I’m frequently told that the division between Right and Left is between ‘individualism’ and ‘egalitarianism’. However, I remain unconvinced. Let’s ignore whether right and left are well-defined categories at this moment, but assume they mean something useful – they certainly operate in the contemporary English Speaking world.
Certainly people on the Right, frequently describe themselves as ‘individualists’, that is true. After all, can individualism, be bad? “We are all individuals!”. We don’t want to be controlled by others. Maturity is a form of ‘individuation’. We should discover our individual talents, and so on.
The problem is that people on the Right, seem to be more accurately described as ‘supremacists’. They nearly always imply things like: the wealthy are great and good, men are better than women, gay people are inferior, white culture is better than any other and needs to be protected and promulgated, and so on. People of the right type are dominant because they are superior and deserve it. We frequently hear how Trump is a great leader because he is a great man, successful at business etc. He is superior and even favoured by God.
The current Right’s favourite policy of neoliberalism seeks to use the State to enhance powerful and wealthy interests, and suppress opposition through talk of ‘free markets’. Even in its individualistic forms this movement seeks to protect the powerful from the people and democratic regulation, but not the people from the powerful and what promotes their profit. It is implied that the corporately powerful are inherently better people; they do stuff.
All of these people seem quite happy to join together to enforce their supremacy; they have little reluctance to put the rights of their group ahead of the rights of outsider individuals, especially individuals who they define as inferior.
Indeed, it sometimes seems that they need inferior groups to denounce to make it clear that they are superior. These groups are nearly always groups which are not that powerful: unemployed people, unmarried mothers, drug addicts, refugees, racial minorities, sexual minorities, religious minorities and so on. Sometimes they denounce minor elites, when those elites disagree with them or say that their ideas are wrong: people like scientists, academics, non-neoclassical economists, post-modernists or so on. Often these people are people who have studied these areas of contention, but they can be denounced as inferior or corrupt. They don’t seem to worry that much about violence being directed at the inferior. It’s either necessary, provoked, or simply does not occur, whatever the evidence to the contrary.
Sometimes people on the Right pretend they are the victims of these inferior people, and this proves how the inferior really need to be put back in their place. We can think of men claiming they are victimized by feminism, white folk claiming the only racism comes from black folk, wealthy people claiming they are being held down by envy, taxes or unions, and so on. The inferior folk are deadly cunning and deserve what is coming to them.
It is this necessity for the construction and denunciation of the ‘inferior,’ that seems to lead to the ease with which people on the Right can join up with fascists, religious authoritarians, military authoritarians, racist groups and so on. It would be hard to explain how individualism merges with authoritarian collectivism if the Right were really individualists rather than supremacists.
If they were individualists, then it would be illogical to condemn other individuals who live differently, but if they are group-supremacists then it is quite logical and even necessary.
The group binding forces, also make it necessary for them to praise people on their side, even when it is clear they would be furious if people on the other side had done the same kinds of things – as is clearly shown by supremacist reactions to the Mueller inquiry. Does anyone seriously think that they would not be calling for Clinton to be executed if the evidence pointed to her being supported by Russians, trying to make contact with Russians, having commercial ties with Russians, and trying to suppress an inquiry into her contacts with Russians. But being a group promoting supremacy, it again becomes logical. Truth is irrelevant to supporting their power as is support for lack of corruption. They are superior and can do no wrong.
There may be people on the right who don’t support supremacy, but they are not that easy to find.
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