Quick post on the false equivalency that the ignorant or the agenda-driven blithely draw between what they see as a rise of populism in Europe and Trump's populist rhetoric and victory here in the US. A few caveats to consider before concluding they're the same thing:
1. Trump is not a conservative, but tapped into the vast electoral power of a few key conservative ideas--not because he understands them properly, or argues them effectively, but because the electorate trusted that he could deliver on the results they want. Conservatism is above all an ideology which values results and evidence over utopian ideals and "war on poverty"-esque promises that deliver no measurable improvements despite decades of money thrown at problems. American Conservative intellectuals almost all had one of two reactions to the Trump nomination: a. he's not a Conservative but could deliver on our vision for the country than the other nominee, therefore we'll hold our nose; b. never Trump.
2. Le Pen is not a conservative. She's less progressive than the French Left, but seeks to centralize power every bit as much as the Left does, just to different ends.
American Conservatism proper is about conserving what? Self-determination.
In Europe, that core idea of the purpose of political organization, of limiting government to the most local level possible, of keeping it out of the way of liberty except for the bare structures of order and security required for equal exchanges and access to opportunity to exist, has been warped over the generations. When they use the word "right wing" or "far right", they are instead referring to an ideal of an illusory cultural "purity" that political organizations must protect and prioritize. The European right operates on the populist flattery that claims a one-to-one mapping of culture to territory, labels traits by belonging or not to that territory, and finds a "solution" to all of society's ills in handing power over to a small group who promises to purge the outside influences whose unfair competition is the reason the "people" aren't getting what they "deserve". In case you haven't taken sufficient care in the reading of the previous sentence to notice the red flags, it's a narrative remarkably consistent with Marxism--the only exception being that Marxist populism targets upper classes, rather than foreign cultural elements.
This is not to say that there is no overlap between American and European Conservatism, and this is also not to say that there aren't real forces of globalism and real economic and (especially supra-national) governmental pressures brought to bear upon Western societies that Conservatism universally reacts against. However, when your "conservative" principles come out of a claim to an unbroken connection, centuries old, between your culture and your rights, then what you're looking to "conserve" tends toward a fascistic sort of nationalism that would subordinate your individual freedom for the collective culture's centrally planned benefit. And that's NOT the American idea.
America's Conservatives aren't trying to protect a MONOLITHIC culture, despite what their critics might claim, but instead define "culture" openly, as a condition of freedom of individual and community expression, so as to include the products, practices, and perspectives of a great multiplicity of "cultures" that in other places of the world are more or less bound by their geographies.
The French can hardly be blamed, though, for failing to see the saving core of individual freedom as a possibility, and therefore for looking to populist figures to be their champions--their economy has been more than 50% controlled by the public sector for at least two generations. Many have no idea what liberty really looks like.
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