The Sociopathic Antipathetic Emotional State of This New Breed of ‘Conservatives’
“Conservative” in the politics if Liberal nations used to indicate someone who endorsed a particular political ideology within the realm of of the meta-ideology of Liberalism. By its nature, that ideology has always been more about being ‘against’ than being ‘for’ anything, but it is easy to overstate that context. Traditional conservatives have been in favor of maximizing liberty within the rule of law and, for that matter, ‘for’ ‘tradition’ more broadly. A traditional conservative is skeptical of new ideas (but not unalterably against change of any kind), which can make a such a person wary of ‘democracy’. Yet, traditional conservativism came to accept the necessary connection between a democratic political process (which is in the end a vehicle for nonviolent societal change) and liberty: neither can exist without the other.
As I see it, the people who proclaim themselves to be a new breed of ‘conservatives’ in the U.S. (and their equivalent in other nations) are not driven by ideology, but only hatred. They have targeted ‘liberalism’ as an outlet for the sociopathic antipathetic emotional state in which they exist. “Antipathetic” conveys here, alongside its standard meaning, that they — especially as white people, and most especially as white males — are revulsed to an irrational degree by the thought that they could be seen as being ‘pathetic’. The result is an irrational hatred for the — liberal — society they blame for putting them in that place and any (therefore) ‘Godless’ beings who might be in favor of it.
Andreas Hofer has published yet another hugely insightful article (here in Medium: 5/13/22). In it he has a chart that contains within it a political spectrum that I consider to be particularly helpful. This spectrum has three categories: “moderate,” “ideologue,” and “dehumanizer.”
One thing that spectrum indicates is that anyone who is neither an ideologue nor a dehumanizer is part of the vast “center.” There is a measure of comfort in that.
Another inference from that spectrum is that anyone who has become an ideologue — of any kind— is on a path that can lead to becoming a dehumanizer. That way lies totalitarianism, which entails dehumanizing all opponents of any kind, to include any who might potentially become active opponents. (That is consistent with the origin of Critical Theory — not be confused with CRT, though there is a tenuous connection there — which sought to understand why a tendency towards totalitarianism exists in all ideologies.) [In the end CT failed to grasp that the source of that tendency is beliefs, which are the foundation and the driving force of every ideology.]
With this new breed of self-styled ‘conservatives’, we are witnessing people becoming dehumanizers without being ideologues. They have no ideology. They only have hatred.