Paleoconservative Movement in the USA through the Prism of Social Constructivism

Abstract

The rise of new players — neoconservatives — to the leading positions in the Republican Party and American politics on the whole during the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency spurred a reaction from far-right intellectuals, who united in a movement called “paleoconservatism”. Although this movement was not able to secure any important victories in the political field, its representatives made a significant contribution to the revival of the republican ideological tradition, having produced a rich intellectual legacy, which still remains relatively understudied. The article attempts to partially fill this gap by reconstructing the paleoconservative identity on the basis of the methodology of social constructivism. Searching for an answer to the question of who paleoconservatives are, the authors analyze the ideals and guidelines put forward by paleoconservatives as well as the set of principles they oppose. The conducted research shows that the identity of paleoconservatives includes two components. Its “positive” component is based on the partial identification with the agenda that the American right defended in the 1930s— 1950s, and its “negative” component is based on opposing themselves to neoconservatives and right-wing mainstream. According to the authors’ conclusion, paleoconservatism, being aimed at undermining the tacit consensus that developed in the United States between the center-right and center-left elites, de facto represents a struggle to define the essence of the American conservatism. Positioning true conservatism as anti-liberal, anti-(social)- democratic, anti-egalitarian, and anti-statist, paleoconservatives reject more moderate right-wing movements as blurring the boundaries of the conservative identity.