Paleoconservatism
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Paleoconservatism (sometimes shortened to paleocon) is a conservative political philosophy stressing tradition, limited government and civil society, along with religious, regional, national and Western identity.[a][1]
According to the international relations scholar Michael Foley, "paleoconservatives press for restrictions on (illegal) immigration, a rollback of multicultural programmes, the decentralization of the federal policy, the restoration of controls upon free trade, a greater emphasis upon economic nationalism and non-interventionism in the conduct of American foreign policy, and a generally revanchist outlook upon a social order in need of recovering old lines of distinction and in particular the assignment of roles in accordance with traditional categories of gender, ethnicity, and race".[2] Practitioners of this philosophy identify themselves as the legitimate heirs to the American conservative tradition.[3]
The nativist politician Pat Buchanan was strongly influenced by the Rockford Institute's Chronicles[4] and helped create another paleoconservative publication, The American Conservative.[5][6] Paleoconservativism's concerns overlap those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s[7] as well as American social conservatism of the late 20th century expressed, for example, in the book Single Issues by Joseph Sobran. The political theorist Paul Gottfried is credited with coining the term[8] in the 1980s. He says the term originally referred to various Americans, such as conservative and traditionalist Catholics and agrarian Southerners, who turned to anti-communism during the Cold War.[9]
Core beliefs
Name
The prefix "paleo" derives from the Greek root palaeo-, meaning "ancient" or "old". It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and refers to the paleoconservatives' claim to represent a more historic, authentic conservative tradition than that found in neoconservatism. Adherents of paleoconservatism often describe themselves simply as "paleo". Rich Lowry of National Review claims the prefix "is designed to obscure the fact that it is a recent ideological creation of post–Cold War politics".[10]
The paleoconservatives use the term "conservative" somewhat differently from some American opponents of leftism. Paleoconservatives may reject attempts by Rush Limbaugh and others to graft short-term policy goals—such as school choice, enterprise zone and faith-based initiatives—into the core of conservatism. This is mainly due to the paleoconservatives' desire to see these incorporated as long-term institutional goals, rather than short-term victories for the movement itself. In this way, paleoconservatives are generally regarded as taking the "long view" toward American conservatism, willing to suffer temporary setbacks while never taking their aim off the goal of establishing the primacy of conservative thought into American politics.[11]
Moreover, Samuel T. Francis, Thomas Fleming and some other paleoconservatives de-emphasized the "conservative" part of the "paleoconservative" label, saying that they do not want the status quo preserved.[12][13] Fleming and Paul Gottfried called such thinking "stupid tenacity" and described it as "a series of trenches dug in defense of last year's revolution".[14] Francis defined authentic conservatism as "the survival and enhancement of a particular people and its institutionalized cultural expressions".[15] He said of the paleoconservative movement:
What paleoconservatism tries to tell Americans is that the dominant forces in their society are no longer committed to conserving the traditions, institutions, and values that created and formed it, and, therefore, that those who are really conservative in any serious sense and wish to live under those traditions, institutions, and values need to oppose the dominant forces and form new ones.[16]
The earliest mention of the word "paleoconservative" listed in Nexis[17] is an article by J. Patrick Lewis in the October 20, 1984 issue of The Nation, referring to academic economists who allegedly work to redefine poverty.[18] The fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary lists a generic, informal use of the term, meaning "extremely or stubbornly conservative in political matters". Outside of the United States, the word is sometimes spelled "palaeoconservative".[19]
Conservative heritage
Many paleoconservatives identify themselves as classical conservatives and trace their philosophy to the Old Right Republicans of the interwar period which influenced the United States not to join the League of Nations, reduce immigration with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 and oppose Franklin D. Roosevelt. They often look back even further, to Edmund Burke as well as the anti-federalist movement that stretched from the days of Thomas Jefferson to John C. Calhoun.[20]
Just as paleoconservatives' non-interventionism stems from their skepticism as to what extent, if any, European culture can be transplanted or forced upon non-Western cultures, paleoconservatives' opposition to immigration is rooted in their skepticism of the ability of non-Western peoples to adopt European culture.[21] As a result, paleoconservatives are most distinctive in their emphatic opposition to open immigration by non-Europeans[22] and their general disapproval of United States intervention overseas. The white nationalist Samuel T. Francis wrote:
We believe that the United States derives from and is an integral part of European civilization and the European people and that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character. We therefore oppose the massive immigration of non-European and non-Western peoples into the United States that threatens to transform our nation into a non-European majority in our lifetime. We believe that illegal immigration must be stopped, if necessary by military force and placing troops on our national borders; that illegal aliens must be returned to their own countries; and that legal immigration must be severely restricted or halted through appropriate changes in our laws and policies.[23]
They are also strongly critical of neoconservatives and their sympathizers in print media, talk radio and cable TV news.[24] Paleoconservatives often say they are not conservatives in the sense that they necessarily wish to preserve existing institutions or seek merely to slow the growth of modern big-government conservatism.[25] They do not wish to be closely identified with the Republican Party.[24] Rather, they seek the renewal of "small 'r'" republican society in the context of the Western heritage, customs and civilization.[26] Author Joseph Scotchie wrote:
Republics mind their own business. Their governments have very limited powers, and their people are too busy practicing self-government to worry about problems in other countries. Empires not only bully smaller, defenseless nations, they also can't leave their own, hapless subjects alone[27] ... Empires and small government aren't compatible, either.[6]
By contrast, paleoconservatives see neoconservatives as empire-builders and themselves as defenders of the republic, pointing to Rome as an example of how an ongoing campaign of military expansionism can destroy a republic.[28]
On some issues, many paleoconservatives are hard to distinguish from others on the conservative spectrum. For example, they tend to oppose abortion on demand and gay marriage[29][30] while supporting handgun ownership[31] and an original intent reading of the Constitution.[32] On the other hand, paleoconservatives are often more sympathetic to environmental protection,[33] animal welfare[34] and anti-consumerism[35] than others on the American right-wing.
Human nature, tradition and reason
Paleoconservatives argue that since human nature is limited and finite, any attempt to create a man-made utopia is headed for disaster and potential carnage. Instead, they lean toward tradition, family, customs, religious institutions and classical learning to provide wisdom and guidance.[36]
Fleming stated this opposition to abstract ideals in a way that critic David Brooks called a "startling crescendo":
Among the most dangerous of our theoretical illusions are the political fantasies that can be summed up in words like democracy; equality, and natural rights; the principle of one man, one vote and the American tradition of self-government. No one who lives in the world with his eyes open can actually believe in any of this.[37]
The political scientist W. Wesley McDonald explains the opposition to ideology this way:
In a humane social order, a community of spirit is fostered in which generations are bound together. According to [Russell] Kirk, this link is achieved through moral and social norms that transcend the particularities of time and place and, because they form the basis of genuine civilized existence, can only be neglected at great peril. These norms, reflected in religious dogmas, traditions, humane letters, social habit and custom, and prescriptive institutions, create the sources of the true community that is the final end of politics.[38]
Along these lines, Joseph Sobran argues in his Pensees that Western civilization relies on civility at the center of the society:
Civility is the relationship among citizens in a republic. It corresponds to the condition we call "freedom," which is not just an absence of restraint or coercion, but the security of living under commonly recognized rules of conduct. Not all these rules are enforced by the state; legal institutions of civility depend on the ethical substratum and collapse when it is absent. And in fact the colloquial sense of civility as good manners is relevant to its political meaning: citizens typically deal with each other by consent, and they have to say "please" and "thank you" to each other.[39]
Certain paleoconservatives say that tradition is a better guide than reason. For example, Mel Bradford wrote that certain questions are settled before any serious deliberation concerning a preferred course of conduct may begin. This ethic is based in a "culture of families, linked by friendship, common enemies, and common projects".[40] So a good conservative keeps "a clear sense of what Southern grandmothers have always meant in admonishing children, 'we don't do that'".[41]
Fleming calls tradition "a body of wisdom and truth and a set of attitudes and behavior handed down from one generation to another. It is our parents' respect for their grandfathers that we reflect when we refuse to think ourselves wiser than our ancestors and do not presume to condemn their shortcomings". By following tradition, Sobran said that society can maintain continuity with the past through words, rituals, records, commemorations and laws:
There is no question of "resisting change." The only question is what can and should be salvaged from "devouring time." Conservation is a labor, not indolence, and it takes discrimination to identify and save a few strands of tradition in the incessant flow of mutability. In fact conservation is so hard that it could never be achieved by sheer conscious effort. Most of it has to be done by habit, as when we speak in such a way as to make ourselves understood by others without their having to consult a dictionary, and thereby give a little permanence to the kind of tradition that is a language.[39]
Furthermore, James Kalb argues that tradition succeeds where ideology fails because it includes habits and attitudes about things that are hard to articulate rationally. Many aspects of social life resist clear definition, so technocratic approaches to social policy deserve suspicion:
Our knowledge is partial and attained with difficulty. The effects of political proposals are difficult to predict and as the proposals become more ambitious their effects become incalculable. We can't evaluate political ideas without accepting far more beliefs, presumptions and attitudes than we could possibly judge critically.[42]
Concrete roots
Many paleoconservatives also say that Westerners have lost touch with their classical and European heritage, to the point that they are in danger of losing their civilization.[43] Fleming wrote:
The decadence of a civilization by loss of faith and vigour can be observed more than once in history. What is extraordinary about the American situation is the stupidity. The Romans, such is my impression, did not become stupid and incompetent with their decadence. Americans have not lost faith in their cultural inheritance—they have been entirely separated from it. How this happened is one of the few topics still worth exploring in this Twilight.[44]
Paleoconservatives tend to dislike abstract principles presented without connection to concrete roots, like religion, heritage, or traditional institutions. This distaste for universalism includes the doctrinal conclusions by socialists, neo-Thomists and Straussians. For example, Bradford wrote in A Better Guide Than Reason (citing Michael Oakeshott):
The only freedom which can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in a history, located in space, sanctioned by genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment. The only equality which abstract rights, insisted upon outside the context of politics, are likely to provide is the equality of universal slavery. It is a lesson which Western man is only now beginning to learn.[45]
Some paleoconservatives also profess a conservative value-centered historicism, which Gottfried defines as "the belief that historical circumstances set values".[46] This is distinguished from nihilism, postmodernism, and moral relativism. Francis argued that this position is a "Burkean appeal to tradition".[46] For example, Edmund Burke wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France:
I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.[47]
Claes G. Ryn says that life has "an enduring purpose, but one that manifests itself differently as individuals and circumstances are different".[48] He writes:
For the conservative, the universal imperative that binds human beings does not announce its purpose in simple, declaratory statements. How, then, does one discern its demands? Sometimes only with difficulty. Only through effort can the good or true or beautiful be discovered, and they must be realized differently in different historical circumstances. The same universal values have diverse manifestations. Some of the concrete instantiations of universality take us by surprise. Because there is no simple roadmap to good, human beings need freedom and imagination to find it. Universality has nothing to do with uniformity.[49]
Anti-federalism
Anti-federalism (see the American anti-Federalist movement) is another key aspect of paleoconservatism, which adherents see as an antitype to the managerial state. The paleoconservative flavor urges honoring the principle of subsidiarity, that is decentralized government, local rule, private property and minimal bureaucracy.[42] In an international context, this view would be known as federalism and paleoconservatives often look to John C. Calhoun for inspiration.[50] As to the role of statecraft in society, Fleming says it should not be confused with soulcraft. He gives his summary of the paleoconservative position:
Our basic position on the state has always been twofold: 1) a recognition that man is a social and political animal who cannot be treated as an "individual" without doing damage to human nature. In this sense libertarian theory is as wrong and as potentially harmful as communism. The commonwealth is therefore a natural and necessary expression of human nature that provides for the fulfillment of human needs, and 2) the modern state is a cancerous form of polity that has metastasized and poisoned the natural institutions from which the state derives all legitimacy—family, church, corporation (in the broadest sense), and neighborhood. Thus, it is almost always a mistake to try to use the modern state to accomplish moral or social ends.[51]
For example, Russell Kirk argued that most government tasks should be performed at the local or state level. This is intended to ward off centralization and protect community sentiment by putting the decision-making power closer to the populace. He rooted this in the Christian notion of original sin as since humanity is flawed, society should not put too much power in a few hands. Gerald J. Russello concluded that this involved "a different way of thinking about government, one based on an understanding of political society as beginning in place and sentiment, which in turn supports written laws".[52] This anti-federalism extends to culture too. In general, this means that different regional groups should be able to maintain their own distinct identity. For example, Fleming and Michael Hill argue that the American South and every other region have the right to "preserve their authentic cultural traditions and demand the same respect from others". In their Southern context, they call on citizens to "take control of their own governments, their own institutions, their own culture, their own communities and their own lives" and "wean themselves from dependence on federal largesse". They say:
A concern for states' rights, local self-government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League.[53]
In a similar fashion, Pat Buchanan argued during the 1996 campaign that the social welfare should be left to the control of individual states. He also called for abolishing the Department of Education and handing decision-making over to parents, teachers and districts. Controversies such as evolution, busing and curriculum standards would be settled on a local basis.[54] In addition, he opposed a 1998 Puerto Rican statehood plan on the grounds that the island would be ripped from its cultural and linguistic roots: "Let Puerto Rico remain Puerto Rico, and let the United States remain the United States and not try to absorb, assimilate and Americanize a people whose hearts will forever belong to that island".[55]
Family
Paleoconservatives often argue that modern managerial society is a threat to stable families. Allan C. Carlson, former president of the Rockford Institute, argues:
The family is the natural and fundamental social unit, inscribed in our nature as human beings, rooted in marriage, rooted in the commitment to bring new life into the world, and rooted in a deep respect for both ancestors and posterity.[56]
He calls this a universal rule of human nature, true for Westerners and non-Westerners alike. He also argues that happiness "comes through natural family bonds" and that "the future of any nation shall be by way of the family".[57] He defines family as "a man and a woman living in a socially sanctioned bond called marriage for the purposes of propagating and rearing children, sharing intimacy and resources, and conserving lineage, property, and tradition".[58]
To be human is to be familial. Any significant departure from the family rooted in stable marriage, the welcoming of children, and respect for ancestors and posterity—any deviation from this social structure makes us in a way less "human": that is, I think it fair to say, the true message of modern science.[56]
Sobran picks up this same theme, saying that heterosexual marriage is hard-coded into human nature:
[Even] the Pope can’t change the nature of marriage. It existed, by necessity of human nature, long before Jesus or even Abraham... This has nothing to do with mere disapproval of sodomy. Even societies that were indifferent to sodomy saw no reason to treat same-sex domestic partnerships as marriages. Why not? Because such unions don’t produce children... To put it as unromantically as possible, people who have children should be stuck with each other, sharing the responsibility.[59]
Paleoconservatives also question the validity of gender feminism in similar ways, some questioning feminism in both its radical and moderate forms. They say that the push for total gender equality dehumanizes both men and women, damaging the nuclear family and sacralizing abortion. Certain attitudes toward feminism also create room for the managerial state to try engineering sexual equality. Gottfried described this position, which was influenced by scholar Allan Carlson, thus:
The change of women's role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined professionals, has been a social disaster that continues to take its toll on the family. Rather than being the culminating point of Western Christian gentility, the movement of women into commerce and politics may be seen as exactly the opposite, the descent by increasingly disconnected individuals into social chaos.[60]
Post-family order
Allan C. Carlson says that we live in a "post-family order", in which elites no longer accept the centrality of family life.[61][62] In response, he calls for a pro-active social conservatism that seeks "real alternatives to the centralized ‘corporate state’ that are compatible with liberty and family life". He argues that there is a permanent tension between the family and "individualist, industrialized society".[63] He says the modern "abstract state" too often sees the family as "its principal rival" and tries to suppress it. It can also hurt family living by the unintended consequences of public policy with good intentions.[63] He also chides American Republicans "for consistently favoring Wall Street over Main Street".[64]
As an alternative to the "abstract state", Carlson argues the state must recognize that men and women "are different in reproductive, economic, and social functions", even though they share political and property rights.[58] He says that churches and other religious bodies must step in and help rebuild "family-centered communities".[63] As for common people, he says:
Men and women are both called home to rebuild families with an inner sanctity, to relearn the authentic meanings of the ancient words husbandry and housewifery, and to exercise the natural family functions of education, the care of the weak, charity, and a common economic life.[63]
Carlson argues that the family's greatest challenge in the early 21st century comes from what he calls "soft totalitarianisms", which are "packaged around a militant secular individualism, but still seeking to build a marriage-free, post-family order".[65] This includes same-sex marriage, the left's association of family values with abortion[66] and "equity feminism".[58] Francis uses similar ideas to argue that society should regulate sexual behavior, specifically laws against sodomy and gays in the military.[67]
Polemics
Other contemporary luminaries include Donald Livingston, a Professor of Philosophy at Emory and corresponding editor for Chronicles;[68] Paul Craig Roberts, an attorney and former Reagan administration Treasury official; Joseph Sobran, a columnist and contributing editor for Chronicles;[68] the novelist and essayist Chilton Williamson, senior editor for books at Chronicles;[68] and the historian Clyde N. Wilson, long-time contributing editor for Chronicles.[68] Another prominent paleoconservative, Theodore Pappas, is the current executive editor of Encyclopædia Britannica.[69]
The movement combines disparate people and ideas that might seem incompatible in another context.[70] Such diversity of thought echoes the paleo opposition to ideology and political rationalism, reflecting the influence of thinkers like Russell Kirk[71] and Michael Oakeshott.[72]
Pat Buchanan argues that a good politician must "defend the moral order rooted in the Old and New Testament and Natural Law"—and that "the deepest problems in our society are not economic or political, but moral".[73] On the other hand, Samuel T. Francis complained that the Christian right focuses on certain social issues and neglects other civilizational crises.[74]
Kirkian legacy
Russell Kirk (1914–1994) is a key figure in paleoconservatism, in that several of his books present an outline of a pervasive Anglo-American conservative tradition that exists despite many other distinctions. His own career stretched long enough for him to defend Robert A. Taft in the 1950s, write for National Review during the Cold War, criticize neoconservatism in the 1980s and give speeches supporting Buchanan in 1992. One neoconservative writer, Dan Himmelfarb, even refers to Kirk's The Conservative Mind as "the seminal work of paleoconservatism", even though it was first published in 1953.[75]
Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism.[76] Gerald J. Russello described them thus:
(1) a belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law; (2) an affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence; (3) a conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize "natural distinctions;" (4) a belief that property and freedom are closely linked; (5) a faith in custom, convention and prescription; and (6) a recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which is a respect for the political value of prudence.[77]
In addition, Kirk said that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief".[78]
Kirk called libertarians "chirping sectaries" by quoting T. S. Eliot and said that they and conservatives have nothing in common apart from their opposition to collectivism.[79] He called the movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating".[80] He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct", libertarians being in the latter category.[80]
Kirk also popularized the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke as the prototypical conservative—and many paleoconservatives consider him a hallowed ancestor.[81] For them, he represents a vital link between the American right and the greater tradition of British customs and common law.[82] As such, his ideas are a touchstone for a conservatism that respects tradition, while rejecting authoritarianism.
Part The First: Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution
Among the incivilities by which nations or individuals provoke and irritate each other, Mr. Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution is an extraordinary instance. Neither the People of France, nor the National Assembly, were troubling themselves about the affairs of England, or the English Parliament; and that Mr. Burke should commence an unprovoked attack upon them, both in Parliament and in public, is a conduct that cannot be pardoned on the score of manners, nor justified on that of policy.
There is scarcely an epithet of abuse to be found in the English language, with which Mr. Burke has not loaded the French Nation and the National Assembly. Everything which rancour, prejudice, ignorance or knowledge could suggest, is poured forth in the copious fury of near four hundred pages. In the strain and on the plan Mr. Burke was writing, he might have written on to as many thousands. When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.
Hitherto Mr. Burke has been mistaken and disappointed in the opinions he had formed of the affairs of France; but such is the ingenuity of his hope, or the malignancy of his despair, that it furnishes him with new pretences to go on. There was a time when it was impossible to make Mr. Burke believe there would be any Revolution in France. His opinion then was, that the French had neither spirit to undertake it nor fortitude to support it; and now that there is one, he seeks an escape by condemning it.
Not sufficiently content with abusing the National Assembly, a great part of his work is taken up with abusing Dr. Price (one of the best-hearted men that lives) and the two societies in England known by the name of the Revolution Society and the Society for Constitutional Information.
Dr. Price had preached a sermon on the 4th of November, 1789, being the anniversary of what is called in England the Revolution, which took place 1688. Mr. Burke, speaking of this sermon, says: "The political Divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights:
1. To choose our own governors.
2. To cashier them for misconduct.
3. To frame a government for ourselves."
Dr. Price does not say that the right to do these things exists in this or in that person, or in this or in that description of persons, but that it exists in the whole; that it is a right resident in the nation. Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that such a right exists in the nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists anywhere; and, what is still more strange and marvellous, he says: "that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes." That men should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.
-- The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine
Unlike paleoconservatives, Kirk was not particularly influenced by the social sciences and other "modernist disciplines".[83]
Precursors
In the United States, the Southern Agrarians,[84] John T. Flynn,[85] Albert Jay Nock,[86] Garet Garrett,[87] Robert R. McCormick,[88] Felix Morley[89] and Richard M. Weaver, among others, articulated positions that have influenced contemporary paleoconservatives. Some paleoconservatives embrace the decentralizing tenets of the Anti-Federalists,[90] such as John Dickinson[91] and George Mason.[92] Neoconservative critic David Brooks lists William Jennings Bryan, T. S. Eliot, Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks and Walker Percy as major paleo influences.[37]
Counter-revolutionary (Roman Catholic) European precursors to the paleoconservatives include Joseph de Maistre, Charles Maurras, Juan Donoso Cortés, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Pope Pius IX, specifically in the Roman Catholic traditionalist subset of paleoconservatism. G. K. Chesterton[93][94] and Hilaire Belloc also influence paleo thought. Regarding Chesterton and Belloc, Sobran said:
This new, paganized Western society under the comprehensive state would have come as much less of a surprise to us if we'd paid more attention to the two great English Catholic writers of the pre-Bolshevik period. Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton saw it coming.
In 1912, Belloc predicted the rise of a new form of tyranny, which he called "the Servile State," neither capitalist nor socialist, in which one part of the population would be forced to support the other. He was not always accurate in detail, but he was right in principle. He saw that the cellular structure of Christian society was under assault.
Chesterton agreed. Together both men resisted modernity in religion, morality, politics, economics, and art. They celebrated the Middle Ages, small private property, and above all Catholicism. In a famous epigram, typically defiant in its simplicity, Belloc proclaimed: "Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe."[95]
Other historical sources referenced by paleoconservatives include Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Antonio Gramsci.[8] Contrarian leftists such as Eugene Genovese, Christopher Lasch and Paul Piccone have also influenced the movement.[96] Modern European continental conservatives Jacques Barzun, Alain de Benoist and René Girard have also been praised by paleoconservatives.
Antonio Francesco Gramsci (Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo franˈtʃesko ˈɡramʃi], About this sound listen (help·info); 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher and politician. He wrote on political theory, sociology and linguistics. He attempted to break from the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought and so is considered a key neo-Marxist.[1] He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.
He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, Fascism, Fordism, civil society, folklore, religion and high and popular culture.
Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie in Gramsci's view develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "common sense" values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure.
-- Antonio Gramsci, by Wikipedia