is there a global conservative movement network?
A few days ago, I was on the Ben Merens show discussing Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party (click here for the archive). A caller made an interesting point. Occupy Wall Street is a progressive movement that has many ties to activists around the globe who are interested in economic inequality. In contrast, the Tea Party seems distinctly American.
Here’s what I said: Yes, to the best of my knowledge, there aren’t many ties between the Tea Party activists and conservatives in other countries. But still, there is a version of right wing populism in other nations. Tea Party like movements exist in other nations, but they don’t share the same level of connectedness as their liberal counterparts.
Questions: 1. What would you have answered? Was I right? 2. If you agree with what I said, why isn’t there a global conservative activism network?
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Written by fabiorojas
March 1, 2012 at 12:01 am
Posted in fabio, self-promotion?, social movements
12 Responses
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Thinking of an inter/transnational conservative movement makes me immediately think of the story of Bertrand Russell and the solipsist. The nationalist strain of conservatism in the US, in the Scandinavian states, and in Germany (and probably other states as well) is one of its central figure. Reaching out to other nations’ conservatives would likely be ignored, and if not ignored, then self-defeating.
That’s just my gut feeling though, no research.
Historically speaking the most famous and successful TNOs (and, if you consider them separate things, transnational epistemic communities) have been capital-p Progressive in nature.
JimPavlik
March 1, 2012 at 12:08 am
I think this may party be due to the philosophical differences between liberals and conservatives. The left tends to approach issues globally, identifying with humanity as a whole, and supports international institutions. The right often takes the form of “national” parties, with isolationism as a platform plank, and distrusts international institutions. While it makes sense for a more global-focused liberal philosophy to lead to international cooperation and organization, it would be strange for isolationist Americans to organize internationally with isolationist British, German, French et al conservatives.
The exception to this would be race-based right, for example the Nazi party, since it is ethnicity that binds rather than nationality.
Kevin Bondelli
March 1, 2012 at 12:17 am
I largely agree with the people who commented above. Nationalism is usually one of the defining features of right-wing populist movements, so it would seem that they would just be generally less inclined toward international cooperation from a philosophical point of view. This nationalism is often so prominent in their rhetoric that it would be hard for them to even connect with groups in other countries. I’m not sure why Tea Party members would care much about BNP rhetoric about preserving English culture or why BNP members would care much about Tea Party rhetoric focusing on their strict constructivist view of the US constitution. On the other hand, the themes of left-leaning movements, like inequality, will resonate in a lot of countries.
JD
March 1, 2012 at 1:14 am
rupert murdoch’s empire is an international conservative movement.
name
March 1, 2012 at 1:44 am
I would have mentioned this: Glenn Beck Meets Vatican Clergy and “International Tea Party Leaders” http://feedly.com/k/yv2NQD – though I would have pointed out that this seems very astroturfy.
There was also the case of anti-Park51 protesters inviting Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right populist.
Finally, I would have also said something about the work of Jessie Daniels about neo-nazi websites, which cross borders and serve to network far-right groups around the world (or at least in North America and Europe).
John
March 1, 2012 at 2:02 am
Conservative movement isolation may also be more present in North America than other places. Do European conservative populist movements coordinate, exchange ideas, draw inspiration from one another? Do Latin American? Do East Asian?
If we considered Islamists as a conservative (religious) populist (against religious and political elites) movement, then I think we would have to say that isolationism is something that their “platform” is notably against.
cwalken
March 1, 2012 at 2:46 am
To the point made by “name,” I think that corporate conservatism operates beyond international boundaries, but in essence is only knowingly subscribed to by elites. While many national conservative movements are used by corporate conservative elites, it is not a philosophy that on its own rallies conservative masses.
I would agree with cwalken’s point about radical Islamic conservatism and categorize it in the supranational with Nazism since religion is a similar organizing identity as race or ethnicity.
Kevin Bondelli
March 1, 2012 at 4:05 am
My impression is that there is some degree of communications between right-wing (as in the National Liberation Front-types) movements in Europe. Of course, the conservatives in many ways are always in contact with each other (think of the EU elites & technocrats who are united in their chorus to jam austerity down Europeans’ throats). But the latter are not a social movement. The former are – but I don’t see how they could have any connections with those outside of Europe (the BNDers would gouge out their eyes before talking to right-wingers in Asia, for example)
andy
March 1, 2012 at 6:31 am
The points about the neo-Nazi movement and radical Islamism are both good ones. As is the one about Islamaphobia. For scholarly reasons I follow a few anti-immigration website based here in the US. None of them, since I’ve been following them, profess a connection to the neo-Nazi movement, but there’s clear ideological overlap between the groups. A good 90% of their stories focus on crimes committed by immigrants (resident aliens or undocumented). And most of those focus on Latino immigrants and those from MENA. However, the other 10% of stories (these numbers are off the top of my head) are on problems _other_(white)_nations_ are having with immigrants in their countries; and those immigrants are always the same culprits: Algerians, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Africans, etc, i.e., non-white. So while their central concern is the dilution of American culture, they are somewhat tied in to a broader world of fear of European cultural dilution. I have a modest level of confidence that if they were asked they would also point to South Africa’s immigration problem, or Mexico’s (from Central America), or the Dominican Republics, etc. so as to reinforce the message “immigration is bad” and obscure their central intent which is just white supremacy.
I would prefer to stick with anti-immigration itself rather the slightly overlapping Islamaphobia movement as an example of true transnational conservative _movement_. Religious advance is only perceived as illiberal in an Enlightenment sense. But from a policy advocacy sense, all of the major transnational liberal movements have either been driven by or through the churches. And even contemporary liberal movements often have a lot of church participation. Radical Islamism as well as radical Christian Evangelicalism, insofar as both movements encourage high degrees of political participation/control, would qualify too, but not in the specific aspects of when they compete for converts. Which is all the really long way of saying that when we’re looking for a broader conservative movement we should focus on specific issues on which disparate conservative groups cooperate. So instead of Tea Party-XXXX coalitions, we should look for subsets of the Tea Party (Flat Tax Reformists?) and whether they have physical or intellectual links with similarly-minded folks in other states. The Tea Party is relatively new, but their intellectual traditions aren’t.
It also may be the case that the US Conservative movements are peculiarly disconnected from their ideological fellows in other countries, which would be in alignment with other sociopolitical (and even legal-rational) trends here. In the EU there may be a much broader network, for example, of pro-national/anti-EU groups that have formed an intellectual confederation for the purposes of combating a perceived threat to their respective cultures and sovereignty. The philosophical conundrum proposed there is interesting but theoretically feasible. We should get more non-US participation on this question.
JimPavlik
March 1, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Not much evidence of Tea Party global contacts, but there is certainly a set of globally oriented conservative movements. Clifford Bob’s new book speaks to this directly: THE GLOBAL RIGHT WING AND THE CLASH OF WORLD POLITICS (Cambridge).
David S. Meyer
March 1, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Do not confuse “conservative” with “libertarian.” Get off the simple abscissa of left-right and get into the spatial orientation of “domestic-foreign … economics-lifestyles … personal-social …” We know it as “The World’s Smallest Political Quiz” and it has had several instantiations over the past 40 years.
American libertarians identify with European liberals. Hayek’s first Mount Pelerin conference extended an invitation to Walter Lippmann for instance.
It is true that conservatives are nationalists. Libertarians are not. But there is no “international libertarian network” because they are fundamentally individualists. That, too, informs conservatism which is largely concerned with the individual in society, not with groups of people in societies.
We call it “laissez faire” but it was originally spoken out loud as “Laissez nous faire.”
Contrary to that are those who, following Plato, think they know what is best for everyone else and want the political power to make everyone else do what they want. And, yes, conservatives (especially European conservatives) fit that mold. However, unlike Occupy, the Tea Party is not a demand for largess or political control, but the opposite: a demand for less meddling, less control, less involvement in the lives of others.
Michael Marotta
March 4, 2012 at 7:13 pm
Does anyone really believe this: “the Tea Party is not a demand for largess or political control, but the opposite: a demand for less meddling, less control, less involvement in the lives of others.”?
The Tea Party is fueled by Christianism and is an effort to exert more governmental control in the social sphere (gay marriage, contraception, abortion) with pretense towards less government intervention economically (ultimately confused “keep the government out of my medicare” or unrealistic, i.e. stop borrowing from china, pay down the debt, but don’t touch 3/4 of the budget (defense, SS, medicare). Despite its incoherence, the TP is a reaction to a feeling of lacking power and wanting to reassert the correctness of their set of values.
Occupy, OTOH, is mostly a bunch of people who like to be indignant and like to protest. While large, structural problems exist in the financial sector, in a practical sense (i.e. what’s possible from Washington) it’s hard to see how much can be done, and with the global mobility of capital, how much one country can even do. But the Occupy types aren’t really interested in the details, but the protest. In that desire for expressiveness, they share something of the symbolic production of emotional energy (Collins) with the TPers.
Gregor
March 7, 2012 at 2:32 pm