What is conservatism? What does it mean to be on the right?
Conservatism means support for hierarchy.
In my last post I described how all of the political turmoil happening right now is the rise of fascism. Fascism is the attempt to preserve the existing class hierarchy by force. Right now the hierarchies of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, Zionism, and organized religion are in decline - and fascism has arrived to prop them up - through the use of violence.
Conservatives seek to preserve or expand the existing privileges of those who are at the top of this era’s hierarchies: Rich over poor, white over black and brown, men over women, Israeli over Palestinian, Christians over everyone.
The hierarchies may change from one society to another, but the conservative always seeks to keep the existing hierarchies in place. The left always fights for equality. The right always fights for hierarchy.
As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan once said, “All conservatism begins with loss.” Loss of what? The privileges that come from being higher up in the hierarchical pecking order.
Conservatives are always banging on about their love of freedom - but freedom for whom? As political scientist Corey Robin writes in his brilliant dissection of conservatism, The Reactionary Mind, “Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.”
This is why male conservatives are threatened by feminism. Men perceive a loss of freedom in womens’ liberation. Same with race - the white conservative fears greater equality for black and brown people because it is perceived as a threat to white freedom and privileges. Zionists dread the expansion of freedom for Palestinians as coming at the expense of Israeli privileges. The capitalist owner sees worker power as loss of freedom to keep all the profits for himself.
The reason conservatism exists is to maintain hierarchy. It has always been this way.
The bible gives us the expression “The right hand of God.” Why God’s right hand? Because historically, being the right hand was as close to the source of power as it was possible to be. To sit at the right hand of the king meant executing the monarch’s wishes as if you were the royal appendage yourself. Being on the right has always meant fealty to power.
Says Robin, this is the goal of right-wing populism: “to appeal to the mass without disrupting the power of elites or, more precisely, to harness the energy of the mass in order to reinforce or restore the power of elites.”
We have this expression “law and order.” What does order represent? Not order as in order versus chaos but order as in pecking order. Hierarchy. Writes Robin, “The conservative defends particular orders - hierarchical, often private regimes of rule, on the assumption, in part, that hierarchy is order.”
Strong over weak. Superior over inferior.
There is frequently a value judgement happening when a conservative protects hierarchy. There is an assumption of legitimacy, that whomever is on top deserves to be on top. This is incredibly gratifying for those who occupy powerful positions. Rulers love the idea that they rule because they actually are better than the rest of us.
The conservative usually tends to agree that existing hierarchies are justified because they share some trait with the existing hierarchy: Rich, white, male, straight, or Christian Zionist. That’s basically the conservative power base right there. The conservative believes hierarchy is legitimate because doing so confers legitimacy on his own privilege. Why would anyone question a hierarchy that benefits them?
Robin writes, “In every social movement or revolutionary moment, reformers and radicals have to invent - or rediscover - the idea that inequality and social hierarchy are not natural phenomena but human creations.”
Top-down hierarchies didn’t become the norm until the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Egalitarianism was the norm in hunter-gatherer societies for about 100,000 years before that. I believe that the internet and globalization herald the return of egalitarianism as the dominant frame for human relations.
Hierarchies do not exist because of any inherent superiority. Reject hierarchy. Embrace equality. Don’t be a conservative who fights to preserve someone else’s privilege. Fight for yourself and your loved ones. Examine your assumptions. Which side are you on?
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Let’s make them pay.
