It took the removal of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to finally stir at least a few on the right into action in the United States.
The unconstitutional, mafioso-like threats by Donald Trump’s head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Disney’s preemptive cave-in, were sufficiently egregious an infringement of the First Amendment that even right-wingers like Ted Cruz raised the alarm. The literal cancellation in July of Stephen Colbert by Paramount to facilitate administration approval of a key merger was, apparently, insufficiently obvious.
Shutting down comedians who mock the Great Leader president is textbook authoritarianism, while preemptively complying with the diktats coming from such regimes is the textbook corporate response. You can’t rely on corporations, no matter how avidly they endorse values such as free speech and basic rights, to ever do anything other than serve their own interests and those of their shareholders.
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If FCC boss Brendan Carr’s assault on the First Amendment was perhaps just a little too blatant, you can’t really blame him or the Trump cabal: there has been so little pushback to the regime’s steady implementation of an authoritarian agenda. In fact, there has been support from the right for the regime’s determination to weaponise the murder of right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk to justify a crackdown on progressive groups and liberal speech, despite a dearth of any evidence so far of a connection between the murderer and left-wing groups.
Trump’s fat-fingered directive to his attorney-general to undertake political prosecutions of his opponents has also failed to attract much criticism from the right of the political divide.
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If the ongoing assault on political liberalism has drawn little opposition from the right, Trump’s assault on economic liberalism attracted even less. It goes far beyond tariffs: Trump’s ongoing attempts to bring the US Federal Reserve under executive control, no matter what the price in inflation, his crony capitalist deals with companies like Nvidia, his seizure of equity stakes in companies, and his attempts to interfere in the production of independent economic statistics have all passed with relatively little comment from the right, except for diehard neoliberal economists.
This failure to object continues the steady erosion of any coherent ideology on the right. As Crikey pointed out six months ago, the right won the ideological wars in the 1980s but is now by far the biggest threat to the ideas it elevated to the status of Holy Writ in the years of Reagan and Thatcher: free trade, globalisation, small government, independent central banks and open borders. But the descent of the US, the supposed bastion of democracy, into fascist autocracy under Trump confirms that the democratic elements of that program — individual freedom, rule of law and freedom from government interference — have joined the list of core values being trashed by the right.
That victory of neoliberalism on the right amounted to the defeat of old-school moderate conservatism, with its emphasis on tradition, avoidance of large-scale change, proven institutions and societal norms, which played out in different ways and at different times in different countries — Thatcher replacing Ted Heath in the UK; the party of Nixon becoming the party of Reagan in the US, the Fraser-Peacock Liberals being replaced by the dries of the Howard years here. Now neoliberalism faces the same fate: to be swept aside as yesterday’s ideology by a new, more hardline breed of right-wingers.
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Problematically, however, it’s not clear what these right-wingers believe, judging by their enthusiasm for Trump and other autocrats. Certainly not in the neoliberal economic agenda. But nor in democracy, based on their support for Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election result. Nor the rule of law, judging by their attacks on judges who fail to make politically correct decisions. Nor in individual freedom, judging by their support for the seizure of people off the street by masked government agents. And nor in freedom of expression — the opponents of woke censorship and “cancel culture” have proven the most ardent and hardline cancellers of all once in power.
Indeed, it appears that the commitment of so many on the right, including here in Australia, to their supposed shibboleth of freedom was weak indeed. At best, it was a fist with which to punch downward at desired targets — minorities, migrants, women, progressives — at worst, a deliberate lie to hide an agenda very much the opposite of freedom: a program of governmental control of every aspect of life embodied in a single leader.
Perhaps the word “agenda” overstates its coherence: it is no more coherent a program than Trump is intellectually or ideologically consistent. It is an “agenda” of the white male id — capricious, short-fused, anxious, paranoid, jealous, demanding of control but resentful of the burden of responsibility control brings — the nihilism of privilege.
From conservatism to neoliberalism to nihilism in just 50 years is a historic transformation, one that continues apace.
