The Right Wing Backlash isn’t “Populist”
Are we experiencing a right-wing backlash against the insane excesses of Woke? If we are experiencing this backlash, then what are its dynamics? How, precisely, has it happened?
I would like to suggest that it has been very much "top down," and, perhaps, this is true of all such societal shifts. It has taken place not because a certain percentage of the population feel deeply unhappy, but because a certain percentage of a small elite have experienced intense dysphoria. To put it even more simply, the richest man in the world was unhappy about Wokeness and he, therefore, crossed the Rubicon and changed everything, albeit knowing that the 'silent majority,' intimidated by the Woke, were behind him.
In 2022, together with my colleague J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles, I published The Past is a Future Country: The Coming Conservative Demographic Revolution. I don't think we are yet at the revolution which that book augurs. We argue in the book that we had selection for conservatism between about 1400 and 1800, Darwinian conditions weakened, mutations associated with liberalism built up, and in 1963 we shifted over to liberalism, having reached a tipping point. However, even within this process, there were humps and bumps: Liberalism, followed by a conservative backlash. It is one of these minor cycles that we are likely seeing today, on the way to a full-scale reversion to conservatism for genetic reasons.
In The Past is a Future Country, we noted that humans have five moral foundations. As we are pack animals, there are the binding foundations of obedience to authority, in-group loyalty, and sanctity (wherein we sanctify that which is good for the group and are disgusted by that which is bad for it and for us). But as, in prehistory, you had to have high status in order to breed, there are also the individually-oriented foundations of equality (so that you get more) and harm-avoidance (so that you are not harmed). Conservatives are high in all 5 moral foundations, whereas liberals are high in the individually-oriented foundations and low in the binding ones.
This difference leads to asymmetrical empathy between conservatives and liberals, meaning that conservatives will cede ground to them and, in general, things will move leftwards. This will continue until, for far too many people, binding foundations are insufficiently attended to and individually-oriented ones have clearly gone too far. People will feel a sense of dysphoria, and there will, in general, be disordered chaos. Anything representing power and order will be attacked, religion will be undermined, all that is sacred will be up-ended, and we will be weak in the face of war and disease. The result is a right-wing backlash.
This itself can go too far, leading to dysphoria. For example, it would seem that the nineteenth century witnessed just such a conservative backlash. Numerous diseases became endemic all at once in industrialized cities. This elevated a disgust response and, in elevating mortality salience, heightened religious instincts. We then witnessed runaway purity-signalling, especially with regard to sexual matters and other issues related to disgust, until, by the 1920s, illegitimate children were being refused service in shops because they were from such a morally impure bloodline that their very presence might pollute the shopkeeper. This was a repressive society in which individual moral foundations were insufficiently attended to. However, it may be instructive with regard to what is now happening to us.
Post-World War I witnessed the rise of Hollywood and various examples of previous restrictions loosening: women wearing shorter dresses, women entering the workplace and going to university, movies dealing with sexual issues (the Hays Code not being imposed until 1934), and so on. It was as though the people invested in the conservative regime realized that a shift was occurring, so, after World War II, there was a huge clampdown. In England, for example, homosexuality, previously illegal yet rarely prosecuted, was rigorously prosecuted. In the US, homosexuals were effectively banned from civil service jobs, and McCarthy did all he could to "cancel" leftists, especially in the media. But, in about 1963, the liberal backlash began in earnest and continued until the 1980s when a combination of leftist-induced chaos and disgust-inducing AIDS witnessed a conservative backlash, especially against homosexuality, which, in the UK at least, began to be reversed in about 1997.
Since 1997, we have seen runaway individualism, with nothing akin to the Cold War to temper it. Intelligent people (for the intelligent are more conformist) have competitively signaled their liberalism in an increasingly wealthy context (meaning nothing to stand in its way), meaning that we have entered Clown World in which feelings are more important than truth, we must accept delusions as truth, and we must over-promote members of "marginalized groups" in the name of "equality," resulting in corruption and incompetence. Where the conservative society would overlook the severe flogging and sexual abuse of children as confronting it might lead to the questioning of the aristocratic class permitting it, we now allow children to be sexually abused because admitting it's happening might question the idea that all cultures are equal; this being the morality via which the ruling class justify their position. We allow deluded children to sterilize themselves, lest they get upset.
We seem to be quite precisely following what happened in the first half of the twentieth century, but in reverse. The movies promoted "degeneracy," whereas the internet, and especially social media, allowed people to question the new Woke System. The regime could no longer control thought and ideas in the way it once could. Like-minded people could find each other, anti-regime ideas could be amplified, and dogmas (which all regimes have) could not be so easily sustained. This was the invention of printing but on an inconceivable scale.
Consequently, the American people, albeit via a Byzantine system where he lost the popular vote, elected Donald Trump. This resulted in a massive clampdown by people who feared they were losing power: Cancellations in abundance via Twitter, throwing opponents off social media, extreme censorship, constant Woke propaganda, de-banking of opponents, the Wokefication of every aspect of society, the tyrannical reaction to George Floyd, the possible theft of the Presidential Election, and so on.
This resulted in the most extreme dysphoria, especially among certain members of the elite. It was bound to lead to a full-on right-wing backlash. This happened when Elon Musk - the richest man in the world, a man whose "transwoman" son was estranged from him and rendered infertile by runaway liberalism - purchased Twitter, the de facto public space, and made it, once more, broadly pro-free-speech. This was vital because the Woke mobs had moved their activities onto Twitter; it was how you canceled people. Yet the mutants of Hope Not Hate found themselves suspended for a week for doxing a conservative, and people could now criticize the Trans-Narcissists who would have us partake in their delusions.
Musk broke the stranglehold of Wokeness on the popular platforms, signaling that powerful people are against Wokeness. This, of course, emboldens its critics. They feel protected, they realize that they are the majority, they understand that the Woke are demoralized, and, indeed, anti-Wokeness seems "high status" and the "Current Thing." This would cause intelligent people to begin to shift over to it – as they understand the benefits of conformity and of getting in there ahead of the game – and now you really do have the beginnings of a backlash.
Trump is able to be elected – and this time he's not politically naïve, so gets to work immediately while the Deep State is still in shock - because of this, and, between his election and inauguration, the Los Angeles fires highlight even further the Hell that Wokeness leads to. Now you have a president and a very important element of the Gramscian "Institutions" that are anti-Woke, boosting conservative confidence even further. And we watch as Trump solves the key problem: deporting these criminal immigrants by the thousands.
Meanwhile, Musk has used his platform to attack and humiliate Britain's anti-British Labour government, forcing more and more people to understand what Wokeness has done. This makes people so angry that they lose their fear of the Woke mob, there being only so many people the Woke mob can attack at any given time.
So confidence spreads further, the mood shifts further . . . and the cowards, the regime enforcers, begin to switch sides, justifying their cowardice to themselves as they always do. Senior Labour Party members, who have previously condemned Trump, such as Peter Mandelson and David Lammy, are suddenly licking his boots. America sneezes, the world catches a cold.
But crucially, this has come from above, not below. This is elite theory playing out. Power to control thought and obedience to the regime shifted towards those who owned large social media platforms. A disgruntled, anti-Woke man purchased such a platform and, in so doing, has been able to lead a backlash against mutant power. And, in that its dynamics follow the major backlash of 1963, it may well be a real backlash.
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A minor pedantic correction, which hope will not overtly annoy you.
To the best of my knowledge, McCarthy went after military officers and the civil service not the media. Attempts to root out communists within Hollywood were about 7 or 8 years earlier with the The House Select Committee on Un-American Activities. Which was originally an anti-fascist subcommittee to root out fascism within pre-war America.
Though during interwar years before the backlash to Communism The chairman of that committee was a now known Soviet confidential informant. As confirmed by the Soviet archives opening up. It's very minor and most people won't notice it.
It's stilla good piece overall, but if you do feel like you need to correct it. I will do one better and suggest the least intrusive correction. Just substitute the word McCarthy with McCarthyism and with that you'll only get a slight grumble from us. Nitpicky history major types.
Have a wonderful day professor!
I don't buy that the 80s was a conservative backlash. It was a high point for Reagan/Thatcher era unbridled capitalism, but cultural conservatism was not really on the table other than some minor nods to it where necessary for their coalition. And I'm not quite sure cultural conservatism is alive now, although perhaps it has a better chance than the 80s. The 80s were a time filled with gender-bending bands being promoted, homosexuality becoming acceptable in the mainstream, etc.