American Conservatism Research Articles

Conservatives watch cartoons: The rise of Disney, the right and cultural criticism in the 1990s

This research explores the dynamic intersection of conservatism and Disney animation during the 1990s, a pivotal decade for both political ideology and cultural influence in the United States. It examines the complex relationship between conservative film critics and Disney’s animated productions, focusing on the tension between conservative expectations of Disney as a bastion of traditional values and the company’s evolving cultural and corporate identity. The study highlights key features of Disney’s animated films that troubled conservative critics while revealing the diversity of conservative perspectives. Central to the former critiques were concerns about the erosion of traditional family and societal norms, especially regarding power structures, feminism and familial hierarchy. Additionally, it addresses a gap in the historiography of American conservatism and Disney Studies by analysing how conservative cultural critics engaged with Disney’s animated productions, offering new insights into the interplay between conservative ideology and American popular culture. By analysing conservative film reviews from this period, the research challenges the notion that Disney’s animated features were merely conservative propaganda and identifies the 1990s as the turning point in the relationship between conservatism and Disney.

Racing whiteness in Asian bodies: The influence of American conservatism on Singaporean anti‐colonial nationalism

AbstractIn contemporary Singaporean sociopolitical discourse, comparisons with the West—particularly the USA and the UK—have become pervasive across a wide range of critical social issues. These comparisons often serve to reinforce the political positions of the Singaporean state by contrasting them with perceived shortcomings in the Western world. Utilizing a linguistic anthropological framework, this paper explores the phenomenon of anti‐colonial nationalism, wherein state representatives dismiss challenges to the Singaporean status quo as unpatriotic, Western‐influenced, and thus dangerously “white.” By demonstrating how Singapore's anti‐colonial politics is paradoxically shaped by the anti‐liberal and populist rhetoric of the contemporary American right, this paper argues that anti‐colonialism is a product of twenty‐first‐century neoliberal nationalism. Underscoring the importance of examining how political rhetoric crosses international borders, this study seeks to invite a conversation on the dynamics of nationalist discourses in the twenty‐first century, and how the language of decolonization can be co‐opted by new forms of state power and control through a racing of “whiteness.”

Association Between Dimensions of Pathological Object Relations and Right‐Wing Conservatism

ABSTRACTRight‐wing conservatism in the United States has many features of psychological interest that evoke the question of what factors might be associated with it. One factor that may be of particular interest to psychoanalytically oriented social scientists is object relations, pathology in which is often operationalized in terms of three dimensions (identity diffusion, primitive defenses, and problems in reality testing). There are reasons to expect that each of these three dimensions might be associated with contemporary right‐wing conservatism, although this has not yet received much empirical examination. In this study we address this issue, examining the association between dimensions of pathological object relations and right‐wing conservatism in a broad sample of U.S. residents (N = 392) using a partial least squares approach to structural equation modeling. Results suggest that primitive defenses and reality testing problems are positively, and identity diffusion is negatively, associated with right‐wing conservatism. These findings have implications for how we might understand right‐wing conservatism and dialogue with those identifying with it.

Registered report: Cognitive ability, but not cognitive reflection, predicts expressing greater political animosity and favouritism.

Liberals and conservatives both express political animosity and favouritism. However, less is known about whether the same or different factors contribute to this phenomenon among liberals and conservatives. We test three different relationships that could emerge among cognitive ability, cognitive reflection and political group-based attitudes. Analysing two nationally representative surveys of US Americans (N = 9035) containing a measure of cognitive ability, we find evidence that compared to people lower in cognitive ability, people higher in cognitive ability express more animosity towards ideologically discordant groups and more favouritism towards ideologically concordant groups. This pattern was particularly pronounced among liberals. In a registered report study, we then test whether the same is true of cognitive reflection in another large dataset (N = 3498). In contrast to cognitive ability, we find no relationship between cognitive reflection, political animosity and favouritism. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive test of how cognitive ability and cognitive reflection are related to political animosity and favouritism for liberals and conservatives in the United States.

From Institutions to Families? The Changing Allocation of Responsibility for Cognitively Disabled Children in Dutch Postwar Long-Term Care Policies

Who is responsible for health care? Neoliberal policies since the 1970s seem to place this responsibility increasingly on the individual, in a process that is called responsibilization. The recent literature on neoliberalism, however, has questioned the preference of free-market liberalism for individual responsibility and shows how neoliberals often made common cause with communitarian conservatives on social policies. Melinda Cooper, for instance, has argued in her book Family Values that free-market liberals and social conservatives in the US both identified the family as a ‘wholesale alternative to the 20-century welfare state’. This article investigates whether this coalition of neoliberals and social conservatives, who agree on the importance of familial solidarity in addition to market freedom, has also played a role in the making of Dutch health care policies. By tracing how responsibility for long-term care has been allocated in the postwar Netherlands in the specific case of children with (cognitive) disabilities, the author will show how ‘the family’ has increasingly been embraced by policymakers as the main responsible party. This is remarkable because the Dutch postwar welfare state sought to loosen family ties in favour of individual arrangements. However, attempts by different stakeholders to deinstitutionalize Dutch health care during the 1990s unintentionally moved the state's responsibility for long-term care not so much onto individuals as onto families.

Iberian Vistas: Franco, Salazar, and American Conservatives

The article takes both a historical and a present-oriented look at the influence of the twentieth-century authoritarian Iberian regimes—including their leaders, Franco and Salazar—on the American conservative movement. It explores the political and religious motivations and major narratives driving Hispanophilia and Lusophilia, and their main advocates. Furthermore, and with a comparative approach, the text analyzes the past and current arguments—in magazines, books, and social media—favoring both regimes, especially in the light of the revival within American conservatism of Catholic Integralism and the defense of alternative representative systems, such as corporatism, that could usher in a new postliberal political regime. The article further explores the potential impact—and inherent limitations—of such strategies and projects, and shows that the revival of interest in figures such as Franco and Salazar is significant not only in terms of a reinvigorated criticism of the political and moral philosophy of liberalism but also regarding the search for new political forms and regimes.

A ‘natcon takeover’? The New Right and the future of American foreign policy

Abstract Donald Trump's capture of the Republican Party enabled a radical questioning of received wisdom within the broader conservative intellectual movement. In particular, it enabled the emergence of a post-Trump, distinctly American New Right. This policy paper examines the American New Right and its visions for United States foreign policy. In the context of contemporary American politics, the New Right is best understood as a rejection of the ‘fusionism’ that has characterized US conservatism since the early decades after the Second World War. The paper argues that there are three major identifiable parts of the New Right: the Claremonters, the post-liberals and the national conservatives. In part because of their ‘big-tent’ character, as well as deft intellectual leadership by Yoram Hazony, the national conservatives have become the most influential group within the contemporary New Right. The article also examines how the New Right has attempted to create an alternative ideational infrastructure, with a clear focus on entrenching itself through large-scale credentialing of personnel deemed to be loyal to the New Right's agenda. There is reason to speak of a ‘natcon takeover’ of traditional conservative institutions. This is particularly the case with the Heritage Foundation, the largest and most influential conservative think tank. While all segments of the New Right ostensibly embrace some notion of grand strategic restraint, the policy paper argues that the rise of national conservatism is likely to accelerate the US pivot from Europe to Asia rather than lead to neo-isolationism, as is sometimes suggested.

US conservative advocacy organizations and right-wing legal mobilization in Europe

AbstractSome recent work on populist conservative forces engaged in legal mobilization in Europe highlights the involvement of US-based conservative legal advocacy organizations and their European affiliates. These groups are linked to efforts to resist the integration of Europe and the power of the European courts to implement the projects of liberal, left-leaning pro-EU social forces. Little attention thus far has focused on the lawyers active in these advocacy groups, their ties to the American conservative legal movement and the transnational lawyer networks of which they are a part. This essay sketches an agenda for future research on the composition, operations, strategies and discourse of this complex constellation of conservative lawyers and their organizations.

Where ideology meets private interest: the three-part composition of climate obstruction in the United States

Abstract A network of organizations working to oppose climate action, called the climate change countermovement (CCCM), has long been a critical yet highly opaque subject of study for social scientists concerned with climate politics. We leverage a new combined dataset of boards of directors, financial contributions, and texts produced by CCCM members to characterize its sources of support and social structure. We show that foundations tend to make more frequent and larger donations to CCCM nonprofits when they are linked through a board member. We also show that CCCM nonprofits which are more distant from each other in the social network of board members produce different climate change discourses. Community detection methods robustly detect three communities within the CCCM: conservative think tanks (CTT), oil and gas trade associations, and utility, coal, and manufacturing trade associations, each with unique goals within the countermovement. The findings suggest that the climate countermovement is an interface among these communities which together ensure that climate action obstruction is achieved on different but complementary fronts, through both discursive and more concrete policy efforts. This paper also introduces a new way of understanding organized climate obstruction and makes significant methodological contributions in the study of social movements and countermovements.

Leveraging Systems Thinking to Dismantle Systemic Racism in Conservation

ABSTRACT In the early 1990s, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and other cultural heritage organizations began to formally address the lack of racial diversity in the US conservation field. Since then, a wide array of programs designed to attract a more racially diverse group of people to the field have been developed and implemented. Their impact, when measured by increased racial diversity in AIC membership, has been limited. Using the concepts of systemic racism, critical race theory, and systems thinking, this article explores how the conservation field got to where it is today and what it could do to become a contributing element of an inclusive society. Possible ways to leverage lasting change are proposed. An invitation to those who are interested in interrogating what is set out, finding the weak points, filling the gaps, and building on the strengths is extended to all readers.

Silencing trans voices

ABSTRACT In recent years, conservatives in the United States have deployed a transgender moral panic attacking the place of trans people in public spaces. This article explores how this panic has been supported by an effort to purge trans-inclusive literature from education spaces, such as schools and libraries, in the United States. Utilizing a unique set of materials, I identify the common discourses developed by anti-trans activists. By eliminating trans stories, anti-trans activists seek to erase even the possibility of trans happiness from the realm of imagination.

“A Revolution in Economic Thinking” – USAID and Privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe (1981–1993)

Abstract: With Ronald Reagan’s ascent to power in January 1981, the conservatives were eager to promote neoliberalism to revitalize America at home and weaken the Communists and the New International Economic Order abroad. Surprisingly, the main vehicle of this ideological offensive was an agency long hated by the American conservatives, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Throughout the 1980s, the agency promoted neoliberal dogmas in developing countries, especially in Latin America which was considered as a testing ground for the neoliberal ideology. To achieve this goal, USAID promoted an important tenet of neoliberalism as a tool for economic development: privatization. At the same time, the agency established various collaborations with different types of actors in a “neoliberal nebula” in which it found an important place. At the end of the 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc provided the reaganized agency its most important test: the promotion of free-market economy in the socialist countries. This article examines how USAID became part of the ideological offensive led by the Reagan administration through its transformation into a neoliberal actor seeking to promote privatization in developing countries. In the process, Latin America became a testing ground for these new policies, but also a blueprint for those that USAID would soon implement in the Eastern Bloc after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Above the Written Law”: Iran-Contra and the Mirage of the Rule of Law

AbstractWhy have scandalous sprees of lawbreaking by U.S. government officials proven so seductive yet so difficult to prosecute? This article takes the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan–Bush era as an instructive case study and red flag in the attitudinal erosion of the belief in the rule of law among American conservatives. Before the scandal broke, officials and legal counsels willfully mis-interpreted a clear prohibition to fund counter-revolutionaries and fabricated a post-facto presidential permission in order to sell weapons to Iran without congressional oversight. Congress's assumption that government officials would obey its statutes resulted in neither wrongdoing being punishable by criminal sanctions. Conservatives therefore argued that ends justified neglecting certain laws while also denying they had broken any laws. Prosecutors found themselves compelled to prosecute Iran-Contra's defendants over more prosaic crimes such as lying and stealing rather than more abstract and damaging ones. President George H. W. Bush's pardon of Iran-Contra defendants contributed to an impunity that further eroded the American rule of law to this day.

Distinct But Not Separate: Rethinking Maritain’s Distinction of Planes to Recover his Democratic Potential

Few Catholic theologians wielded as much influence over the Twentieth-Century Catholic Church as Jacques Maritain. Furthermore, few have stirred as much global controversy in the realm of theological politics (especially in the area of global affairs). Considered treasonous by Latin American conservatives and impractical by those arguing for a politically active church, Maritain’s work touts a contemplative moderation that frustrates all political sides. Maritain’s canon daunts even the best readers and often breeds practical misinterpretation of his own philosophy. Using primary sources from Argentina and Brazil, this article reexamines Maritain’s distinction of the spiritual and worldly planes and its application of Maritain’s political thought during both the Spanish Civil War period and Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship (1964-1986). It thereby pushes back on longstanding theological critiques of this distinction. Far from advocating a church aloof from the political sphere, Maritain advocated for a vigorous engagement with it while maintaining the church’s spiritual integrity.

Questioning the Pope: US Conservative Catholics and the Online Polarization of the Debate about the “Church of Bergoglio”

Questioning the Pope: US Conservative Catholics and the Online Polarization of the Debate about the “Church of Bergoglio”

Cosmopolitan Anarchy: Ananda Coomaraswamy, Transnationalism, and Walt Whitman

abstract: This article explores how anarchists championing Walt Whitman's sexual libertarianism before and during World War I were eclipsed by American conservatives, who promoted the poet as a parochial nationalist to assert the hegemony of US-style democracy on a global scale. Focusing on a special "Walt Whitman" issue of The Modern School journal marking the centenary of the poet's birth in 1919, I discuss Ananda Coomaraswamy's argument that Whitman was spokesperson of a "new religion" antithetical to puritanical sexuality, capitalist acquisitiveness, and the anthropocentrism undergirding the West's industrial exploitation of the natural world. I conclude with an examination of Lajpat Rai's mobilization of Whitman to the cause of Indian nationalism and Coomaraswamy's disruptive counter discourse, in which Whitman embodied an anarchic form of cosmopolitanism that was internationalist.

Owning the Libs: The Contemporary Politics of Envy

Abstract: This essay defines Owning the Libs (OTL), a logic of envy, characterized by a subject's need to both deny another enjoyment and to frustrate the capacity of these political opponents to live. My case studies focus on reactions to progressive protests in the post-Ferguson environment. OTL is not downstream of some cultural war nor an exotic right-wing, illiberal phenomenon. Situating personhood in the tradition of violent dispossession, I illuminate the practice's liberal roots, before concluding OTL will be (if it is not already) US conservatism's policy agenda, and an existential threat to progressive agitation.

Man in the Mirror

ABSTRACT: Write about politics for long enough and you'll put some arguments into the world you come to regret. This issue's special section on the global right has me reconsidering a long piece on American conservatism that ran here in Dissent in 2019. That's before Joe Biden steamrolled over a primary field that was supposed to be the future of the Democratic Party, barely scraped together a victory over Donald Trump in an election that was supposed to signal the arrival of a new progressive majority, and then pre sided over an administration that was supposed to mark the end of neoliberalism. It's also before the summer of George Floyd, when the largest protests in American his tory were supposed to launch a reckoning that would transform the country.

The Problem of American Conservatism, Revisited

The Problem of American Conservatism, Revisited

Resisting in Times of Law and Order: Civil Disobedience, American Conservatism, and the War on Crime

Resisting in Times of Law and Order: Civil Disobedience, American Conservatism, and the War on Crime