{"id":1936,"date":"2018-10-22T22:47:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T02:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2018-10-22T22:47:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T02:47:20","slug":"rich-lowry-playbook-big-conservatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/rich-lowry-playbook-big-conservatism.html","title":{"rendered":"Rich Lowry and the Playbook of Big Conservatism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just as there is Fake News, so too is there such a thing as \u201cFake Conservatism,\u201d or the \u201cFake Right.\u201d And just as Fake News is a vast money-making industry, Fake Conservatism is as well. This is why it is best, I submit, to refer to this counterfeit species of conservatism as Big <\/em>Conservatism, or \u201cthe Big Con.\u201d<\/p>\n

One especially salient feature shared by the agents of the Big Con, these fake conservatives, is an insatiable desire to virtue-signal to the left.\u00a0 However, even while doing so, they convince their constituents that their anti-right, pro-left perspectives are in fact \u201cconservative.\u201d<\/p>\n

National Review\u2019s <\/em>Rich Lowry provides us with the proverbial textbook illustration of this showmanship.<\/p>\n

Political violence has returned to the streets of America. Without exception, its antagonists<\/em> have been leftists, self-described members of \u201cthe Resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Rich Lowry, writing in Politico, <\/em>decries not Antifa or Black Lives Matter, but \u201cthe poisonous allure of right-wing violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, Lowry singles out Gavin McInnes, founder of \u201cthe Proud Boys.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the evening of Friday, October 12, street confrontations occurred in New York City between Gavin McInnes<\/a>\u2019 Proud Boys<\/a> and several Antifa \u201cprotestors\u201d after McInness gave a talk at the New York Metropolitan Republican Club.<\/p>\n

Lowry\u2019s condemnation of McInnes is unequivocal. McInnes\u2019 \u201calt-right affiliation\u201d is established, Lowry insists, by the \u201crancid\u201d nature of some of the publications for which McInnes has written.\u00a0 The founder of the Proud Boys is a \u201cfringe-y right-wing\u201d persona with a \u201ccracked vision\u201d who, in contrast to such other \u201cfringe figures\u201d as Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer, has managed to still get a hearing only because he has schemed to \u201cpreserve some credibility, or at least some plausible deniability [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

McInnes\u2019 call to battle with Antifa \u201cis\u2026poisonous,\u201d Lowry continues, for it is a threat to our \u201cdemocratic politics,\u201d a system devised \u201cso [that] political and cultural disputes can be settled without resort to fisticuffs\u2014or firearms and bombs.\u201d \u00a0He adds: \u201cYou can oppose antifa without brawling with it\u2014one mob does not justify another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowry concludes by warning conservatives that if their \u201cconservatism is to represent law and order, it must anathematize and exclude advocates of, and practitioners, of violence,\u201d like McInnes and the Proud Boys.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s break this down:<\/p>\n

While the case can certainly be made that the Proud Boys used excessive and, thus, morally questionable violence in this instance, this is not<\/em> the case that Lowry makes.\u00a0 Quite the contrary: Lowry\u2019s take on McInnes and his group is indistinguishable from that of the left.<\/p>\n

The left-wing media, represented by the New York Times, <\/em>characterize McInnes as a \u201cfar right provocateur.\u201d Lowry refers to him as a \u201cright-wing provocateur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lowry doesn\u2019t explicitly say in what respect McInnes remains \u201ccredible\u201d or what exactly it is that he has \u201cplausibly\u201d denied, but given Lowry\u2019s use of the \u201calt-right\u201d label in this connection, as well as his noting that McInnes and his Proud Boys refused to attend the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville last year, it is not difficult to read between the lines:<\/p>\n

While he is a \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cwhite nationalist,\u201d McInnes has managed to largely conceal this to an extent that eluded Milo and Richard Spencer.\u00a0 This is what Lowry intends to imply.\u00a0 In so doing, Lowry reinforces, and means to reinforce, the left\u2019s depiction of the Proud Boys as a bunch of dreaded \u201cwhite nationalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although at no time and in no place have McInnes and the Proud Boys harmed the hair on the head of a single person that wasn\u2019t a member of a leftist mob intent upon purveying criminal, and criminally violent, activity, Lowry, along with the left, would have readers think that there is moral parity between them and the leftist thugs and terrorists from whom they protect innocents. \u00a0\u201cYou can oppose antifa without brawling with it\u2014one mob does not justify another.\u201d<\/p>\n

You see? The Proud Boys are but the right-wing version of Antifa, a mob that, by implication, is every bit as lawless and destructive as this leftist, anti-American terrorist outfit that routinely ruins property, shuts down speakers with whose speech its members disagree, and intimidates and physically pummels political opponents with all manner of weaponry.<\/p>\n

The reality, however, is radically other than the appearance that Lowry and the rest of the leftist media wants to convey. There are two points that need to be expressly stated:<\/p>\n

First, those right-leaning street activists who have brawled with leftist agitators used violence defensively, <\/em>not offensively. <\/em>\u00a0Whether it was in order to protect themselves or others on whom the rabid left set its sights, neither Deplorables nor anyone else who the Fake News media has tried to link to Donald Trump has ever preyed upon their political opponents.<\/p>\n

Second, since those instances of right-leaning violence, i.e. self-defense, have been relatively rare, anyone, like Lowry and the New York Times<\/em>, who speaks of \u201cright-wing violence\u201d deserves to be condemned for his dishonesty, for the language, by design, suggests that it is comparable in motivation, nature, and extent as the violence of the left.<\/p>\n

Lowry\u2019s efforts to ingratiate himself to the left may not prove successful, but there can be no denying that he spared no opportunity to prove to his (nominal) opponents that he is a \u201crespectable\u201d conservative whose disgust for those on the right upon whom the left has deemed beyond contempt is second to none.<\/p>\n

It should also be noticed that in this endeavor, Lowry says of McInnes and the Proud Boys that their tactics conflict with \u201cour democratic politics.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0The latter, it should be obvious, is language that leftists will immediately recognize as their own.<\/p>\n

Yet Lowry manages to do all of this while dressing his PC moral exhibitionism in the veneer of\u2026conservatism! <\/em>\u00a0If \u201cconservatism is to represent law and order, it must anathematize and exclude advocates of, and practitioners, of violence,\u201d like McInnes and the Proud Boys.<\/p>\n

What attentive audiences will notice is that there is indeed a Big Con template of sorts that Lowry follows.\u00a0 There are three steps to it that we saw in Lowry\u2019s critique of Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys.<\/p>\n

First, a member of the Big Con in good standing must not only distance himself from those rightists who the left-wing press has chosen to vilify; the men and women of the Big Con must go on the demonization campaign themselves.<\/p>\n

Second, in rejecting whatever right-leaning individuals the liberal media has decided to make into Public Enemy Number One, the peddlers of Big Conservatism must do so in the PC parlance of the left.<\/p>\n

Third, so as to reduce the risk that he will lose his \u201cconservative\u201d bona fides in the eyes of the base of the conservative movement, it is imperative that those members of the Big Con who adopt an essentially leftist vantage point from which to denounce rightists throw in a touch of GOP boilerplate and reiterate that their position is the only one consistent with (what they call) \u201cconservatism.\u201d<\/p>\n

This <\/em>is the playbook of the Big Con.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just as there is Fake News, so too is there such a thing as \u201cFake Conservatism,\u201d or the \u201cFake Right.\u201d And just as Fake News is a vast money-making industry, Fake Conservatism is as well. This is why it is best, I submit, to refer to this counterfeit species of conservatism as Big Conservatism, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRich Lowry and the Playbook of Big Conservatism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/10\/rich-lowry-playbook-big-conservatism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rich Lowry and the Playbook of Big Conservatism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just as there is Fake News, so too is there such a thing as \u201cFake Conservatism,\u201d or the \u201cFake Right.\u201d And just as Fake News is a vast money-making industry, Fake Conservatism is as well. 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