Revisiting Richard Hofstadter's essay 'The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt' (1955). Here are the highlights of an essay that was in many ways prescient: (thread)

Hofstadter sketches out a distinction between restrained conservatism and pseudoconservatives revolting against the present. It's a shame he drew so heavily on Adorno's research, which doesn't offer him much.
But this characterization of pseudoconservatives resonates deeply right now.
Hofstadter considers causes, but also hints at business interests (and nowadays donors) harnessing pseudoconservatism, and highlights how making money through pseudoconservatism incentivizes paranoia. Consider Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Dinesh D'Souza and so on.
Why are pseudoconservatives obsessed by the threat of *their own government*, Hofstadter wonders.
Hofstadter famously and controversially answers that modernity's instability and America's complex sense of identity fuels status anxiety and conflict.
The status politics stuff hasn't aged perfectly, as Hofstadter himself quickly realized (in this postscript), but at the time, it was a dramatically new type of analysis in addition to basic economic interests.
Today, I think we would talk about the previous normative certainties of race, gender, sex, religion changing over the past 60 years and the reaction to that, blasted through partisan media (which is in part a direct successor to Hofstadter's pseudoconservatives.)
Why now, Hofstadter asks. Partly because new waves of immigrants no longer provide a step up the status ladder. Today we might say the unsettling of racial, religious and gender hierarchies disrupts often white, evangelical/conservative Catholic and male status.
Hofstadter fingers the mass media as a cause, today it is massively intensified by the participatory and personalizable nature of the Internet.
And the long period of liberal dominance, which the right now feels as sustained and total, incorporating all aspects of politics and culture.
Although pseudoconservatism is a small phenomenon, it has outsized influence. "In...
Hofstadter sees parts of pseudoconservatism as paranoid fantasy, not a new event in history. The past four years has been a Bircherfied right. But where does this pathologizing get us, beyond catharsis? I'm not sure.
Finally, Hofstadter returns to the distinction between conservatism and pseudoconservatism. Pseudoconservatism's total opposition to compromise takes it out of the bounds of democratic politics. Instead, it is "implicit utopianism." /Fin.

More from History

Rush Catalog
Emotion Detector (1985, Power Windows)
https://t.co/3U3Ol6tMHU
#RushFamily
@RushFamTourneys
What's your grade of this song?

https://t.co/3U3Ol6Lo6u

Lyrics:

When we lift the covers from our feelings
We expose our insecure spots
Trust is just as rare as devotion —
Forgive us our cynical thoughts
If we need too much attention —
Not content with being cool
We must throw ourselves wide open
And start acting like a fool

If we need too much approval
Then the cuts can seem too cruel

Right to the heart of the matter
Right to the beautiful part
Illusions are painfully shattered
Right where discovery starts
In the secret wells of emotion
Buried deep in our hearts

It’s true that love can change us
But never quite enough
Sometimes we are too tender
Sometimes we’re too tough
If we get too much attention
It gets hard to overrule
So often fragile power turns
To scorn and ridicule
Sometimes our big splashes
Are just ripples in the pool

You May Also Like