Thinking the "Far Right"
Added 2024-02-11 16:23:14 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam return to some historiographic questions from our episode with Kim Phillips-Fein — especially how to think the relationship between "right" and "far right" — and then discuss the troubling return of scientific racism to mainstream conservative thought.
Further Reading:
James Alison, "Facing Down the Wolf," Commonweal, June 10, 2020.
Matthew Sitman, "Time in the Eternal City," Commonweal, Dec 24, 2024.
Samuel L. Popkin, Crackup: The Republican Implosion and the Future of Presidential Politics, Oxford UP, May 2021.
Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism, Yale UP, June 2009
John S. Huntington, Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism, Penn Press, Oct 2021.
Comments
If you come to Bologna let me know! I’d be happy to take you to a great restaurant here with your other Bologna fans :-)
Gabriella Gruder-Poni
2024-03-02 00:17:22 +0000 UTCGreat argument for contingency! Completely agree.
Jennifer Delton
2024-02-26 16:10:11 +0000 UTCGreat episode and looking forward to the exploration of biological racism. A related request: I’d love to hear you all explore the history and current trajectory of Silicon Valley as it relates to biological racism. The links to Stanford and the early, eponymous semiconductor industry have been well explored, including in Malcom Harris’ recent book. But there hasn’t been enough discussion of how these ideas are reemerging in ethno nationalist rhetoric linked to tech and innovation. Prominent figures like Musk, Thiel and Andreessen are talked about, however I’d love to hear exploration of how the environment they created shapes the politics of current/future generation technologist and business leaders.
kpw
2024-02-24 05:27:27 +0000 UTCOn the manosphere/scientific racism tip, I can’t help thinking about Seth Simons’ recent writing on Shane Gillis, the Holocaust-denial-curious comic hosting SNL this week. Simons would be a worthwhile guest for a future episode, someone to think about the (booming, ignore-at-your-own-peril) alt-right edgelord comedy scene with. Unless this is a conversation that’s already happened and it was KYE where I learned about Simons and Humorism in the first place…?
Shabbos Tatty
2024-02-23 04:12:44 +0000 UTCI read Huntington’s book Far-Right Vanguard after listening to the episode with him, and I loved it. The strategic debates he addressed in the book are so similar to debates on electoral strategy that were taking place on the left at the same time, and which are still happening today. The far right’s decision to commit itself to realigning the Republican Party instead of creating a new one definitely was not fated and their multi-decade commitment to it is one major reason, in my view, for their political success. By contrast, while key currents on the socialist left advanced a realignment strategy regarding the Democrats, this is still an unsettled question on the far left, even in light of the success of Bernie Sanders, the Squad, etc. There just doesn’t seem to be an analogue on the right of the idea that socialist politics requires a specifically working-class party, which is typically the main justification for left-wing opposition to a realignment strategy. Would be interesting to investigate the reasons behind this divergence in far right and far left political strategy more deeply!
Chris Maisano
2024-02-16 14:56:28 +0000 UTCYes! I have long craved a KYE episode on race and the right! Please do an episode on biological racism and its recent resurgence. My research is on the post-racial myth, which in many is the inverse of biological racism - the idea that because science has proven race a biological falsehood race should no longer have significance in our economic, social, and political lives; a myth to be sure. I think one interpretation of the right-wing resurgence of biological racism is in reaction to the claims of race as a social construct. Many whites on the right interpreted the idea of a "post-racial nation" which circulate from Obama onward as a "post-White nation." To erase race in this context would be to erase the very thing that gave them their power - their Whiteness and supposed claim to the U.S. as a white nation. Combine this with fears of immigration and the Census Bureau predicting that Whites may be a minority by the mid-century in the 2010s, and White anxieties run rampant. The return to scientific racism specifically is, I think, an attempt to place racist hierarchies back on authoritative ground. Race as a social construct is always desperate for authority, be it scientific or political. A concept I teach and I have found infinitely useful is Michael Omi and Howard Winant's idea of a "racial project" which they define as "A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along particular racial lines." (125) It is a great concept for tracking the relationship between symbolic ideas of race and material structures. Colorblindness, post-racialism, and biological racism are all racial projects. If anyone is in search of the older context of how scientific racism emerges in the Enlightenment and explodes in the 19th century I'd suggest looking up figures like Francois Bernier, Carolus Linnaeus, Johann Blumenbach, Buffon, Francis Galton, and Charles Davenport.
Daniel D.
2024-02-15 02:48:05 +0000 UTCI too feel like an episode on biological racism would be useful. However, I would point out that conservatives are heavily embracing biological determinism beyond race.
Steve
2024-02-15 00:20:28 +0000 UTCSpeaking of dynamics, it would be interesting to see how the return of scientific racism rubs against the presence of non-white conservatives whom Trump has apparently not alienated and may have spurred to greater numbers. (That latter statement is more feeling than polling, but the surge does seem to exist.) One way to start might be with Pedro L Gonzalez who was bashing MLK long before Charlie Kirk stuck his unpleasant face into matters.
David B Hearne
2024-02-14 20:45:29 +0000 UTCBenvenuto all’Italia! Make sure to bring Ziploc bags, brown sugar, cling wrap, and cold medicine. Sincerely, another New Yorker living in Bologna
Charlotte Lokey
2024-02-14 15:08:24 +0000 UTCI first encountered Steve Sailer in the comments of Yglesias’s blog. Just saying. I think part of the explanation for the return of scientific racism is the consensus about it among the elite, well beyond the “official” right.
Marshall Steinbaum
2024-02-14 13:50:50 +0000 UTCas a transgender Catholic I would LOVE an episode on gays in the Vatican 😻
Cuddlefisch
2024-02-13 21:55:29 +0000 UTCI feel like the influence of the manosphere is in the mix with the resurgence of scientific racism. There's a big emphasis on biological essentialism and pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology inherent to many manosphere ideas which complements the older Bell Curve ilk. That's just my two cents --- Would be very interested to hear an episode on this
Josh T
2024-02-13 04:22:45 +0000 UTC(My favorite is Santi Cosma e Damiano directly on the forum. Its apse mosaic is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I could stare at it for hours.)
Nimportequi
2024-02-13 00:53:41 +0000 UTCOn Rome: I’m an atheist Marxist but spending time there made me want to be Catholic. Also, I think it’s okay to not feel ashamed about the riches amassed there as a Catholic. The church was what kept civilization from collapsing in the early Middle Ages and generally extracted less from the peasantry in its domains than temporal lords did. People would likely have been off worse materially without the church. And they wouldn’t have been able to enjoy all these utterly beautiful churches … Can’t wait to be back in Rome.
Nimportequi
2024-02-13 00:44:35 +0000 UTCIt makes sense that Lowry would not want to cite biology for Black disfunction.
erik w bjorke
2024-02-12 23:19:50 +0000 UTCThe concept of culture has this weird double life: it was formulated by figures like Franz Boas as a repudiation of biological racism, but has found use as either a dogwhistle or a sincerely believed determinism of its own—not immutable, but just static enough to treat it as such. (Whatever flaws there might be with Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, I think its insistence that what we call culture is just politics practiced continually throughout history is really welcome.)
Nik
2024-02-12 23:05:15 +0000 UTCAn episode on the publication of the Bell Curve and its aftermath would be really interesting: on the one hand there are clear through-lines to old segregationists and eugenicists, but on the other hand it infamously gets excerpted in TNR. And I actually think a fair number of current IDW/"dissident" types make sense if you recognize them as erstwhile 90s/Obama-era liberals (confident in their anti-politics, convinced that civil rights movements went too far around the year they turned 18) who thought they'd come of age into an easy cultural prestige and had the rug pulled out from under them. Even if you refuse to take the professed centrism of someone like Charles Murray at face value, it's troubling that this hasn't been a purely far-right phenomenon.
Nik
2024-02-12 22:51:15 +0000 UTCIt's moments like this that I wish Stephen J. Gould was still alive--I feel like he'd be the perfect KYE guest. Baseball and race science! I don't know if you could get them, but Michael Blakey and/or Lee Baker would be great KYE guests on race and policy. Both are eminent anthropologists who have thought deeply about the relationship between race science, public life, and social inequality.
Quentin Lewis
2024-02-12 22:11:10 +0000 UTCI think a lot of plausible deniability comes in the form of for example black conservatives and other conservatives with minority backgrounds. Glenn Lowry even hangs out with Charles Murray. Glenn Lowry used the “throwing money at the problem” phrase when he was on Bad Faith podcast. His argument isn’t biological but cultural. Policy preference remains the same.
erik w bjorke
2024-02-12 19:35:29 +0000 UTCFor the Roman episode: how are certain American bishops (ranging from Strickland to Barron to Burke, maybe) and even the entire USCCB viewed by conservative/far right curial officials, bishops from other continents, global commentators? And more to the point: does the Napa Institute/Tim Busch/libertarian side of conservative American Catholicism have influence outside of the US or is it more likely to be challenged by their conservative allies? Is integralism more coherent to conservative Catholics abroad? What international networks are contributing to the spread (or suppression) of these ideas? Last question: I think the conservative reactions in this country to the synod, fiducia supplicans, laudato deum, latin mass (basically the Francis agenda) are all interesting and have far right allies in other countries. But does the eucharistic conference this year have global appeal (and is there similar concern about how “catholics in the pews” understand real presence)?
Tommy Sullivan
2024-02-12 18:57:44 +0000 UTCOne thought I had while listening to your discussion of biological racism among those on the right. How do you think the concept of original sin and the nonperfectability of man, core concepts among conservatives (tied in with the futility argument against progressive policy), influence the uptake of these ideas? Biological racism seems like a convenient, semi-scientific explanation for a “feeling” that conservatives have had forever. Curious for your thoughts.
Andrew
2024-02-12 18:50:59 +0000 UTCAgreed with others that I would be interested to hear more about the resurgence of more overt and biological racism. on that point i’m curious if there is any overt mention on the right about how opposition to things like affirmative action, “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, welfare etc. tees up the reinstating a racial hierarchy of labor as well. Like it kind seems clear that they want to return to having people of color in their “proper place” more than anything else right?
Andrés Emil González
2024-02-12 17:53:16 +0000 UTCWhen in Rome go gay or go home
Sam
2024-02-12 17:11:52 +0000 UTCDang, I'm in rome in June. Will just miss ya Matt! Give up some restaurant recommendations for trastevere and testaccio
Leonardo Restrepo
2024-02-12 14:14:41 +0000 UTCI would love to hear an episode about biological racism. It’s been popping up on Twitter lately, most recently with a debate involving Steve Sailer himself.
Andrés
2024-02-12 07:56:18 +0000 UTCI wonder if the reversion back to scientific racism was another impact of the Obama presidency. As much as us on the left may criticise Obama for his drone regime or what he didn’t do with his majority - compared to his contemporaries he was a clearly intelligent, relatively scandal free, black man who was POTUS. The only way to feel powerful after that as an impotent racist white base is to go back to a biological “we’re still better than them” view.
Matthew Maddock
2024-02-12 07:40:51 +0000 UTCAmen. Maybe Matt could look at why so many on the Catholic right lose their mess over Pope Francis, sorry Jorge Bergoglio the atheist, apostate, Satanist, Marxist, Stalinist, mole, and never-was-pope-to-begin-with?
Matt Gately
2024-02-12 06:38:00 +0000 UTCI would absolutely listen to a Rome/Vatican gossip episode
R. Daniel Smith
2024-02-12 01:44:31 +0000 UTCSegregationists moved from explicit segregation to “color blindness” and policies that had adverse impacts on people of color, while taking out the explicit racist animus. For example, after Detroit’s suburb Birmingham, Michigan lost a court case that allowed them to block housing using racial criteria, it simply switched to single-family zoning. At the time, Detroit area whites were overwhelmingly more likely to live in such areas, while blacks were much more likely to live in multi-unit dwellings. The result — in 2020, Birmingham is still about 2% black.
Chad Bailey
2024-02-12 01:14:11 +0000 UTCYou two are definitely overdue for a biological racism episode, maybe taking off from that Helen Andrews article on how everybody on the right reads Steve Sailer. Historically, Sailer’s comeback is interesting because he first got on my radar screen after that Austin Bramwell article in AmCon in 2005, a point at which Obama was only just emerging on the national scene and wokeness wasn’t a thing. So, there’s more to Sailer’s place on the right than just a backlash. I think Sam was right to say some of the fascination seems to be that people are really invested in stopping policies that might redistribute resources away from their own constituency. I couldn’t think of anything more depressing to read if I were in Rome, but the problem of scientific racism on the right does warrant its own episode.
Martin W
2024-02-12 00:54:19 +0000 UTCDid I not say Niki?!? Must have been a real time brain hiccup. Obviously this is a super pro Niki pod
mjs
2024-02-12 00:40:44 +0000 UTCPeople find it odd that as a faithful Catholic, I use a materialist lens to interpret history and culture. It’s largely consistent with how the Church investigates miracle claims: only after all material (e.g., based on modern scientific evidence) hypotheses are excluded can the miraculous be considered. A few examples follow. The Reformation The Reformation arose, not simply based on ideas expressed by Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, or Melanchthon, but wouldn’t be big if the printing press wasn’t already being used around most of Europe. The printing press itself was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 in Germany, who combined existing technologies in a unique way: Moveable type was invented originally in China in the middle of the 11th century AD, where it was put to use printing paper money for the first time in history. It’s not clear that the technology moved from China to Europe, though there is some evidence to suggest that (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=2f002286849673abd351222c9e6ec3f045950f9a). While moveable type wasn’t totally new, the metalworker Gutenberg found a way to create molds of letters that was easy and more efficient than other methods. In 2015, evidence arose that an Avignon printer may have created Hebrew letter molds prior to Gutenberg— Procopius Waldvogel. If true, he would have invented a printing press before Gutenberg. The other technology combined in the printing press was the screw press, long a tool used for pressing wine, oils, and metals. The printing press made the business of printing catch fire in Europe by dramatically reducing the cost of printing books and other materials. It was the controversy sparked by Luther that made Bible printing a lucrative business, which itself helped to spread the Protestant movement. History doesn’t record every new interpretation of the Bible or the Christian faith. But by publishing many copies of the Bible into a world where one man loudly proclaimed his interpretations of it, the printing press ensured that Luther’s message would not be lost to history. The Culture War The culture war wasn’t due to some change in thinking independent of material changes in society. Changes in reproduction began with the Industrial Revolution, as urbanization changed how people calculated the best ways to improve their lives. Women entered the workforce in factories in places like Lowell, Massachusetts, allowing them in large numbers to earn incomes independently of their parents and husbands for almost the first time. The rise of large corporations and large government agencies created a large demand of the 1870-1920 women’s jobs: secretaries that file the paperwork, librarians for the libraries, as well as nurses who helped heal industrial workers who were injured in their jobs. In the urbanization of the Industrial Revolution, men often worked in factories for the first time, while women worked at homes. Farming families had their children work. For example, my dad grew up in the 1950s on a dairy farm, and had to wake up at 5 AM to create and move hay bales, feed the animals, and clean the barn — all before he went to school. Families that moved to cities then needed to either send their children to work or keep them home under the supervision of their parents, generally their mothers. The Industrial Revolution created two new(ish) types of employment opportunities: working themselves or helping their husbands work by taking care of children and the home. All new urban residents needed to purchase almost all their foods, rather than growing them for themselves. This represented a huge change in culture. These changes also affected families economically. Women could now receive incomes independent of their husbands and families. Children moved from a source to a sink of family money. It was at this time in the Industrial Revolution that higher demands for contraception and abortion began. A 1868 book by Storer and Heard stated: “Lawyers and physicians should stand to each other [...] The crime of unjustifiable abortion is now recognized by both the professions as of frequent occurrence, and as going to often unwhipt of justice. [...] The number and success of professed abortionists is notorious. Hardly a newspaper throughout the land that does not contain their open and pointed advertisements, or a drug-store whose shelves are not crowded with their nostrums, publicly and unblushingly displayed: the supply of an article presupposes its demand" Charles Goodyear applied for a US patent for rubber vulcanization in 1844. In the 1860s, US physician Edward Bliss Foote began to sell a “occlusive peasant” under the name “womb veil.” In the 1880s in Germany, gynecologist Wilhelm P. J. Mensinga described an early version of a diaphragm. Abortion rates also grew in the same time. According to James Mohr, during the first three decades of the 19th century, between 1 in 25 and 30 pregnancies were ended by abortion. In the 1850s and 1860s, 1/6 to 1/5 pregnancies ended in abortion. This change is coordinated with the industrial development. Obviously, the demand for contraception and abortion was high enough in the middle 19th century that Congress passed in 1873 the so-called “Comstock Laws” criminalizing the use of the mail for any type of contraceptive and later any type of interstate movement of them. While legally, the supply of contraceptives was limited. However, the demand remained high. The situation led to many working families to have a lot of children. It was that situation and its impact on women that caused Margaret Sanger to begin to advocate for what she came to call “birth control.” If we look at the historical articles published about abortion, we see that the laws failed to reduce the abortion rates. In 1931, Frederick Taussig wrote, after a career trying to reduce the abortion rates: "All efforts to control the incidence of criminal abortion by legislation have resulted in failure." In 1951, Russel Fisher, chief medical examiner of the State of Maryland, wrote in a journal article: "It is doubtful if any other felonious act is so free from punishment as is criminal abortion." It is against this historical backdrop that I castigate both sides of the abortion debate.
Chad Bailey
2024-02-11 23:08:09 +0000 UTCA few other book recommendations that really fill out the story of this episode: - “Freedom’s Dominion,” Jefferson Cowie - “How the South Won the Civil War,” Heather Cox Richardson - “Dying of Whiteness,” Jonathan Metzl And because I think people here will enjoy and appreciate them, and because they highlight the consequences of the story told here: - “Waste,” Catherine Coleman Flowers - “Evicted,” Matthew Desmond - “Wastelands,” Corban Addison There’s a whole second half of the Know Your Enemy cinematic universe yet to really be explored: people fighting the world the right has built, and who run into the money and power the right brings to bear to maintain its position.
Adam Sarvana
2024-02-11 22:59:48 +0000 UTCAn episode on contempory catholic conservatism would be very interesting, especially in its relationship to vatican politics. Also Matt, if you are serious about meeting listeners in rome it turns out we are overlapping in trastevere for the same week. I would love to tell you about my family's yearlong conflict with a far right catholic organization.
Ezekiel Maben
2024-02-11 22:33:02 +0000 UTCCan’t wait for Roman Matt. Perhaps an occasion to drop an episode on the Gingrichs? (And their impressive photo editing skills).
Jake Medvitz
2024-02-11 21:59:28 +0000 UTCI would be really interested in an episode on the history of how the right has talked about race and what precipitated the renewed acceptability of biological racism.
J English
2024-02-11 21:49:03 +0000 UTCseconded
Sam
2024-02-11 20:56:34 +0000 UTCAnother vote here!
Ian Derk
2024-02-11 20:49:39 +0000 UTCI want to hear more about what a piece of shit Joyce Carol Oates is. This is new information for me and the kind of hard hitting investigative gossip I come to KYE for.
DJM
2024-02-11 20:28:34 +0000 UTCOne vote for the wine sodden episode on the Vatican
Kevin Burke
2024-02-11 19:40:20 +0000 UTCAnd also Niki hemmer on the AHA panel!
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd
2024-02-11 18:08:33 +0000 UTC
