By: Janice Bulbock

What will it mean to be far-right in the spectrum not only of politics but of culture in general?

Forty, thirty, twenty years ago, far-right was vastly more identifiable with conservative, reactionary outlook on society in a perpetual search for the good-ole days. From this outlook we got people like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Ron Paul, and others who continually instituted policies based on attaining a pristine image of society. This meant the War on Drugs, the War on Homosexuals, War on all Religions except Christianity, and the more general War on Progressivism. In essence, the far-right represented a marker in society of militarism mixed with Norman Rockwell.

But in this new century the far-right has adapted. In many ways it has retained its old form, and in other more crucial ways it has transformed into something entirely different. In a digital age with constantly evolving technology and globalized communication, the makeup of far-right culture can no longer retain its previous ‘back-in-my-day’ nostalgia. Rather the far-right is more corporatized, integrated into a system of profit based on a reaction of post-Cold War sympathies to government infringement caused by a lack of the communist-socialist enemy.

What it will mean to be far-right this upcoming century is neoliberalism. Less emphasis on government and more emphasis on a perceived free market. It won’t matter if there’s a monopoly on the market created by select amount of wealthy few, just so long as it’s still called a free market. Unlike previous decades, the far-right has developed a sense of liberty based on perceptions of government involvement infringing upon their belief system, whatever it may be.

With prayer being banned in schools, integration now systematically a part of education, gays being allowed to marry and serve openly in the military, illegal immigrants afforded similar opportunities as regular citizens (though not really), and outsourcing the new norm within a globalized economy, the far-right now vies over conflicting desires: both the desire to be centralized and yet be regarded as idiosyncratic individuals with solipsistic self-interest.

In this pursuit for solipsistic centrality, as contradictory as that sounds, the far-right created the Tea Party, which derives its name from a historical event that was progressive rebellion against a tyrannical force, yet many of their policies revolve around a corporatocracy that can be just as much tyrannical. The Tea Party, though, is only a more symbolic sect of Libertarianism, which espoused an ideology of deregulation and Ayn-Randian self-interest with little to no government regulation.

It’s hard to disagree with a hard-emphasis on capitalism in the far-right when some of the most advanced countries in the world often times have a de-emphasis on government and a bolstering of corporate rights. In this sense, the far-right will, in this upcoming century, be engaged more so than it was previously in the material pursuit to regain an Eisenhower-era-like prosperity. “Yeah I didn’t really need these knick-knacks and bric-a-bracs, but these useless items mean job creation and a growing economy.”

Another component of the far-right that will further develop in this upcoming century is the question of global climate change. If, as many scientists have predicted, the earth is unsustainable by 2030s, then the far-right were wrong about the market self-correcting the global problem of the earth becoming unsupportive of life. Because of the corporate emphasis of the far-right on optimal profitization of society, if self-destruction remains profitable, then the free market will not change the carbon-dependence that is killing humanity’s ecosystem. While dangerous as this gamble many on the far-right are making, it seems ideal for them to continue the perpetuation of the individual despite global, communal causes and disasters.

The far-right invariably will mean a radically alienated individualism with the amassing of multilateral pursuits of self-interest for the apparent goal of stability. It’s just not possible, but it appears ideal precisely because the alternative (government infringement on their belief system) seems so unattractive. The idea that individuals create thriving societies while perennially acknowledging the massive amounts of people behind the curtain making sure everything works will lead to a cyclical retrogression in the name of liberty. Much as the Founding Fathers predicted, liberty will be the death of liberty.

Unlike previous decades, though, the far-right is no longer uneducated or uninformed. Many now have scholastic training and theories to justify their pursuits and ideologies. It is precisely because of a globalised society that the far-right has become informed about other countries’ failures in government regulation providing people with freedom. And it is because of technological connectivity that the far-right will further react to perceptions of communal interrelations by promoting corporate individualism to create a conflicting homogenous society that fits its framed image of what society should be rather than what it is through monopolizing human behavior into specific modes of operation.

Here’s a clip, ironically, from Ron Paul on his description of Neo-Conservatism…