How Trumpism Swallowed Conservatism, by Jeffrey Tucker.
In the summer of 2015, Donald Trump came to FreedomFest in Las Vegas –an event for conservatives and libertarians — as an eccentric outsider. Almost a gate crasher. People wondered why he was there. He presented his message of protectionism and immigration restrictionism, while railing against Iran and China. Only a strong leader can save us from them, was his message. So far from Reaganism was his message that it was surprising that he received even a smattering of applause.
The next year, it was different. True, a “Never Trump” movement had developed in conservative circles but it didn’t have legs. Mostly, the activists were coming around. I spoke from the FreedomFest stage with warnings that Trump’s ideology is neither libertarian nor conservative but from a different tradition altogether, one that was historically and philosophically statist. I was booed by perhaps two thirds of the audience.
I did the same the next year — Trump was now president — and I was basically shouted down. I’m glad no one in the audience was carrying vegetables.
At least Trump fights the left effectively, unlike so many previous “conservative” leaders.
I get that people like a winner. His political victories are legendary. They also fear the left, which seems to have lost all rational moorings. …
The new intellectualism on the right:
It’s common that mainstream venues attribute Trumpist ideology to working-class whites without advanced education. This is now a caricature. There is an emerging brain trust forming out there, which suggests to me that the nationalist/protectionist/restrictionist mindset is spreading and entrenching itself. As in markets where success speaks for itself, and attracts imitators, so too in politics. The remarkable rise and persistence of Trump as politician has caused a shift in thinking among serious-minded people. The thinking is leaning against liberalism (classically understood) and for a new version of statism: what I’ve called right-wing collectivism. …
To me, it is a disappointment to see how and to what extent the intellectual class is trapped into a state-dominated mindset, flinging left then right without considering classical liberalism as a viable option. …
Remember that statism is what left and right have in common: the determination to mold society according to some pre-determined end; they only differ on their end-of-history eschaton. The means of obtaining it are the same: capture the prize of power and impose one’s view on everyone else. …
The trouble is that this right-wing longing for control of the centers of power normalizes what should never be considered normal in a free society: a state that knows no limits to its power.
Trump is a 1990s Democrat, who didn’t move onto the anti-white, identity politics of the new left.
