Mukul Kesavan – Right not rabid: Respectable conservatism in the time of Trump

In these majoritarian times, some conservative pundits, embarrassed by the feral Right and keen to seem ideologically respectable, have found an all-purpose rhetorical manoeuvre which goes like this. Progressives are to blame for the enthronement of racist, communalist and majoritarian political parties because it is the left’s ‘wokeness’, its elitist disdain for the anxieties of ordinary people and their common sense, its infatuation with minority politics that prepared the ground for the rise of the ‘hard’ right.

This was the burden of Chetan Bhagat’s arguments in the course of a long interview with Karan Thapar. In country after country, fastidious, hem-raising conservatives are making the same case. Bhagat’s American counterparts argue that the reason majorities of white men and women in America voted for Donald Trump in two successive presidential elections had more to do with the smugness of liberals than the sense of white grievance that the Republican Party has cultivated since Richard Nixon inaugurated its southern strategy in 1968. By harping on racism and minorities and police brutality, progressives had driven a politically orphaned rust belt into the arms of a racist president. Had Democrats and progressives mobilized in an inclusive way, had they attended to the material needs of an alienated white working class, had they been nicer to them, Trump might never have carried the day in 2016 or have come so close to winning again.

It is notable how writers (righters?) embarrassed by brazen bigotry become materialists, reproaching progressives for being culture warriors, obsessed with race and identity politics instead of constructing a broad colour-blind liberalism focused on economic well-being and social welfare. …

https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/right-not-rabid-respectable-conservatism-in-the-time-of-trump/cid/1798933#.X8Npj_xDFo8.mailto

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