The Great Replacement of Conservative Ideology
Belief in a "Great Replacement" unites the factions of conservatism like "fusionism" never could.
It’s an article of faith for never-Trump conservatives that Trump is not a conservative. But history and tradition are against them. In his 200-year historical survey, “Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition,” Edmund Fawcett shows that conservatism has always had a hardline camp fiercely opposed to liberal modernity and a “liberal conservative” camp that seeks to triumph via adaptation. Most Republican Party elites have been part of this tradition as well. During the Cold War, the disparate elements they spoke for were united by “fusionism”—a fire-and-ice cocktail of libertarianism and social conservatism held together with anti-Communism.
In post-WWII America, conservatives faced three threats: the ascendancy of New Deal liberalism, the threat of global communism, and the ongoing process of modernization that was eroding traditional practices, institutions, and norms. Hardline conservatives saw all three threats as facets of one big conspiracy, usually with Jews as chief villains.
Fusionism strove to articulate a more respectable account. Libertarianism was fusionism’s counter to the New Deal, social conservatism its counter to evolving social change, and anti-Communism its umbrella faith…
Continue reading this article by Paul Henry Rosenberg, “The Great Replacement of Conservative Ideology,” here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-great-replacement-of-conservative-ideology/