The New Right's Strange and Dangerous Cult of Toughness

[Celerity]

An emerging culture idolizes a twisted version of “toughness” as the highest ideal and despises a false version of “weakness” as the lowest vice.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/the-new-rights-strange-and-dangerous-cult-of-toughness/620861/



Last month, at the National Conservatism conference, a gathering of hundreds of leaders and members of a movement that hopes to represent a new, less libertarian American right, one of the speakers, a lawyer named Josh Hammer, delivered a strange denunciation of “fusionism.” For those not steeped in the language of conservatism, fusionism refers to the alliance among economic conservatives, social conservatives, and defense hawks forged during the Reagan administration. It was designed to confront government overreach at home and the threat of Soviet tyranny abroad.

Fusionism, Hammer said, is “inherently effete, limp, and, as Hillsdale College’s David Azerrad might say, unmasculine.” It “makes for a cowardly way to approach politics” in part because it “ensures never having to face pushback from one’s political opponents on the most contested issues.”

Longtime fusionists, who are veterans not just of the intense and consequential debates surrounding foreign policy during the Cold War and the War on Terror but also of countless successful courtroom contests designed to expand First Amendment rights in the face of government censorship, might be startled by this news.

But that’s hardly the oddest part of Hammer’s critique. Fusionism is “unmasculine”? How is that claim a part of an allegedly serious ideological argument? The critique, however, helps illuminate the emerging culture of the right—a culture that idolizes a twisted version of “toughness” as the highest ideal and despises a false version of “weakness” as the lowest vice.

snip

[Walleye]

1. Toughness? These Republican men are the biggest bunch of cowards I've ever seen

[PortTack]

6. +1000

[DBoon]

2. This is part of the cult of Fascism

Per Umberto Ecco:

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist
transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which
implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual
habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-
Fascist hero tends to play with weapons – doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Screenshots are hard to read and some e-readers can't use them.

[Celerity]

4. can't you just enlarge it on your mobile or e-reader via a basic pinch enlargement?

If not (as this is the first time I have heard this) I can cut n' paste the text via an edit.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. Scrolling back and forth to read it is a bigger pain than scrolling vertically.

And adaptive browsers can't read screenshots at all.

[Celerity]

5. I edited it to text

[RAB910]

8. The irony is that cowardice (and self centeredness) is at the heart of Conservatism

Every conservative idea is pushed by appealing to fear (with hate and self centeredness mixed in from time to time)

[crickets]

9. K&R for visibility.

[Volaris]

10. Am I the only one tired of all their faux intellectual nonsense?

They're pissed cause they cant say n****r in public anymore without getting yelled at. It's as simple as that, and every other argument they create is sophist, excuse-making, tantrums to cover up the fact that they're all 40yo children who understand neither how their own dicks work, OR 'personal responsibility'.

[Sympthsical]

11. There's a reason their go to insult is "cuck"

And it's a term they largely reserve for other Republicans and figures in the conservative movement who are perceived to be too socially liberal or felt that they do not push back enough against Democrats and the Left.

For example, if you google conservative anti-Trump writers and the word "cuck" you will find many, many results.

Republicans who mainly reside in D.C. or New York (any major media center, really), and who socialize primarily with other media figures and politicians are seen as part of an effete, soft, unmasculine class of people - i.e. the elites. The never-Trumpers are soft men to be despised and ridiculed with all the disgust one can muster.

So cuck cuckity cuck cuck cuck, all day long in the right-wing blogosphere.