The Woke Right?

There is a woke left. But there is also a woke right. And the two are basically the same.

That realization hit me when I read a piece in Unherd by the British conservative Mary Harrington entitled Darryl Cooper: World War II historian for the woke Right. She was discussing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Darryl Cooper, an internet opinion writer whom Carlson called “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” Cooper maintained that Churchill, not Hitler, was the “chief villain” of World War II. And that the concentration camps were the result of failing to plan for the millions of prisoners of war and political prisoners Germany was saddled with, to the point that the Nazis decided it would be more humane to kill them than to let them starve to death.

Back in 1993, I published a book entitled Modern Fascism, which showed that Fascism and Nazism were distinctly modernist movements, with direct connections to the rise postmodernism. I focused on the philosophy and theology of fascism, exploring their repudiation of the “Jewish influences” on Western civilization–that is, the impact of the Bible, which pro-Nazi liberal theologians sought to purge from Christianity. Anyway, in that book I predicted that Fascism would come back. And it has.

I argued at the time that Fascism was not conservative, since conservatives (at the time) believe in small government, personal liberty, free market economics, and transcendent morality, the polar opposite of fascist totalitarianism. But now, with “big government conservatism,” “postliberal” political theory, and the like, some conservatives are at least flirting with fascist ideology. Though where I most see fascism today is still on the left, with its identity politics and power reductionism. (See this for my look back on the book after 30 years, in which I discuss what predictions have come true, what I missed, and what I underestimated.)

I have already seen some revisionism arguing that Fascism really was not so bad. So I wasn’t surprised at the Carlson interview. But I was struck by what Mary Harrington, a long time critic of woke progressivism, had to say about it:

“Woke” historical revisionism from the Left is a familiar trope in the culture war. Just last week we learned that the University of Nottingham has expunged the phrase “Anglo-Saxon” from its module on, erm, Anglo-Saxon England, in a bid to “decolonise the curriculum”. Across the pond, since 2019 the revisionist “1619 Project” has attracted conservative criticism not just for factual inaccuracies but also for the politically provocative move of challenging the received narrative of the American founding in 1776.

Cooper’s revisionism represents a Right-wing equivalent of the 1619 Project: a radical re-narrativisation, with a similarly tendentious relation to factual accuracy, of a politically load-bearing set of historical narratives. It’s also premised on broadly the same set of insights about the relation between historical narratives, ideology, and power as Left-wing “woke” revisionism, and particularly the crucial “woke” insight concerning the operation of power through language, narrative, and ideology.

So is there a “woke” right that is similar to the “woke” left? Consider:

Both go in for historical revisionism.
Both are pre-occupied with power and oppression.
Both are fixated on victimhood.
Both are critical of free market economics.
Both want big government to solve our problems.
Both employ social media mobs to silence or punish opposition.
Both are flirting with antisemitism.
Both believe that behind society’s appearances is some kind of systematic evil.
Both will speak of a sort of conversion, when they first realized how bad things are (waking up, taking the red pill; becoming “woke; becoming based)

Can you think of other similarities? Or am I wrong about this?

As I was putting together this post, I read another article, which sees on both the far left and the far right a common disgust for American life. The author, though, says that you can be a populist and work to reverse what is bad in this country without falling into that trap. Here is Fred Bauer in “Based” Signals vs. Populist Policies:

Like Marxist radicals in the Sixties, “based” discourse often uses disgust with American life as proof of authenticity. From this perspective, maximal honesty means asserting maximal brokenness. The foes are legion: corporate America, the “deep state,” feminists, every media outlet, the “forever war” political establishment, schools, “wokes” of all stripes, Big Tech, nonprofits, professional associations, conservative organizations, and your next-door neighbor. They have taken every opportunity from you, and the struggle with them is the essential goal of politics. (Apparently, much of this “struggle” consists of listening to podcasts.) . . . .

Affection rather than disgust is a stronger foundation for a “realigned,” more populist right: that we have inherited a great nation, and we need to rise to the challenge of preserving that Republic for this and future generations. That requires strengthening American families and rebuilding the nation’s industrial infrastructure. This kind of political vision is compatible with a range of populist policies, from regaining control of the border to doing more for working families. But it also means affirming American life and not tossing our national inheritance into the bonfire of trollery.

Illustration: I asked the AI image generator at Stable Diffusion to give me an image of “two angry young men, one a left winger and the other a right winger.” Evidently, Artificial Intelligence, after scouring what the internet knows about them, can find no obvious difference between them. [AI images are not subject to copyright.]