The World Out of Joint

The Hard Right and Postliberalism in 21st Century American Politics

In this post, I will introduce—and expound upon—a relatively short essay by Matt McManus entitled “The World Out of Joint: The Hard Right and Postliberalism in Twenty-First Century American Politics,” which is published in Social Catholicism for the Twenty First Century? Volume 1 Historical Perspectives and Constitutional Democracy in Peril.

The Hard Right and Three Leading Forms of It

McManus writes about how what is called the “hard right” has resurfaced in many parts of the world, while distinguishing three primary forms of it and how they might evolve in the future. He draws upon Edmund Fawcett to define this hard right as

a very right-wing movement that has nonetheless achieved sufficient mainstream appeal to no longer warrant the designation “far right.” As [Fawcett] puts it the hard right is a “segment of conservatism that rejects one or more core elements of the liberal-democratic status quo. An unstable alliance of free-market hyper-libers and popular anti-liberals, the hard right claims to speak for “the people” against “the elites.” It is called “hard,” not “new,” because its themes are old; and “hard,” not “far” or “extreme,” because since 1980, it has drawn off votes from the center right to join the mainstream (355, n. 3).

A central point here is the rejection of—at least—core elements of the liberal-democratic status quo. Notice also his reference to “an unstable alliance of free-market hyper-libers and popular anti-liberals. On the first side of this unstable alliance are the oligarchic business class that has funded the rise of this “hard right” through—for example—a broad network of think tanks, university centers, and other institutions. On the other side are the populist demagogues who rail against the egalitarian liberalism of “cultural elites,” which they ironically do by employing the fortune of the economic elites who use their wealth to dominate the political process.

Writing when it looked like a return of Donald Trump to the White House was relatively unlikely, McManus notes that although this hard right “has yet to achieve lasting success of the sort predicted by the “wave” of victories from 2016—2018, the abetting tide has by no means rolled all the way back” (354). With the 2024 election, however, the hard right has now won the largely unchecked political power to radically transform not only American liberal democracy but also the postwar rule-based international order of constitutional democratic states that has prevented major power conflict for the eight decades of the nuclear age.

We can understand what this novus ordo seclorum might look like with the help of McManus’s discussion of three distinct but overlapping ideologies of today’s “hard right”: the Nietzschean right, national conservatism, and postliberalism.

The Nietzschean Right

McManus prefaces his discussion of the Nietzschean Right with a concise listing of related extreme forms of contemporary anti-liberalism in today’s hard right:

everything from unabashed fascists and ‘white identitarians,’ to Eurasianists after the model of “Putin’s Brain” Aleksandr Dugin, traditionalists in the mode of the postwar Italian Julius Evola, outright Catholic integralists, and alt-right nihilists who just want to see liberalism burn and everything in between (356).

This rogues gallery needs to be understood regarding the tens of millions of deaths that followed from the last era of fascism, and the fact that Dugin’s Eurasianism envisions Russian domination from Dublin to Vladivostok. Close to these extreme anti-liberals, McManus includes those inspired by the Scottish thinker Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881) and especially the German Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

[Friedrich Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, 1875. Wikipedia]

Today’s Nietzschean right is characterized by a “muscular atheism” and explicit condemnation of Christianity (364). McManus observes that they “combine a heady mixture of antiquarian appeals with more trollish kinds of ultra-masculism and assertions of natural hierarchy and domination.” Such radicals “see liberal democracy as embodying a degenerate and effeminate kind of egalitarianism which has none the less erected itself as a force of totalitarian oppression” (357). This alleged oppression justifies almost anything to overthrow it.

I would add that these contemporary Nietzschean tendencies toward hyper-masculism and aggressive anti-egalitarianism have been present in popular conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh for decades. In a more subdued form, echoes of the hard right have even been recognizable in the hostility of influential conservative American Catholics towards the Christian humanism of postwar Catholic Social Doctrine. As we have seen in previous posts, this doctrine entails a call to work in a mode of social friendship with others for the common good, including with those of differing views on deeply held matters of faith and morals.

We saw such fraternal collaboration exemplified in social Catholics starting with the father of modern Catholic social teaching Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler, in the subsequent French social Catholics defended against the proto-fascist integralists by Maurice Blondel, in the most influential American social Catholic Msgr. John A. Ryan, and in the father of European social democracy Don Luigi Sturzo. Such democratic cooperation for the common good as present in the whole tradition of modern social Catholicism has been largely eschewed by conservative Catholics since especially the Reagan era.

[Curtis Yarvin, Wikipedia]

McManus introduces some of the leading figures of today’s Nietzschean right who have gained a wide following, including the blogger Curtis Yarvin, the pseudonymous internet personality Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), and the “anon” troll personality L0m3Z (pronounced Lomez). Yarvin, for example, has influenced the thinking of prominent political figures including Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and ongoing advisor Steve Bannon, who has been following thinkers of the hard right for decades, including Aleksandr Dugin. Yarvin has also influenced Peter Theil, the entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist who is also the mentor and financial sponsor of the conservative Catholic Vice President elect J.D. Vance. Yarvin has also been praised by Chris Rufo, who has reshaped “Florida’s post-secondary curriculum for Governor Ron DeSantis, and has appeared for friendly interviews on prominent Catholic media outlets.

Bronze Age Pervert—who espouses a mix of fascism, racism and bodybuilding—has published a book called “Bronze Age Mindset which had a cult following amongst younger Trump aides” during the first term. Graeme Wood writes in The Atlantic that BAP is actually an MIT graduate named Costin Alamariu who grew up in Newton, MA.

He is a favorite among many of the same hard right political actors. To give a sense of the ideas promoted by BAP, Wood writes that he

argues that the natural and desirable condition of life is the domination of the weak and ugly by the strong and noble. He considers American cities a “wasteland” run by Jews and Black people, though the words he uses to denote these groups are considerably less genteel than these.

Wood continues:

The modern state, [BAP] says, has been designed to empower the feebleminded and the misshapen at the expense of their betters. The strong and noble must humiliate and conquer their tormentors and destroy their institutions. On Twitter, where he has more than 100,000 followers, BAP posts images of seminude Aryan beefcakes, usually in tropical settings, to celebrate the physical perfection of the warrior element of the race that he hopes will someday be restored to dominance.

It would be difficult to imagine an attitude more contrary to Catholic Social Doctrine, which is rooted in Jesus’s teaching on fraternal love and, therefore, respects the dignity of every human person. This social tradition has its deep roots in the central Old Testament ethical concern for justice, the measure of which is how we treat the most vulnerable, namely the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger. This teaching is not abrogated, but fulfilled in Jesus, and further understood over time through the discernment of the teaching office of the Church.

McManus only mentions the previously “anon” L0m3Z in passing, but the influential troll was revealed earlier in 2024 to be a former University of California, Irvine lecturer Jonathan Keeperman. A recent article by Zack Beauchamp at the online venue Vox discusses him in further detail.

[Keeperman speaking at the 2024 National Conservatism Conference, from Vox]

Beauchamp’s article is especially helpful in explaining how thinkers of the hard right have mainstreamed their thought in the years since Donald Trump first came into power, which opened the door for them. Although L0m3Z, for example, started his own publishing venture to advance hard right thought, he has also worked to build “ties with more mainstream figures, such as Tucker Carlson, who serve as go-betweens to pump the radical right’s ideas into the political bloodstream.” L0m3Z has also published in perhaps the most prominent venue for conservative Catholics, namely First Things (357). Other figures of the hard right have similarly cultivated relations with prominent figures in Catholic media to communicate their message among conservative Catholics.

McManus writes that these figures are “comfortable with ironically and sincerely deploying the language of racism, sexism, and even eugenics,” tapping “into a sincere animosity towards liberal norms of egalitarian toleration” (358). Although McManus wrote at a time in the recent past when it seemed that this Nietzschean extreme of the hard right had perhaps peaked in influence, it is now clear that this was not the case.

National Conservatism

McManus describes those advocating national conservatism as “[l]ess extreme and more respectable” than the Nietzscheans. Their lead spokesman Yoram Hazony describes a national conservative as “a person who works to recover, restore, and build up the traditions of his forefathers and to pass them onto future generations” (358).

[Hachette Book Group]

McManus writes that

At its philosophical heart, national conservatism repeats the counter-Revolutionary objection that liberalism is an airy “rationalist” creed which is unable to conjure sufficient human affections and loyalties. Predicated on abstract universal principles like liberty and equality for all, it should be replaced by a “historical empiricism” which reverences the national traditions, practices, and of course hierarchies into which we are born (358).

McManus describes the relatively clear political agenda that follows from Hazony’s rejection of liberal democracy. This includes rejecting the ideas of human equality, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism while prioritizing those of one’s own nation in societies that honor superiors in “unchosen hierarchical relationships” (358). Such policies don’t bode well for minorities or especially immigrants. For Hazony, the place for pluralism is in international relations, although this is not a solution for those without a homeland.

Regular and lavishly funded conferences have been the most visible feature of National Conservatism over the last several years. These conferences have brought together formerly marginal figures—like Jonathan Keeperman and Hungarian strongman Victor Orbán—with many of the leading politicians in the Republican Party. These politicians have ranged from Senators Josh Hawley and Mike Lee, to congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, to Vice President elect J.D. Vance, to Donald Trump. Prominent conservative Catholics were well-represented on the the 2024 conference agenda.

Postliberalism

McManus also sketches some of the key characteristics of the postliberalism that can be understood as the third major form of today’s hard right. I will note just a few points.

First, postliberalism is the division of today’s hard right most associated with Catholic intellectuals, because it draws upon pre-liberal thinkers central to our tradition including Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas. Second, postliberals also draw upon a variety of more recent thinkers who are either Catholic or influential among Catholics including John Finnis, Alasdair MacIntyre, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin (360). Third, McManus notes that the various proponents of postliberalism don’t speak with one voice but agree on looking “forward to a time after liberalism,” which they blame for its “atomizing and disintegrationist qualities,” and for “upending the conventions of moral order.”

Fourth, Catholic postliberals are especially concerned about an understanding of moral order that centers on sex and marriage, but—as I argue—neglects the higher virtues of justice regarding the common good and love of neighbor that inform Catholic Social Doctrine. This concern is reflected in the name of a substack published by some of the leading postliberal intellectuals, namely Postliberal Order. In this, I would add that they reflect key feature of earlier debates between Catholics treated in previous posts. These debates pitted, on the one side, speculatively-oriented Catholic intellectuals like Louis Billot SJ, who advocated a more paternalistic socio-political vision that aligned with integralism and proto-fascism. On the other side were the social Catholics who prioritized a fraternal collaboration for the common good.

Reflecting such concerns about moral order, for example, the postliberal legal scholar Adrian Vermeule writes that “same-sex marriage actually happened too suddenly and too completely. Something else was needed to animate liberalism, and transgenderism has quickly filled the gap, defining new forces of reaction and thus enabling new iterations and celebrations of the Festival [of Reason]” (361). Such thinkers see the hypersexualized illiberal left as providing the greatest threat to the common good and associate the entire left with this illiberal extreme.

Fifth, McManus identifies Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen as the scholar who has offered the “most extensive, comprehensive, and rich articulation of postliberal thinking” (361). He discusses Deneen’s criticisms of liberalism as being based on “a materialist ontology,” that rejects “the Scholastic view of a teleological universe.” He continues that “[t]he normative takeaway from this is [that liberalism holds that] the only good in human life was the pursuit of hedonic pleasure, giving rise to the classical liberal worldview centered around securing rights for the individual to maximize their utility without interference from the state or civil society.”

Against this regime of liberalism, Deneen advocates “regime change” that would entail “ending the tyranny of liberal ‘power’ elite and replacing it with a conservative ‘power elite.’” They would enact a “mixed regime” of “aristopopulism” led by a new generation of postliberal Catholic aristocrats who would use the coercive power of the state to enforce a “common good constitutionalism” (362). This would include elements of economic populism and extensive socially conservative measures, looking especially to the illiberal democracy of Hungary as an example. The reader is referred to McManus’s essay for further details. We are apparently headed for such a “regime change” from liberal democracy to the hard right. To what extent it is led by Deneen’s postliberal Catholic aristocrats remains to be seen, as does the extent to which it reflects the hierarchies of the Nietzschean hard right.

Conclusion

In an allusion to the Reagan era coalition of “fusion conservatism,” McManus judged at the time of his writing that a new “‘fusionism’ of national conservatism and postliberalism [was] most likely,” because it “would have a genuine shot at appealing to many on the American hard right.” He advocated a radically different path, as have I. This path could be described as a renewed social democracy that aligns with the integral and solidary humanism of Catholic Social Doctrine in a way that meets the challenges of our time.

Following from the recent elections, however, the hard right will soon have the power to radically transform American democracy and the postwar liberal international order into something that aligns more closely with the goals of a new generation of oligarchs and strongman leaders. Toward these ends, the new administration will claim the majoritarian support of the American electorate, including at least 56% of Catholic voters and over 60% of white Catholics. As I argued in the introduction to Social Catholicism for the Twenty First Century? Volume 1 Historical Perspectives and Constitutional Democracy in Peril, however, this is the path to a dystopian future. I certainly hope to be proven wrong.

It would seem that we have entered a new epoch in human history, but—even if this is true—it need not mark what Francis Fukuyama once called “the end of history.” Electorates are fickle, and even the power of the right-wing media ecosystem over its viewers may loosen as Americans experience the economic, geo-political, social, spiritual and other costs of hard right rule in the coming months and years.

Christians also believe in a God who created the world as good, who called humans to live in justice and holiness, who loves the human race, and whose saving presence operates within human history. Catholics, moreover, believe that God has established his Church in the world as a sacrament of unity, has guided the shepherds of the Church and has given us a social doctrine. If there was ever a time for Catholics to recover that doctrine to meet the signs of the times, it would be now.