GEORGE HAWLEY
CONSERVATISM IN A DIVIDED AMERICA THE RIGHT AND IDENTITY POLITICS
University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame,
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CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 ONE Conservatism and Other Concepts 13 TWO Conservative Arguments against Identity Politics 61 THREE Conservative Explanations for the Rise of Identity Politics 87 FOUR Conservatism and the Civil Rights Movement 109 FIVE Conservatism and Feminism 143 SIX Conservatism, Immigration, and National Identity 163 SEVEN Partisan Politics as Identity Politics by Another Name 203 EIGHT Lessons from the Alt-Right’s Rise and Fall 227 NINE Conclusion: Conservatism in the 2020s 255 Notes 291 Index 339 Hawley_Text.indd 7 8/22/22 9:49 AM
Introduction Over the course of its history, the American conservative movement has declared its opposition to several intellectual and political currents it considers antithetical to its vision of ordered liberty. Conservative in tellectuals have lambasted socialism, relativism, nominalism, secularism, and hedonism. Some have attacked the very concept of ideology as un healthy and dangerous. Recently, however, conservatives have focused much of their attention to the purported evils of identity politics. This is not a new subject of concern for conservatives, but the way conserva tives have approached questions of identity—and related questions of equality and justice—has evolved over the last seventy years. This book examines this history and the current debates about these issues.
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By “identity politics,” I mean the tendency to think about politics in terms of groups engaged in a zero-sum struggle for resources. In a sense, it is not entirely dissimilar from class-based politics, such as that described by traditional Marxism. Identity politics, however, is focused on different kind of groups. When we describe identity politics, we typically mean a form of politics built around mostly fixed demographic attributes. That is, politics focused on race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual identity, religion, and region. This form of politics—alternatively described by conservatives
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Conservatism in a Divided America
Most American conservative intellectuals look toward the Enlight enment era for arguments in favor of individualism and against col lectivism. The modern American conservative’s fondness for the Enlightenment and its most important thinkers—John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson, among others—is one characteristic that sets American conservatives apart from many other conservatives around the world. Classical liberalism, and the individualism it promoted, is a vital part of the American conservative tradition. Conservative argu ments are often rooted in claims about the natural rights of individuals.
as “tribalism”—is presumably not conducive to compromise and ratio nal discussion. It is qualitatively different from political struggles defined entirely by specific material interests. Conservatives argue that identity politics degrades people, reducing us all to our tribal characteristics, rather than treating us as free-thinking, rational, and unique individuals.
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Despite the impressive intellectual pedigree that many of these con servative arguments possess, the primary conservative claims about identity politics are challenged by our everyday experience. The kind of “individual” that conservatives promote as the ideal—someone not focused on any par ticular identity group beyond, perhaps, the nation as a whole, and rationally weighing every argument through the use of his or her personal reason—is exceedingly rare. Whatever its origins, tribalism, in some form or another, seems to be an inescapable element of democratic politics. This implies, of course, that conservatives do not fully understand their own movement. Conservatives promote the narrative that they are the side of ideas, whereas the progressive movement is just a collection of aggrieved identity groups, united by nothing beyond a shared resent ment of white, Christian, cisgender, heterosexual men. In terms of how the respective intellectuals, journalists, and activists on the left and right present their arguments, there is some truth to this claim.1 However, a closer look at the literature on political psychology reveals that selfdescribed conservatives who vote Republican can be just as tribal as their political opponents.
In defense of conservatives, I will note that identity politics can be difficult to understand because identity is complicated, as are the political attitudes that emerge from identity. There are many facets to identity, and different people will find different personal attributes salient to their sense of self. These can further change over time. For most people, identity is not
Introduction 3 determined by a single variable—be it racial, ethnic, religious, and so on— but some attributes tend to be more politically significant than others.
Conservatives are justifiably hesitant to venture into this intellectual territory for several reasons. Most importantly, the relationship between
The latest research has made this subject even more complex. It is well established that our political identities—especially our party iden tifications—are usually downstream from other forms of social identity. However, in this era of affective partisan polarization, party identifica tion itself has become an important form of social identity. That is, for many of us, identifying as a Republican or a Democrat is not just an indication of which party we vote for. These party identifications have become a meaningful part of our sense of self, as significant as many other forms of identity. The fact that we increasingly, to the extent that we can, reshape other elements of our identity to be consonant with our political loyalties shows that political categories have an incredible emotional hold on us. This is true for both Republicans and Demo crats. These findings challenge some of our basic assumptions about how democracies are supposed to function. In many ways, U.S. politics would be healthier if we followed conser vatives’ advice. At an individual level, we should strive to think beyond our identity groups when thinking about public policy, and perhaps the con servative call to do so has had some success. Nonetheless, it is important that people across the political spectrum think clearly about these issues, considering the electorate as it actually exists rather than insisting it meet an unrealistic ideal. Nor is it helpful to simply blame identity politics on a liberal conspiracy to divide Americans into antagonistic groups. This argument is incongruent with the facts, and, to borrow conservative fire brand Ben Shapiro’s catchphrase, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Scholars of public opinion and political behavior have made important discoveries about identity and partisanship. Any political theory that could prove useful in solving the more intractable problems of twentyfirst-century U.S. politics will need to take these findings into account. Accepting that identity politics is here to stay does not mean it should be celebrated. When it comes to the politics of identity, there is much wis dom in Kwame Anthony Appiah’s approach: “And so I write neither as identity’s friend or foe. . As with gravity, you might as well be on good terms with it, but there’s no point in buttering it up.”2
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In the face of these questions, calling for an end to identity politics will not suffice. One may be correct in stating that the world will be more just and free if we can escape identity politics, if we can base our political loyalties on our individual interests and philosophical beliefs, rather than our group identities and allegiances. The soundness of the argument, unfortunately, may not be important. It is unlikely to prove successful, no matter how many charts conservative pundits and scholars provide. At some point, to use a recurring theme in conservative political philosophy, one must work with human nature as it is.
This is not to say that all conservatives claim identity politics goes against the grain of human nature. Many recognize that some degree of
Although conservatives have for years complained of identity politics on the left, recent years have seen an increase in right-wing identity poli tics. This has been most pronounced in the rise of the so-called Alt-Right, a recent iteration of the American white nationalist movement. What accounts for this movement’s rapid rise and fall? If some form of identity politics really is inevitable, why did this effort to bring explicit white racial identity politics out in the open fall apart in such a short amount of time?
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identity and politics is dangerous and potentially explosive. Such a dis cussion also threatens to undermine many myths that conservatives tell about themselves and their movement, especially the notion that they are somehow above identity politics. As I will note, there was always an identitarian element to conservatism, which arguably became more important (if even less openly acknowledged) as conservatism became a powerful political force. Despite their misgivings about doing so, contemporary conservative intellectuals and journalists must take the subject seriously. Questions of identity, which are disrupting political debates across the globe, in both established and fledgling democracies, and in dictatorships, require answers. The subject of group identity is tied to many of the other most contentious subjects of the day, raising new questions about individualism and democracy. What are we to make of the apparently unexpected resurgence of populist nationalism across the Western world? How do we address the legitimate grievances of histori cally disadvantaged minority groups without provoking a backlash that leaves them worse off than before? What is the proper response to ma jority demographic groups expressing anxiety about their forthcoming status as just one more minority among many?
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Writers working on this subject face other problematic temptations. Several notable authors, including some I admire, have recently published books on the subject of tribalism in modern politics in recent years. Many
There are a few points where I disagree with Goldberg’s book. Most notably, I am not convinced that America’s escape from tribalism and embrace of Lockean liberalism, a crucial part of what Goldberg calls “the Miracle,” was ever as complete as he suggests. Identity politics was always there, even at the nation’s founding, and I am not just referring to the nation’s original sin of racial slavery. Identity politics may have taken different forms from what we see today, but at no point has it ever been fully absent. This may be a comforting message. If identity politics in some form or another has always been present, its contemporary versions likely do not signify the end of the republic. Yet it does unquestionably represent a great challenge.
Introduction 5 tribalism seems to be innate. They nonetheless also believe it can be tran scended. In Suicide of the West (2018), conservative author and columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that tribalism—and the identity politics that follow—seems to be hardwired into human beings. However, for several reasons (he does not settle on a single theory), the West, and especially the United States, managed to overcome this aspect of human nature, and it is crucial that Americans safeguard that achievement.3
When attempting to explain a large and diverse intellectual and po litical tradition, especially its approach to controversial subjects, it is very easy for critics, even friendly critics, to oversimplify arguments, attack straw men, exaggerate the influence of irrelevant kooks, or take quotes out of context. This book aspires to avoid that pitfall. I try to fairly and accurately describe conservative arguments about these issues, quoting their words directly when possible, and acknowledging that conservatives have never been monolithic. I will present representative arguments, from respected figures within mainstream conservatism, rather than cherrypick transparently foolish claims made by obvious intellectual light weights. I furthermore start from the assumption that the conservatives I discuss in the pages ahead made honest, good-faith arguments. I will mostly take it for granted that, on the occasions that they made incorrect factual statements, they did so out of ignorance rather than a desire to mislead.4 There are conservatives I do consider patently dishonest about their movement’s history, but I will mostly not engage with them here.
I unfortunately do not feel comfortable leaning on Sharif’s work to make any kind of case here, as it turns out that the Robbers Cave experiment was so flawed that we may not want to draw any inferences from it. One problem is that we could probably not replicate it today—I doubt any university’s Institutional Review Board would approve of such an experiment. A more troublesome concern is that Sharif may not have been honest in his description of what occurred during his experiments.
In her recent book on the subject, Gina Perry examines the Rob bers Cave experiment in detail, finding that the story as it is usually told omits many crucial details.5 For example, before conducting his most famous experiment, Sharif performed a similar study in 1953. This earlier experiment showed very different results, to the point that they undermined his theses. He tried to goad the two sides into conflict, and
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The results of Sharif’s experiment seem to demonstrate something extremely important. They apparently showed that people could develop levels of enmity against total strangers. They further showed that com petition is a major catalyst for these feelings of hostility, even when the stakes of the competition are extremely low. From a political science perspective, this finding, if true, could have enormous implications. For example, it helps demonstrate why so many Americans’ emotions run so high around Election Day, even if they are almost completely ignorant about issues of public policy and the policy differences between can didates are slight. The mere fact that they personally identify with the Republican or the Democratic Party is enough for them to feel strong negative emotions toward those who identify with the competing party.
6 Conservatism in a Divided America of them recounted a relevant, famous social science study: the 1954 “Rob bers Cave experiment.” The social psychologist Mazafer Sharif conducted the experiment as a test of his theory that prejudice results from compe tition between groups. He gathered two groups of a dozen boys between the ages of eight and eleven and sent them to a state park in rural Okla homa for about three weeks. The two groups of boys were kept separate except when engaging in competition against each other. The winning side of these games received honors such as trophies and medals, items that may seem symbolically significant but were practically useless. As time went on, the groups became increasingly hostile toward each other. Beginning with verbal insults, tensions intensified, escalating to theft, vandalism, and physical violence.
Introduction 7 never succeeded. In his more successful experiment, the researchers took steps to block the boys’ efforts to build friendships across group lines. The inferences we can make about human behavior based on Sharif’s work are not as clear-cut as we would like. Although I argue the research on identity, tribalism, and group conflict tells an important story, the story is not always straightforward. Sometimes interesting studies are so flawed that they are ultimately useless, but this may not be understood until after the study has had a great effect. Sometimes researchers examining similar subjects reach very different conclusions, despite all using proper methods. In other cases, results are statistically significant but not substantively important. In the pages ahead, I will try to provide as complete a picture as possible, not relying too heavily on any single set of research and acknowledging the research that contradicts my main arguments. This is a complex topic, and although I argue that identity cannot be extricated from politics, I do not want to overstate my case or oversimplify the subject. I hope conservatives will view this work as a well-intentioned cri tique. I hope to start a conversation rather than score partisan or ideo logical points. The United States benefits from a strong debate between competing ideological visions, even if ideological principles will always be rare in the electorate. This is harder to achieve when different sides fail to understand each other’s basic premises or have very different views about the basic nature of democratic politics in a heterogeneous society. Furthermore, I agree with the conservatives who say identity politics can create real problems for American democracy. However, resolving or at least mitigating those problems is not possible until we understand their true nature. I hope this book provides some clarity.
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In various passages in this book, I acknowledge that figures on the Far Right and sometimes even the extreme Right have made cogent argu ments. This may be a controversial decision, but also one that is necessi tated by intellectual honesty. One can recognize that the Radical Right sometimes makes arguments that cannot merely be waved away without agreeing with a radical-right worldview. One can, after all, think that Lenin made some very perceptive arguments without being a Leninist or even a leftist of any sort. As I have argued in the past, the Right should be treated in an intellectually serious manner. Although I take the field of political psychology seriously, I disagree with efforts within that field to
Chapter 1 presents definitions and an introduction to key concepts discussed throughout this book. I discuss the concepts of “left” and “right,” conservatism as a broad idea, and American conservatism as a unique ideology. My perspectives on these topics, though not unique, are not universally shared among all scholars of this subject, which is why it is important to explain my views and definitions. I do, however, attempt to give a fair hearing to those thinkers whose arguments on this matter deviate from my own. I also explain, as well as I can in short sec tions, how I define concepts such as “identity politics,” “intersectionality,” “political correctness,” and “cultural relativism.” I also try to discuss some of the controversies around these terms.
As I write these words, identity questions are even more salient in U.S. politics than normal. The death of George Floyd, an African American man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota in May 2020 set off a wave of protests across the nation; in rare cases, these protests were followed by rioting and looting. The Black Lives Matter movement has achieved remarkable success in changing how journal ists and the general public discuss questions of race and racism. At the same time, conservative activists have recently had great success demon izing critical race theory, leading to acrimonious debates about how race should be discussed in public schools. These developments add an addi tional level of timeliness to this project, and a greater sense of urgency to the questions I consider here.
8 Conservatism in a Divided America pathologize the Right, to treat right-wing views as a sign of some kind of mental disorder. Extremely learned and intelligent people can reach con clusions that many others find abhorrent. The mere fact that a position is discordant with the progressive Zeitgeist is not enough to dismiss it. I am sensitive to the concern that discussing extreme views in a dispassionate manner risks normalizing and amplifying these kinds of ideas, perhaps helping them make a breakthrough. In other forms of media, this may be a greater concern. For scholarly texts from a university press, however, I am confident any such effect would be, at most, minuscule.
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Chapter 2 examines the various conservative arguments against identity politics. The American conservative tradition is strongly, but not exclusively, influenced by classical liberal thinking. Although intellec tuals from this tradition differed in their views, those that most influ enced today’s conservatives, for the most part, embraced an individualist
perspective. Contemporary conservatives mostly share this view, suggest ing that group-based political distinctions are at odds with the natural rights tradition. I try, as well as I am able, to describe the conservative cri tiques of modern identity politics, noting that these arguments are some times based on principles and sometimes built upon utilitarian concerns.
Chapter 3 considers how various conservatives have sought to explain the rise of modern identity politics. They do not have a consis tent story. Some blame the rise of identity politics on the legacy of the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the thinking of the American Founders, based on natural rights, gave way to insidious ideas imported from Europe. Other conservatives blame identity politics on new ideas that developed in the post–civil rights era, when demands for equal rights for all people gave way to demands for special recognition for people according to their identities—the Black Power movement, for example. I also discuss those conservatives who have argued that identity politics resulted from other trends, such as the breakdown of the traditional family or the decline of religion.
In Chapter 4, I move to the history of the American conservatism in one of the pivotal periods of the twentieth century: the era of the civil rights movement. In this chapter, I discuss the ways in which an implicit white identity was a key element of conservatism in its early days. I dis cuss the strange dance between northern conservatives associated with the conservative intellectual movement (working with publications such as National Review), who wanted to avoid a reputation for explicit racial prejudice, and southern segregationists who thought the nascent conser vative movement could prove a useful long-term ally.
Chapter 5 analyzes the relationship between conservatism and femi nism. On this subject, the conservative discussions about identity politics deviate from its other manifestations. Unlike the high-profile opponents of the civil rights movement, who were rarely African Americans, the most notable opponents of modern feminism were often women them selves. Furthermore, when it came to women’s rights, conservatives were often more willing than the Left to engage in gender essentialism— the notion that women are fundamentally different from men and thus need to be treated differently by American laws and cultural mores. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, there was a meaningful debate between the Left and the Right as to what represented women’s
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Introduction 9
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oppression and women’s privileges in American life. In their own way, I argue, antifeminists on the right were more explicitly engaged in identity politics than feminists on the left. Recent developments, such as a grow ing trend among conservative women to describe themselves as femi nists, further complicates matters, as do the tense political debates about the status of transgender women in the modern feminist movement.
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Chapter 6 looks at the complex issue of immigration and the con servative movement’s approach to it. This subject, perhaps more than any other, has raised important recent questions about the meaning of the contemporary American identity. It is also a question that the early con servatives scarcely wrote about at all. Reading early works from leading figures of the postwar conservative movement, one is hard-pressed to find meaningful commentary on the immigration question. These early conservatives furthermore apparently took it for granted that the United States would remain a majority-white country for the indefinite future. As immigration became a more pressing issue in the latter decades of the twentieth century, and it became clear that immigration policies had set the nation on a path that will lead to the end of whites’ majority status, conservatives have sought to develop a coherent approach to the immigration question. The conservative movement, however, has always been divided on this issue, with some remaining in favor of generous immigration policies (usually, but not always, for economic reasons), and others maintaining a strong commitment to immigration restriction. I consider conservative approaches to immigration, and discuss the many issues tied to immigration, such as questions about political culture, as similation, racism, and the partisan consequences of long-term, largescaleInimmigration.chapter7,I examine the subject of partisan politics and how it disrupts the usual narratives about identity politics. I discuss the most recent research from scholars of public opinion and political behavior, noting the degree to which the typical American voter is not a rational utilitarian or a devotee of abstract principles. Instead, partisan politics increasingly looks like identity politics by another name. Political scien tists have made this argument for many years. However, we are increas ingly reaching a new, startling conclusion: our party identifications are more than the sum of our various other social identities; for many of us, being a Republican or a Democrat is now a crucial element of our sense
Introduction 11 of identity. A disturbing number of us view our partisan attachments as a crucial aspect of who we are. Our partisan identities are so strong that they can even influence our other identities, things we long assumed were exogenous to partisan politics: personal attributes such as religion and even race or ethnicity. This is even true of those of us with relatively low levels of political knowledge and little understanding of ideology. Debates about the nature and roots of partisanship and ideology in the electorate are ongoing, and I explain multiple competing theories. How ever, there is increasingly incontrovertible evidence that partisan politics is both rooted in identity and is itself a form of identity. Conservatives especially should find this unsettling, as it seems to repudiate what many in the conservative movement claim about their own supporters. If con servatives wish to continue to claim that their political philosophy is ultimately rooted in human nature, they will need to update their po litical theory, incorporating these new findings.
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Chapter 8 returns to a subject I examined in detail in two of my pre vious books: the so-called Alt-Right. At this point, I consider the AltRight a defunct movement, and I have begun speaking of it in the past tense. This does not mean that its underlying ideology—white national ism—has vanished from American life, even though it was always small and punched above its weight when it came to media attention. In this chapter, I discuss the things that we can learn from the Alt-Right’s short history. Most readers will find reasons for optimism in this chapter. It is unquestionably true that the Alt-Right was hindered by missteps by its leading figures and dysfunction within its ranks. However, it suffered from a more fundamental problem: very few white Americans actually support white nationalism, especially when offered in a straightforward manner. In a way, the Alt-Right’s history seems to further complicate this book’s arguments. If most people, at least implicitly, embrace some form of identity politics, it stands to reason that white Americans, espe cially in a period of extraordinary racial polarization, would support an identitarian movement of their own. Yet, when such a movement was placed before them, and it even seemed to have the endorsement of im portant political elites, they rejected it.
Despite apparent misgivings with contemporary multiculturalism and high levels of immigration, your typical white American (includ ing your average Republican voter) does not endorse a policy of mass
In chapter 9, I conclude by discussing how some contemporary con servatives are rethinking some of the movement’s assumptions. I have never been an alarmist, and continue to reject some of the apocalyptic scenarios suggested by many people on the left and the right. However, I must acknowledge that this is a precarious moment for the American republic. I hope I have accurately and adequately explained many of the questions that must be resolved if we are to move forward as a tran quil and tolerant liberal democracy. As readers of my earlier writings are aware, I respect and admire much of what the American conser vative movement has accomplished, but I have never shied away from naming what I consider its shortcomings. Whatever one thinks of the conservative movement, however, conservatives will play a vital role in determining the future of the United States, and I hope they rise to the extraordinary challenges ahead.
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deportation of nonwhite Americans. From the beginning, my approach to the study of white nationalism has always differed from many other academics. I have argued that we should draw a line between white nationalism and American conservatism, even while acknowledging the degree to which conservatives have benefited from, and sometimes con tributed to, white racial anxieties. I argue that events of the last few years have substantially vindicated this claim, but I acknowledge problematic exceptions and I recognize that others have a different interpretation of recent events.
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