The Right’s Phony Class War
The populist right’s new intellectuals are abuzz about capitalism and class. Don’t be fooled. Their denunciations of "cosmopolitan elites" actually provide cover for the plunder by the rich and powerful.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) addresses the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference at the US Capitol Visitor’s Center Auditorium June 27, 2019 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump appeared to upend conservative orthodoxy with a clear message of economic populism: globalization is bad, NAFTA sold you out, greedy corporations are sending your jobs overseas. A billionaire vulture capitalist himself, Trump was an implausible bearer of such a message.
Since in office he has pulled a predictable bait and switch, retaining his xenophobic obsessions while imposing an even more vampiric version of the GOP’s standard economic fare: assaults on Obamacare; gigantic, regressive tax cuts; deregulation of every sort; and attacks on the government’s minimal aid to the poorest and most precarious Americans.
All along, the Trump carnival has attracted intellectuals who see a potential in right-wing populism that, due to his mental and ideological emptiness, Trump can never deliver himself. An emerging class of right-wing populist intellectuals has increasingly taken aim at decades of Republican pro-business orthodoxy, talking about a yawning gap between a bipartisan American elite and everyone else.
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