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Right-wing politics

History of the term

The political term right-wing originates from the French Revolution when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side. One major figure on the right was Joseph de Maistre who argued for an authoritarian and less liberal form of conservatism. Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right in France was between supporters of the Republic and those of the Monarchy. On the right, the Legitimists and Ultra-royalists held counter-revolutionary views and rejected any compromise with modern ideologies while the Orleanists hoped to create a constitutional monarchy, under their preferred branch of the royal family, a brief reality after the 1830 July Revolution. The Bonapartists advocated the idea of a strong and centralized state, based on popular support. Since then the term right-wing has come to be associated with preserving the status quo in the form of institutions and traditions.

In Europe, with a strong traditional class-structure, historians and social scientists identified the political spectrum on the basis of class, with left, right and center representing the working, upper and middle classes. While these cleavages developed at the time of the French revolution, they deepened in the 19th century and both right and left accepted the class nature of their positions. While universal suffrage, the acceptance of democracy and regional and religious division blurred the distinction between the groups, the analysis continued to be applied. The most usual ideologies of left, right and center were socialism, conservatism and liberalism. Seymour Martin Lipset saw modern political parties as continuing the "Democratic Class Struggle" that led to their creation.

In America, with its economic system less codified as rigid a structure of hereditary social classes, the political spectrum has been analyzed with a more idealogical emphasis. For example, Louis Hartz identified the mainstream political ideology of America as Lockean liberalism, not lying in a feudal past, and saw the two main opposing forces in American history as Whig and Democrat, representing the industrialists and the agriculturalists, but both accepting liberal principals and therefore essentially centrist. Russell Kirk however argued that the American Revolution had been a conservative reaction and therefore the term conservative could apply to American politics. Although Kirk's theory gained very little academic acceptance, it popularized the term conservative in the United States and it was adopted by the New Right and later by the majority of the Republican Party and blue dog Democrats. Lipset coined the term radical right in 1955 to describe radical groups opposed to social reforms and foreign interventionism and the term right later came to be applied to American conservatism. In other English-speaking countries however, the term has received less acceptance, and is usually considered pejorative.
Friedrich Hayek wrote that it was incorrect to represent the political spectrum as a line with socialists on the left, conservatives on the right and liberals in the middle. Instead he suggested seeing each group as pulling at the corner of a triangle. The socialists had by mid-twentieth century pulled harder, so that the entire political spectrum had shifted to the left and socialist ideas had become respectable. In the United States however the difference between conservatives and liberals was obscured by the fact that it was possible to defend individual liberty by defending established institutions, as the American tradition was liberal. He thought that the attempt to transplant the European type of conservatism to America had created confusion in viewing the political spectrum as had the tendency of American radicals and socialists to call themselves liberals.

In Europe, after World War II, traditional right-wing parties and movements such as monarchists, aristocrats and authoritarian conservatives have diminshed in power on the mainstream right and were replaced with liberal conservatives, Christian democrats and laissez faire captialists.

Varieties

The spectrum of right-wing politics ranges from centre-right to far right. By the late 19th century, the French political spectrum classified the center-right as Constitutional Monarchists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists, and the far right as Ultra-Royalists and Legitimists. The centre-right Gaullists in post-World War II France advocated considerable social spending on education and infrastructure development, as well as extensive economic regulation but a limited amount of the wealth redistribution measures more characteristic of social democracy.

A definition of the term "centre-right" is necessarily broad and approximate because political terms have varying meanings in different countries. Parties of the centre-right generally support liberal democracy, capitalism, the market economy (although with some limited government regulation), private property rights, the existence of the welfare state in some limited form, and opposition to socialism and communism. Such definitions generally include political parties that base their ideology and policies upon conservatism and economic liberalism.

The terms far right and radical right have been used by different people in conflicting ways. The term far right is most often used to describe nationalist, religious extremist and reactionary groups as well as fascism and Nazism.
The BBC has called politician Pim Fortuyn's politics (Fortuynism) far right because of his policies on immigration and Muslims. The term far right has been used by some, such as National Public Radio, to describe the rule of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Left-wing publication New Left Review called Ronald Reagan's policies "radical right". The US Department of Homeland Security defines right-wing extremism as hate groups who target racial, ethnic or religious minorities and may be dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.
Right-wing populism is a combination of ethno-nationalism with anti-elitist populist rhetoric and a radical critique of existing political institutions.Canovan, Margaret. 1981. Populism. Some associate ethnic nationalism with the right. According to scholars of fascism, there are both left and right influences on fascist ideology. They argue that fascism is a search for a third way among all these views. Roger Griffin claims that fascist movements have become more monolithically right-wing, and fascism has become intertwined with the radical right.

Positions

Social hierarchy

Reactionary right-wing politics involves the creation or promotion of a social hierarchy. Right-wing politics views social and economic hierarchies as either natural or normal and rejects attempts to remove such hierarchies. For example, right-wing politicians in France during the French Revolution opposed the removal of the monarchy and aristocratic privilege. Religious figures with right-wing views, as in the Roman Catholic Church after the French Revolution, typically called for the creation or restoration of the authority of religious institutions and the social hierarchy that was associated with religion.Martin E. Marty, R. Scott Appleby, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fundamentalisms observed. University of Chicago Press, 1994. P. 91. ISBNISBN 0226508781, ISBN9780226508788. Right-wing racialists believe that there is a racial hierarchy wherein superior races have a natural authority or supremacy over inferior races. Right-wing economics involves the acceptance of a social hierarchy based on economic wealth and social class.

The Right often advocates equality of opportunities as an alternative to equality of outcome. The Right generally regards most social inequality as the result of ineradicable natural inequalities, and sees attempts to enforce social equality as utopian or authoritarian.Bobbio, Norberto, "Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction" (translated by Allan Cameron), 1997, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226062465 Russell Kirk, a major figure of American conservatism included "civilized society requires orders and classes" as one of the "canons" of conservatism.http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL811.cfm

Social order

Many right-wing ideologies and movements support the social order. The original French right-wing was called "the party of order" and said that France needed a strong political leader to keep order.
Latin Conservatism, founded by Joseph de Maistre, is uncompromising in its belief in the need for order. Maistre, like Thomas Hobbes before him, supported absolutism as the only means of avoiding violent disorder. Maistre, who fled the French Revolution, became convinced that ultra-liberal ideas, particularly Rousseau's theory of a "general will", had led to the horrors of the French Revolution and the bloodshed of the Napoleonic Wars. Maistre also objected to the quasi-secularism and self-indulgence of some late 18th century monarchies, and believed that state and church must remain inseparable. The principles of Maistre's Latin Conservatism were fully instituted in Spain under Francisco Franco.

Religious fundamentalists have often supported the use of political power to enforce their religious beliefs.

While traditional right-wing politics supports legal and moral authority over those who would challenge such authority, the Libertarian Right, in contrast with the religious Right and the nationalist Right, is anti-authoritarian.

Nationalism

In France, Nationalism was originally a left-wing and Republican ideology. Nationalism became a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right after the Dreyfus Affair. The original right-wing nationalists endorsed ethnic nationalism and believed in defining a "true" national identity and defending it from elements deemed not part of the identity and corrupt. Right-wing nationalism was influenced by Romantic nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the particular manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion and customs of the "nation" in its primal sense of those who were "born" within its culture.

In the United States, the idea of national sovereignty was deemed to derive from that of the independent states forming it, and from their people, as described and limited by the Constitution of the United States, whose tenth amendment notably reserves power to the states where not explicitly identified, rather than delegating it to the nation. American nationalist identity developed gradually, being expressed weakly for instance in the motivation for the war of 1812 for which a significant element was the impressment of "American" seamen by the British Navy, which still claimed they were British subjects. It was expressed more strongly later, in Andrew Jackson's famous pronouncement in 1830: "Our Federal Union: it must be preserved". The American Civil War established nationalism as a foundation of American government, with the basic issue being preservation of the national Union

Linked with right-wing nationalism is cultural conservatism. Cultural conservatism supports the preservation of the heritage of a nation or culture, usually in the face of external forces for change. The culture in question may be as large as Western culture or Chinese civilization or as small as that of Tibet. Cultural conservatives try to adapt norms handed down from the past. The norms may be romantic, like the anti-metric movement that demands the retention of traditional weights and measures in Britain and the United States and opposes their replacement with the metric system. They may be institutional: in the West this has included chivalry and feudalism, as well as capitalism, laïcité and the rule of law. Cultural conservatives often argue that old institutions have adapted to a particular place or culture and therefore ought to be preserved. Others argue that a people have a right to their cultural norms, their own language and traditions.

Economics

Historically, the Right has advocated preserving the wealth and power of aristocrats and nobles. Traditional rightists were uncomfortable with liberal capitalism. Particularly in continental Europe, many conservatives have been uncomfortable with the impact of capitalism upon culture and traditions. The conservative opposition to the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the development of individualistic liberalism as a political theory and as institutionalized social practices sought to retain traditional social hierarchies, practices and institutions. There has also been a conservative protectionist opposition to certain types of international capitalism.

In modern times, most right-wing ideologies and movements support capitalism. In Europe capitalists formed alliances with the Right during their conflict with workers after 1848. In France, the right's support of capitialism can be traced to the late 19th century . Right-wing libertarianism (sometimes known as libertarian conservatism or conservative libertarianism) supports a decentralized economy based on economic freedom, and advocates policies such as property rights, free markets and free trade. Russell Kirk believed that freedom and property rights were interlinked. Anthony Gregory has written that right-wing, or conservative libertarianism, "can refer to any number of varying and at times mutually exclusive political orientations." He listed some as: being "interested mainly in 'economic freedoms'"; following the "conservative lifestyle of right-libertarians"; seeking "others to embrace their own conservative lifestyle"; considering big business "as a great victim of the state"; favoring a "strong national defense"; having "an Old Right opposition to empire." He holds that the issue is not right or left but "whether a person sees the state as a major hazard or just another institution to be reformed and directed toward a political goal." According to Christopher Pierson, "...we can find on both right and left the view that the essence of civil society is its guarantee of a market capitalist economy primised upon private property. The difference is that the right like it and the left do not."
Western-style corporate capitalism but not full-fledged laissez-faire economics or individual autonomy was adopted by reformist governments in Singapore and Taiwan during a period of authoritarian rule and economic reform. These countries continue to venerate tradition in what has been described an "Asian model" of capitalism.

Still there are some right-wing movements, notably American paleoconservatives, that are often in opposition to capitalist ethics and the effects they have on society as a whole, which they see as infringing upon or decaying social traditions or hierarchies that are essential for social order. Conservative authoritarians and those on the far right have supported corporatism.

Religion

Government support for the majority religion has from the beginning of the movement been a major part of right-wing politics. The original French right-wing supported the power of the Roman Catholic Church and opposed the secularization proposed by the anti-clerical forces of the Left. Religious figures with right-wing views, as in the Roman Catholic Church after the French Revolution, typically called for the creation or restoration of the authority of religious institutions and the social hierarchy that was associated with religion.
Joseph de Maistre argued for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters. According to Maistre, only governments founded upon a Christian constitution, implicit in the customs and institutions of all European societies but especially in Catholic European monarchies, could avoid the disorder and bloodshed that followed the implementation of rationalist political programs, as in the
French Revolution.

The Christian right is a major political force in the West, supported by the Republican Party in the United States and by Christian Democratic parties in Europe. They generally support laws upholding religious values, and laws against immigration, especially immigration by non-Christians.
Hindu nationalism has been a part of right-wing politics in India. A form of conservative populism, the movement has attracted not only privileged groups fearing encroachment on their dominant positions, but also "plebeian" and impoverished groups seeking recognition around a majoritarian rhetoric of cultural pride, order, and national strength.

The Likud party in Israel expresses support for the Torah within the context of civil Judaism. Many Islamist groups have been associated with the right, such as the Great Union Party, the Felicity Party of Turkey and the Combatant Clergy Association/Association of Militant Clergy ('Jame'e-ye Rowhaniyat-e Mobarez) and the Islamic Society of Engineers of Iran.

Today many social and religious conservatives find themselves in opposition to scientific organizations over such topics as evolution and the global warming debate.

Anti-communism

Early communist movements were at odds with the traditional monarchies that ruled over much of the European continent at the time. Many European monarchies outlawed the public expression of communist views, and the Communist Manifesto began "A spectre is haunting Europe," suggesting that monarchs feared for their thrones. Advocacy of communism was illegal in the Russian Empire, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, the three most powerful monarchies in continental Europe prior to World War I. Many Monarchists (except Constitutional Monarchists) viewed inequality in wealth and political power as resulting from a divine natural order.

By World War I however, in most European monarchies, the Divine Right of Kings had become discredited and replaced by liberal and nationalist movements. Most European monarchs became figureheads; elected governments held the real power. The most conservative European monarchy, the Russian Empire, was replaced by the communist Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution inspired a series of other communist revolutions across Europe in the years 1917–1922. Many of these, such as the German Revolution, were defeated by monarchist military units.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the fading of traditional right-wing politics. The mantle of conservative anti-communism was taken up by the rising fascist movements on the one hand, and by American-inspired liberal conservatives on the other. When communist groups and political parties began appearing around the world, as in the Republic of China in the late 1920s, their opponents were usually colonial authorities or local nationalist movements. Two examples of reactionary anti-communist dictatorships were the governments of Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet.

After World War II, communism became a global phenomenon, and anti-communism became an integral part of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States and its NATO allies. Conservatism in the post-war era abandoned its monarchist and aristocratic roots, focusing instead on patriotism, religion, and nationalism. Communists were also enemies of capitalism, portraying Wall Street as the oppressor of the masses.

The United States made anti-communism the top priority of its foreign policy, and many American conservatives sought to combat what they saw as communist influence at home. This led to the adoption of a number of domestic policies that are collectively known under the term "McCarthyism".

Throughout the Cold War, conservative governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America turned to the United States for political and economic support. Some of these were authoritarian regimes, which – according to their critics – used the fear of communism as a means of legitimizing repression, the suspension of civil rights, and the abolition of democracy. Examples include South Korea under Syngman Rhee (see Jeju massacre), the Republic of China under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, South Vietnam under Ngo Dinh Diem, Indonesia under General Suharto, Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko, Paraguay under Alfredo Stroessner and Chile under Augusto Pinochet.

During the 1980s, the conservative governments of Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Brian Mulroney in Canada followed a clearly anti-Soviet foreign policy that is credited by their supporters as a major factor in the fall of the Soviet Union and the democratization of Eastern Europe and other countries.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, communism is no longer seen as a major force in world politics, and therefore most conservatives are far less concerned with anti-communism. However, conservative anti-communism resurfaces anywhere that communist political groups make significant advances, such as in Nepal in recent years.