I have not read Jeffrey Tucker’s 2017 book “Right Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty.” But I have read extensively about it and watched him articulate his ideas in a number of videos. One I should like to focus on was a lengthy interview conducted by Dave Rubin in 2018 and still available online.
Tucker’s thesis, it seems to me, is a masterpiece of obfuscation consisting of gross generalizations backed by highly selective evidence leading to evaluations that would seem to make sense only to one lost in a Leftist fog.
Clearly an admirer of the Classical Liberalism that emerged from Enlightenment Europe, Tucker deems both the Left and Right to have become increasingly addicted to authoritarianism and intolerance throughout the 20th Century and into the present. Now as I have said repeatedly, the Left’s concept of “equity” by definition prioritizes Government Coercion over the Freedom of the Individual. Believing not in equality before the Law but in the bizarre principle that the incredible diversity of our species ought to yield relatively uniform socioeconomic results, it is implicitly committed to forcing reality to submit to its arbitrary expectations. Hence, for example, the notion that Women, in spite of their demonstrable physical/psychological differences from Men, ought to comprise 50% of every board of directors and government agency in existence. Of course none of those devoted to that ideal would ever consider arguing they also be allowed to die in equal numbers with male construction workers atop skyscrapers in the dead of winter. The absurdity of the Left’s “social justice” warriors is that their definition of Justice, as it was for the father of their religion, Karl Marx, refuses to acknowledge the universal, irrepressible impact of the ineffable, unpredictable inner workings of the human Mind and Spirit.
But, Tucker asserts, the “collectivism” that has poisoned the good intentions of the Left is manifest equally on the Right as typified by the ugly Nationalism and Racism promoted by Donald Trump. The implication is that Trump is little better than Hitler. In his discussion with Rubin, Tucker cites the ex-president’s 2015 statement that immigration would be a priority of his government should he be elected. But was his concern with the integrity of America’s southern border a matter of racism or pragmatism, a matter of his loathing for Hispanics or of his belief in the Rule of Law coupled with his awareness that his country was fiscally incapable of adequately caring for those already within its borders. Britain’s Brexit vote would seem to be another example of the crude, right wing “collectivism” so loathed by Tucker. But were the multiple acts of Islamic terrorism which plagued Great Britain in the years before it decided to withdraw from the E.U. not legitimate reasons for its citizen’s desire to regain control of their borders? Were Trump and the Brexit vote indicative of some widespread, populist outbreak of fascism, or is Tucker’s thesis a gross distortion of the facts?
It must be obvious by this point that the Nation State is no longer viewed by Leftists [i.e., globalists] as a valid way of organizing the planet. If you do not buy their egalitarianism, if you do not believe that everyone, everywhere, is equally entitled to everything, whatever their beliefs or behavior, you are, apparently, a racist!
I have read dozens of testimonials by people of color saying that Trump in not a racist. Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad refers to Leftists who refuse to acknowledge the dangers posed to Europeans and their Culture by massive, unmonitored immigration from Africa, as the Ostrich Brigade, citing the rape of more than 500 women in Cologne, Germany, on New Years Eve, 2015, by a huge mob of non-European men. It appalls Saad that the Left, which claims to be so attuned to Women’s Rights, simply closes its eyes to the fact that Women within Islam are basically considered second class citizens. It’s a complicated issue. Of course there are millions of decent Muslim men who would never dream of raping a woman. But Culture is not some meaningless abstraction invented by White racists to demonize “the other.” Tayyip Erdogan’s invocation to Muslims a couple of years ago to flood Europe and Islamize the entire continent was fairly clear in its intent! As I discussed in my last blog, however, Cultural Principles and Values don’t matter to the brain-dead Left and Tucker, perhaps betraying his empathy with that sector, simplistically dismisses anyone who has any reservations with limitless immigration to the West as a fascist.
Yes, there are racists, misogynists, homophobes, etc. lurking within the ranks of the Right. They are, to use Tucker’s word, “collectivists” in that they see the world in terms of contending Identity groups [i.e., Us vs. Them]. But is it not strange that the host of “conservatives” I revere loathe Identity politics? Is it not strange that Jordan Peterson, a prominent spokesperson for contemporary “conservatism,” focuses exclusively on the responsibility of each Individual to rationally take charge of his/her life, as did Nathaniel Branden, another iconic “conservative” who, 50 years ago in “The Psychology of Self-Esteem,” preached the very same gospel, a gospel utterly antagonistic to a “collectivist,” herd mentality? Is it not strange that Tucker, while willing to demonize the Right by cynically attributing its various positions to the most despicable of all human impulses, is utterly impervious to the fact that the Classical Humanism he so reveres is more or less synonymous with mainstream “conservatism”? At one point in his conversation with Rubin, Tucker describes those targeted in his book not only as anti-immigration, but as anti-freedom and anti-Capitalist. Dennis Prager and the myriad of other pro-Capitalist, freedom-loving advocates I read on a regular basis, must have wondered how it was they came to be utterly deleted from Tucker’s skewed vision of the world.
Bizarrely, Dave Rubin fails to challenge his guest’s gross generalizations about “conservatism.” Perhaps he was simply being polite. Perhaps, as the interview in question took place in 2018 and Rubin had only abandoned what he had come to consider the lunacy of the Left three years earlier, he was not yet fully committed to his new perspective. But simple, inarguable fact: Jeffrey Tucker’s insistence on identifying “conservatism” with racism, fascism, Nazism, etc. is alarmingly disingenuous and repudiated daily by a racially disparate crew of “conservative” advocates who base their valuations not on the Identity of history’s players, but on the actual moral/intellectual quality of their behavior.
I have no explanation for Tucker’s refusal to acknowledge this obvious fact. The Classical Liberalism he supposedly reveres is right there in front of him in the form of contemporary “conservatism” which continues to champion the Freedom of the Individual operating within the Rule of Law. Perhaps enamored with the “good intentions” of the Left, he is psychologically incapable of making it the primary villain of his narrative. But that some vile people espouse perfectly rational “conservative” Principles and Values for the most indefensible of reasons, does not, as Tucker would seem to contend, cancel the legitimacy of those Principles and Values.