession with providing a spotlight on their every whispered word. Trump’s affiliation with white supremacy is a complete myth perpetuated by the media. White supremacists supported Trump because of ‘the wall’ and his strong stance against political correctness. Not because of some secret, as yet to be detailed, plan of ‘white supremacy.’
Unfortunately for us, reason has no voice in this argument. We are forced into battling mythology because we cannot speak in public otherwise. Everytime we attempt to engage in discussion we are accused of being associated with Nazis or white supremacists and we are obligated to denounce them before we can even make our point, regardless of the topic. The Left has learned that labeling the Right with these ridiculous titles effectively marginalizes whatever speech said accused was planning to engage in. They have just enough examples of actual white supremacists to blend into the mix to convince average Americans that this assertion is believable.
A big part of that is the association with ‘the Right.’ In the world of politics there is only the Right and the Left on the spectrum. In truth the connections between the ‘far-Right’ and the rest of us are so baseline as to be silly in any other context. For example, both white supremacists and libertarians support the 2nd amendment. To a rational person it is easy to understand how two separate ideologies can both agree upon basic Constitutional rights. At one point in our history Democrats and Republicans agreed on nearly everything regarding the Constitution and only disagreed on how it should be implemented. Today, simply supporting the Constitution at all is considered evidence of Nazi sympathizing.
The Left, however, both intentionally and unconsciously, associates any similarities together. It is why they so easily group people with similar racial characteristics into large collective categories. It is why defending the right of a Nazi to speak is the same as supporting the Nazi’s perspective in their minds. They also know that our brains works by organizing like things into easily sortable categories and recognize our collective desire to carefully manage association. As such they know that if they declare a person to be a Nazi, in the public eye, it is that person’s responsibility to prove otherwise.
It is also convenient that nearly everything white supremacists and Nazis support that are in common with everyone else on the Right are issues the Left strongly disagrees with. Religious freedom, freedom of speech, national security, a border wall, gun rights, etc are all on the Left’s ‘bad people support this’ list. Ironically the things white supremacists support that line up with the Left such as abortion, authoritarianism and racial identity are simply ignored.
Rallies supporting freedom of speech have been instantly labeled ‘white supremacist’ rallies and Antifa and other assorted protesters show up with full support from the media. Even when it turned out that no actual white supremacists were involved, the events were still implied to be associated with them. In 2017, advocating freedom of speech is equated with supporting Nazi philosophy.
Unfortunately every phrase the Right typically uses to describe their beliefs has been twisted into a Nazi/white supremacist ideology. ‘America First’ is racist, xenophobic and reminds people of dangerous militias hiding in bunkers. ‘Freedom of speech’ is the same as defending Nazis. ‘Religious Freedom’ is now ‘Anti-LGBT discrimination’ and so on. Even the description ‘right-wing’ has become associated with Nazis.
Part of our struggle is neo-Nazism and white supremacy/nationalism are Right-wing ideologies, just as Black Lives Matter is a Left-wing ideology. We cannot deny they are on the Right side of the spectrum. The question is, how separated are we from them on said spectrum in terms of how the public views us? We can’t assume people will understand the differences. The Left is driven to win and so sees this conundrum as justice for our generalized ‘hate.’ But in truth, most on the Right have been caught off guard by this new reality.
In truth we typically break down into ‘conservative’, ‘libertarian’ and ‘Republican.’ There are Constitutionalists, Federalists and other more precise variations of the above standard three. I have always referred to ‘the Right’ in an effort to include everyone involved fairly. You can’t just say ‘conservatives’ and leave out libertarians when both are involved, for example. There is more we agree on than we disagree on. There is a great deal of overlap as well. I sometimes think of myself as a conservative libertarian. Conservatarian, as defined by Charles C. W. Cooke in The Conservatarian Manifesto, is a great discussion on this experience.
But for the sake of media, I think it has become important to carefully define the political ideology one embraces. ‘Right-wing’ may have been a catch-all previously, but today it involves disassociating with neo-Nazis, as absurd as that might be in practice. Interestingly, ‘conservative’, while demonized by the Left, seems fairly safe as the alt-Right built its reputation on mocking conservatives as ‘cucks.’ Libertarian is the ‘bisexual’ of politics and is always a safe choice. No one is going to mistake a libertarian for a Nazi.
But what shall we call ourselves as a whole without invoking the specter of ‘Nazi’? What should our collective identity be now that the Left has effectively made it socially risky to align with ‘the Right’? If we were to look at the political spectrum it seems we would far more likely be closer to the center between the far-Right and the generalized Left. The Left has congealed into a fairly recognizable cluster of identity politics and socialism. There has been no ‘center’ or ‘moderate’ space for a long time; only ‘non-political.’ Perhaps the ‘safe’ place for us to find ourselves is directly in the middle.
Part of our identity, of course, has been that we represent both average America and a unified and specific set of social and political beliefs. Being ‘center’ meant compromising said beliefs in order to be better accepted by the Left. We have long avoided the title ‘moderate’ because it almost always meant ‘Democrat-lite.’ But our world has changed and strict political identity is dangerous in a time when staunch belief can be easily declared ‘extremist’ and a threat to the rest of America.
Perhaps it is time we reminded America that most people are exactly like us and our ideals are not controversial at all. We have all become so used to the insanity of the progressive Left we have forgotten that the Right is more than just the opposition to said insanity. We hold views the majority of Americans find perfectly reasonable. Its just the media that declares it all to be crazy.
Conservatives and libertarians have to unite together and recognize that the current political take-over by a very small, but poisonous, minority has tainted the title ‘the Right.’ We have to think in terms of commonality rather than pristine allegiance to identity. I am a conservative because my beliefs align with what most Americans view as fundamental freedom and liberty. I do not belong to a new way of thinking. I think this has to be the way we position ourselves from here on out.
We are not here to change anything. We are here to preserve and protect what everyone already supports and agrees with but is being attacked by a growing ideologically driven collective. We are America; not a political spectrum separate from the whole.
