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Notes -
Tyler Cowen published an analysis of the “new right” today.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/classical-liberalism-vs-the-new-right.html
He illustrates the new right as a reaction against two factors: the pretty crazy level of what we’ve come to call wokeness on the left, and the capture of most of the main cultural institutions by the same left.
At the same time, there are signals that the woke left is declining in power and relevance (not quite a sure thing yet, but he lists a few signs that we’re trending this way).
Tyler does a good job in my opinion of fairly representing the views of the new right, while also laying out his own disagreements with the philosophy. These center around the idea that the new right is unlikely to be able to create a high trust society. Indeed, since 2016 we have had a precipitous decline in trust in our society, and while almost no one would disagree with this, the different sides would place the blame on different factors.
He finishes the piece:
Overall I think it’s an important piece and potentially a lot of the more thoughtful members of the new right might get a lot out of reading it.
Political movements often do a good job at identifying problems in society, but it’s usually their own internal quirks and flaws that end up being magnified if and when they do come to power. Politics tends to progress as these flaws become exposed, as one side reacts against the excesses of the other, and vice versa.
Whatever the case may be, it leads one to wonder whether the woke left and the new right are short term aberrations, specific to what will be looked back upon as a short period of time, or whether these are indeed the feedstock of long lasting ideologies that we’ll be stuck with.
That’s certainly one way of putting it.
I’ve argued previously that the biggest liability of this New Right is free speech absolutism. So long as they incorporate a subculture which is really loudly invested in, say, using slurs, they will continue to polarize fresh enemies. It may still be strategically wise—the absolutists claim that without them, the New Right loses outright to censorship.
This is the same drawback faced by identity politics. It generates pushback at an astounding rate. Look at how much of the New Right is fixated on calling out woke excesses—how much ammunition has been handed out. “Polarizing” is the intersection of “offensive” and “useful.”
That said: I’m firmly in the short-term camp. The utility of these strategies will hit its limits before the outrage thus generated. Cowen points out some evidence for idpol approaching that point; I read the dissident/alt/New right as following a similar curve. When the seams of angry young men are mined out, when the blue-check well runs dry, mainstream politics will shamble back to the old standbys of economics and social safety nets.
Is the New Right absolutist on freedom of speech or is it simply defensive about the unpopularity of its own speech? If we're identifying the New Right with people like, e.g., Sohrab Amari, they might use absolutist rhetoric when one of them gets banned from twitter, but then they'll turn around and argue for banning speech they disapprove of (and not in a 'ban from privately owned social media' sense).
This is a sticking point for me with Cowen's overall analysis - I don't think the New Right is rooted in libertarianism/classical liberalism at all. Amari and Dreher are integralists, Yarvin is the neoreactionary, Carlson is a bit of a chimaera but at heart seems to be a paleocon, etc... but the common thread of wanting to use state power to remediate culture war losses puts them quite far from classical liberalism (to say nothing of rising anti-capitalist sentiments).
The free speech group has overlap with the right these days out of a common enemy, but I have no illusions that things would change if the right grabbed control of institutions.
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