The Right Says to Hell With Equality Story by Matt

The Right Says to Hell With Equality
Story by Matt McManus •
9/13/23

The political right is a diverse intellectual tradition and world-making project. But there’s one thing that unites every variant of right-wing ideology: the belief that society will improve if we give up on the dream of a world where people are equal.

Etching of political philosopher and writer Edmund Burke, London, England, ca. 1880. (Universal History Archive / Getty Images)

© Provided by Jacobin
Since 2016, the political right has surged in many parts of the globe. From Brexit to Bolsonaro, and from Trump to Theresa May (we hardly knew ye), conservative populists and their allies have challenged liberal democracy and sought to establish or reestablish autocratic and hierarchical forms of society.

And yet “the Right” remains an ambiguous political ideology. Some of its most (in)famous figures defend capitalist markets as the only just form of economic organization. But others express skepticism and even hostility to the whole idea of bourgeois society. Many conservatives insist that they want to conserve society and uphold the status quo. But just as frequently the Right demands major social transformations, up to and including “counterrevolutions” and massively disruptive violence.

A new book by Matt McManus, The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity, provides a careful analysis of the Right and its many permutations. Covering authors from Edmund Burke to Aleksandr Dugin, and from Martin Heidegger to William F. Buckley, The Political Right and Equality offers an in-depth guide and critique of right-wing thought as espoused by its most articulate defenders. Jacobin’s Ben Burgis sat down with McManus to talk about the Right, past and present.