A couple of years back, Fred Clark made the observation that the religious right does not police its right-wing boundary for heretical thought because there is no boundary: “No group or individual’s status within evangelicalism is suspect because they may be too white or too patriarchal or too nationalist or too conservative. But any member of the group who is perceived as insufficiently white or insufficiently patriarchal or insufficiently nationalist or insufficiently conservative is deemed “controversial,” and their status and legitimacy within the group is never a settled question.” Or as he put it a decade earlier, “‘Conservative’ occupies the same space in the evangelical imagination as “sexual purity” does. To say someone was “too conservative” — theologically, politically, socially — would be like their saying a bride was too much of a virgin.”
Thus while conservatives may not like the Jim Crow-loving slimeballs preaching that white male supremacy, an all-white America and the return of slavery would all be good things, the faith of those slimeballs is not in question. Liberals, no matter how much they may look to the Bible for guidance and inspiration, are always suspect.
Reading Clark’s Slacktivist blog recently, it struck me the same is true of secular conservatism. They may not like neo-Nazis (and I emphasize “may not”) but if Nazi support helps them crush liberals, there are no enemies to the right. And this is not good: “if there’s no boundary on the right, inevitably you spiral down to a state of Nazi allyship, as Roberts and slimy Catholic right-winger Adrian Vermeule are. We end up with Moms for Liberty and others quoting Hitler, Tucker Carlson interviewing Nazi right-wing star Nick Fuentes and Heritage’s Roberts defending Carlson — though as noted at the link, the heat from his own side was hot enough to make Roberts back down.” There are exceptions, but not enough. And it’s hard to oppose Nazis when there’s so much overlap in your goals: crushing women, crushing POC, crushing LGBTQ people.
Here’s an example. In the wake of Sen. Eric Schmitt embarrassing himself interrogating prosecutor Jack Smith, it came out that he’s being touted as a possible VP for when Vance runs for the Oval Office — despite Schmitt being comfortable hiring a Nazi. I can’t imagine Republicans being so chill if Schmitt had a Muslim on his staff, as accepting Muslims as Americans is now one of those On The Left things Republicans have to despise.
This is not innately a right-wing problem. Decades ago, a large chunk of the American left was convinced the Soviet Union, the great socialist bastion of freedom, was leading the world into a Golden Age of socialism. Even as late as the 1970s, I knew campus communists who insisted the USSR invading Afghanistan wasn’t an invasion, it was a liberation from the cruelty of Islamic dictatorship! It wasn’t. At the moment, however, this kind of thinking seems to be overwhelmingly a right-wing thing — I wish “no enemies to the left” was a thing, but it isn’t.
Instead we have a mass of Democrats freaking out that Zohram Mamdani is too radically left and his being on the ticket will sink Democrats’ chances in purple and red states … where he isn’t on the ticket. Dems everywhere feel the need to gatekeep and assert that yes, they aren’t on Team Mamdani. Somehow nobody ever felt the need to likewise denounce conservative West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin even though he frequently blocked Democratic policies on energy and climate and wanted Republicans to win in 2024 (that in itself should put him completely outside Overton’s window).
And now Republicans have a new case, declaring Nixon’s crimes were all a frame up by the deep state. Because as we know, Republicans being criminals and being impeached isn’t an issue for the party today (Kevin Kruse points out, by the way, that the “historian” pushing this is not a historian at all).
Nazis are still monsters. Modern Nazis are already part of the GOP and they find it compatible. And that just normalizes Nazism as simply another strand of conservatism. The GOP’s inability to draw a line in the sand will not end well for anyone. Neither will those Democrats who think they can fix this by ensuring their decisions don’t alienate Republicans. That includes — if we do pull a big win next month — not acting as if Republicans deserve some sort of participation trophy when they lose. As Rebecca Solnit put it in 202, “the victors of the recent election are being told in countless ways to go grovel before the losers. This unilateral surrender is how misogyny and racism are baked into a lot of liberal and centrist as well as right-wing positions, this idea that some people need to be flattered and buffered even when they are harming the people who are supposed to do the flattering and buffering, even when they are the minority, even when they’re breaking the law or lost the election.”
