We Need to Talk About What Conservatism Is

And why it should be neither reactionary nor fascistic

The events of recent years have got me thinking lately. The many ways the anti-woke movement went wrong, the way the IDW imploded, the way the political right has taken an authoritarian turn, the emergence of a 'National Conservatism' that is neither nationalist nor truly conservative but highly authoritarian, and so on. Why did all this happen? And what can we do to fix things from here?

Exploring the Conservative Tradition

The common element in the aforementioned cases appears to be the rise of a harshly authoritarian strain of thinking in the political right. Therefore, I think we need to examine the conservative philosophical tradition first. After all, it is what is supposed to underpin the political right. I think we should start with the ideas of 18th century British thinker Edmund Burke, because he is often considered the father of conservatism. Burke was actually a member of the Whigs, the main liberal party in Britain at the time. He was outspoken against the British government's oppressive policies towards the American colonies, and the damage the East India Company was doing to India. He opposed slavery and supported Catholic emancipation, and took a leading role in arguing against unrestrained royal power. He even worried that democracy would lead to tyranny over unpopular minorities. All this earned him the respect of liberals both in his time and long after his death. As you can see, Burke cared about individual liberty and justice for everyone, including minorities. He was certainly no reactionary who opposed all change and wished to use government power to turn back the clock. His approach to the controversies of his day would hardly fit in with today's populist, culture war orientated part of the right. If Burke represents what real conservatism is, then Trumpism, 'National Conservatism' and the postliberal right are simply not conservative movements at all.

The reason Burke is revered by conservertaives is because he staunchly opposed the French Revolution, correctly predicting the chaos and authoritarianism that would follow. Burke's opposition to the French revolution actually took his fellow liberals by surprise, again proving that he was not a reactionary who predictably opposed all change. The reason he opposed the French Revolution was because he saw that the radical upheaval, the total destruction of tradition, the focus on abstract ideas rather than practical reality, and the denial of the complexity of people and society, would eventually lead to tyranny. I think there are very real parallels between Burke's story, and today's classical liberals who are anti-woke. Like Burke, we started out being passionate about liberty, concerned about the overreach of government power (particularly during the 'War On Terror'), and advocated for the inclusion and equality of minorities against the conservative establishment. We did all this because we believed in individual liberty. However, in the 2010s, 'wokeism', more accurately known as cultural systemism, began to demand changes to society that were harmful to free speech and individual liberty, and we felt we had no choice but to take a stand against this development. Like Burke more than 200 years ago, we saw a revolution that was rooted in academic philosophy, ignored the complexities of reality, and was hellbent on deconstructing and banishing all traditional values, including even free speech itself. Like Burke, we predicted that it would not end well for liberty. If Burke's opposition to the French Revolution represents the core spirit of conservatism, then we anti-woke liberals are the very best expression of the conservative tradition in this day and age.

Of course, the conservative tradition is not limited to Burke. Let's look at another very well respected figure in that tradition, 19th century British Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He is famous for saying that 'the great question is, not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, the traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines'. In other words, it is not change in general that is to be opposed, but that only change rooted in abstract philosophy and doctrines, removed from reality and alien to the traditions of the nation, that should be opposed. This is entirely consistent with the way Burke approached politics, even though Disraeli was speaking almost a century later. Clearly, Burke and Disraeli belonged to the same tradition.

In fact, this tradition of conservatism, as it should be properly understood, has never entirely died out. More recently, 11 years ago to be exact, then-British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron famously stated that 'Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.' Cameron supported gay marriage because it was an exercise in extending traditional values, and specifically traditional British values too. Being committed in a life-long relationship is a traditional value, and the role of legal marriage in securing that commitment has a long tradition in British law. The reform of gay marriage, while being a social change, is a change that is entirely consistent with British traditions, and not an alien imposition rooted in abstract philosophy. The logic of what change to accept here is again similar to what Burke and Disraeli represented. Again, today's anti-woke liberals are in strong agreement with this philosophy. It is why we are open to new ideas and supportive of reforms to make life better for everyone in general, but opposed to the kind of radical and theory-driven change that cultural systemism represents. This is why a strong case can be made that today's anti-woke liberals are the real heirs of the conservative tradition, properly understood.

The Origins of the Authoritarian Right

If today's anti-woke liberals are the real heirs of the conservative tradition, then today's authoritarian right necessarily represents a distortion or corruption of the conservative tradition. I believe an analysis of the history of Western politics, particularly American politics, of the past several decades actually supports this view. In the mid-late 20th century, the US Republican Party gradually adopted a culture-war based politics, where reactionary sentiments to any and all change are encouraged and magnified, for the sake of electoral gains. A series of strategic moves laid the foundation for this transformation, including the 'southern strategy' that took advantage of post-desegregation reactionary sentiment, the making of abortion into a central culture war issue after Roe v. Wade was decided, the 'war on terror', and the aughts scare campaign around gay marriage. This meant that, by the aughts, Republican politics no longer represented conservatism as properly understood, but a populist reactionism that fundamentally opposes all social change, something very different to the Burke-Disraeli approach to politics. This reactionary version of conservatism also had some, but not total, influence in other Western countries.

In the aughts, reactionary conservatism was focused on preventing change that was yet to happen. Gay marriage was its first and foremost target. Yet, as history teaches us, change is inevitable, sound ideas will win out in the end, and reactionaries never successfully stop all change. So gay marriage became legal in almost all of the West, despite aggressive resistance by the reactionary right. The reaction of the true conservative might have ranged from actually welcoming the change (like Cameron did), to reluctantly making peace with it, seeing that it is now what the people support, and predictions of negative effects on family values haven't come true either. But the reactionary cannot accept any change, and views it as a defeat. This is why the culture warriors on the right are now saying that gay marriage won because the right was not aggressive enough, and that they now need to wage the culture wars, especially on LGBT issues ever more aggressively.

The wish to use state power to wage the culture war aggressively has, by definition, turned reactionary conservatism into something that is completely alien to the conservative tradition, by turning its back on everything from the principle of limited government to the classical liberal values that Anglosphere conservatives going back to Burke held as a central pillar of their politics. The movement looks up not to English-speaking conservatives like Burke, Disraeli, Reagan and Cameron, but to right-wing figures in Eastern Europe like Viktor Orban. This politics hence represents an unwelcome import of authoritarian foreign norms into the Anglosphere to supplant our own liberal values and traditions, something real conservatives should resist unconditionally.

Most concerningly, the tactics that the movement has adopted, including stoking populist negativity towards certain minority groups, obstructing the freedom of private businesses to do business as they see fit (including Disney, Bud Light and Target alike), not taking a stand against the fake news and biased reporting that is creating a post-truth political discourse and encouraging hateful sentiment, and continuing to stoke passions even as violent individuals and groups have threatened businesses and organizations in the name of fighting this culture war, have alarming parallels to the fascism of 1930s Europe. Given that conservatives should, by principle, oppose all fascistic behavior (as Winston Churchill famously demonstrated), the true conservative needs to stand against what the culture war right has become today. While I think that today's culture war right can't be called 'fascist' (they don't support a fascist economic system, nor do they appear to be antisemitic, for example), it is certainly not to be considered a form of conservatism, because true conservatives do not condone fascistic behavior.

What Needs to Happen

The first thing that needs to happen is the revival of the conservative tradition, as properly understood. As I have demonstrated, today's anti-woke liberals are the natural heirs of the conservative tradition, and we should unapologetically take it up. If we do not, we would be allowing the culture war right to pretend that they are conservative, which would serve to hide their radicalism from the general public. Taking up the conservative mantle would not harm our ability to identify as classical liberals, or argue for classical liberal positions. There is no conflict between conservatism and classical liberalism, in the context of the 21st century English-speaking West. Even going back to Burke's time, English-speaking conservatism clearly had a liberal character. After several more centuries of the classical liberal consensus, a conservative in our society would definitely have to be a classical liberal, trying hard to conserve this important part of our political tradition for future generations, against assaults from both the left and the right.

The lack of a healthy conservative tradition has also led to today's polarization, where many people feel like they have to choose from either wokeism or the increasingly authoritarian right, or else shut up about their views. The revival of the conservative tradition would go a long way to fix this problem. Bringing back a conservatism that allows the possibility of gradualist progress would also provide an alternative to the kind of progressivism that is rooted in abstract, and hence unsound, cultural systemist theories.

We also need to call out, and ultimately aim to defeat, the authoritarian culture war right, for two reasons. Firstly, they are the reason why so many young people immediately react negatively when they hear 'conservative'. They are the reason why we classical liberals still fear embracing the c-word, even though it fits us very well. The image of conservatism has been tarred by several decades of reactionism, as well as the recent authoritarianism, and we need to work hard to rehabilitate its image. We can't do that without calling out the authoritarian culture war right. Secondly, some in the authoritarian culture war right are now resorting to fascistic behavior out of a desire to forcibly turn back the clock of society. Even though they are not actually fascists, embracing fascistic behavior should be unacceptable to conservatives, and we should make it clear. As Winston Churchill demonstrated, conservatism can only be credible if it takes the strongest stance against fascism. We too can take a credible stand for conservatism in today's world by firmly opposing the fascistic behavior that we are seeing from the authoritarian culture warriors right now.