Special Report
October 2002
The Men Who Stole the Show
By Tom Barry and Jim Lobe
Glossary of the Right-Wing Sectors in U.S. Foreign Policy
Anticommunists: Until the collapse of the Soviet bloc, militant
anticommunism served to unify right-wing sectors around a foreign policy
that stressed military budget increases, rationalized U.S. support for
dictatorial regimes, and supported military intervention. Unlike cold war
liberals, who also identified themselves as anticommunists, the militant
anticommunists of the right believed that the fight against communism needed
to be fought at home as well as abroad, and they advocated aggressive rollback
strategies rather than merely containment and deterrence. Militant anticommunism
no longer functions as the backbone of the right’s approach to international
affairs, although anticommunist convictions still shape the foreign policy
agendas of many right-wing ideologues regarding U.S. relations with China,
Cuba, and North Korea. This political agenda of crushing all forms of communist
governance has created fissures within the right, dividing the proponents
of free trade from those who resist establishing normal business relations
with countries ruled by Communist parties.
Christian Right: Before the 1970s, the U.S. evangelical movement
was a subculture that kept its distance from electoral politics. With a
new focus on social conservatism, Republican Party strategists together
with neoconservatives and right-wing ideologues encouraged the politicization
of the evangelical sectors as part of the New Right fusionism that ushered
Ronald Reagan into the presidency in 1981.
Conservative Internationalists: Neoconservatives often use this
label to describe themselves. It distinguishes them from the paleoconservatives,
from the traditional isolationism of many core Republicans, and from the
liberal internationalists found mainly in the Democratic Party.
Conservative Mainstream: Today’s conservative mainstream encompasses
all those elements of the right who believe that it is possible to operate
within the electoral arena, including all the groups in this glossary.
The mainstream includes think tanks and front groups as well as major constituency
organizations like the Christian Coalition. The conservative mainstream
may call for radical changes in domestic and foreign policies, but it does
not embrace the methods of domestic right-wing vigilante groups, although
most sectors of the right have supported U.S. assistance to foreign right-wing
vigilante groups. Membership in the conservative mainstream does not equate
to resisting social change. Indeed, many conservative groups espouse radical
policy agendas. However, conservatives react negatively to changes that
are regarded as part of progressive, secular, or liberal policy agendas.
Libertarians: Conservative libertarians have long been part of
the conservative mainstream in their embrace of free market solutions and
processes and in their opposition to government involvement in social and
economic matters. Conservative libertarians share concerns about government
infringement on individual civil liberties with progressive civil libertarians.
Libertarians also share concerns about U.S. interventionism and foreign
aid with paleoconservatives.
National Security Militarists: Closely connected to what President
Eisenhower termed the “U.S. military industrial complex,” national security
militarists are among the chief proponents of major increases in the U.S.
military budget and transformations in military capacity, arguing that
the U.S. must maintain military superiority. Closely allied with the most
militant anticommunist sectors of the right, the militarists have in recent
years rallied around a grand strategy of U.S. global supremacy built on
the foundation of unchallenged military power in order to maintain “the
American peace” throughout this century.
Neoconservatives: Neoconservatives constitute an intellectual
current that emerged from the cold war liberalism of the Democratic Party.
Unlike other elements of the conservative mainstream, neoconservatives
have historical social roots in liberal and leftist politics. Disillusioned
first with socialism and communism and later with new Democrats (like George
McGovern) who came to dominate the Democratic Party in the 1970s, neoconservatives
played a key role in boosting the New Right into political dominance in
the 1980s. For the most part, neoconservatives—who are disproportionately
Jewish and Catholic—are not politicians but rather political analysts,
activist ideologues, and scholars who have played a central role in forging
the agendas of numerous right-wing think tanks, front groups, and foundations.
Neoconservatives have a profound belief in America’s moral superiority,
which facilitates alliances with the Christian Right and other social conservatives.
But unlike either core traditionalists of American conservatism or those
with isolationist tendencies, neoconservatives are committed internationalists.
As they did in the 1970s, the neoconservatives were instrumental in the
late 1990s in helping to fuse diverse elements of the right into a unified
force based on a new agenda of U.S. supremacy.
New Right: In the 1970s this manifestation of American conservatism
represented a revival of the coalition of libertarians, traditionalists,
and anticommunists that gave Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination
in 1964. This fusionist movement, however, differed in that it included
a politicized evangelical sector (the Christian Right), Democrats disaffected
with the liberal platform of the new Democratic Party, and the strong intellectual
influence, particularly in foreign policy issues, of the neoconservatives.
Paleoconservatives: In direct contrast to neoconservatives, paleoconservatives
reject internationalism and interventionism that is not directly related
to protecting U.S. national interests (largely defined as economic interests).
Their roots can be traced back to the conservative isolationists and profascists
of the 1930s and to the America First movement of the 1940s. After the
end of the cold war, the paleoconservatives were one of the few political
sectors that criticized the new military interventionism, including both
the Gulf War and the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s. On economic
issues such as free trade, the paleocons are nationalists and protectionists,
while on most domestic issues their posture is one of reactionary populism
that includes elements of racism and nativism.
Social Conservatives: This sector, which is mostly focused on
domestic issues, arose from the traditionalist backbone of the U.S. conservative
movement. Unlike libertarians, social conservatives hold that government
has the God-given mandate to enforce a moral order shaped by Christian
values. Although not all social conservatives are part of the Christian
Right, most support the notion of a “culture war” to protect what they
regard to be traditional American values from erosion due to secularism,
feminism, and cultural relativism. The international perspective of social
conservatives has historically been viewed through the prism of anticommunism,
but in the 1990s, neoconservative authors and activists like Samuel Huntington
and William Bennett were instrumental in internationalizing the paranoia
that fueled the domestic culture wars of the right by positing that Judeo-Christian
values and civilization were threatened around the world.
Sources: Amy E. Ansell, ed. Unraveling the Right:
The New Conservatism in American Thought and Politics (Westview Press,
1998); Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America:
Too Close for Comfort (Guilford Press, 2000); Sara Diamond, Roads
to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States
(Guilford Press, 1995). Highly recommended, also, are two glossaries compiled
by Political Research Associates that focus on right-wing populism and
the Christian Right: http://www.publiceye.org/research/Chart_of_Sectors.htm
and http://www.publiceye.org/glossary/glossary_big.htm
