The Resonance Of The Far Right And Lefts Antielitism

One interesting resonance between far left and far right viewpoints is that both see themselves as anti-elitist viewpoints in different ways. For the left, they are against the wealthy elite, whereas the right is against the institutional elitism (eg against the institutional elites that argue for certain ways of moral thinking).

Both the far left and right say that the groups they dislike only serve their own class interests and that their very existence is an affront to Common Sense ideas. Whereas the former sees extreme wealth as obscene, the latter sees institutional moralistic discourses as obscene.

The far-right essentially agrees with Foucault and Nietzsche that power is really what matters, and the critical role language has to play in this. Arguments are to be viewed as ways of attempting to gain political authority. At the end of the day philosophical claims are used to reinforce a certain political group as hegemonic and in control of how society operates by setting the terms of the debate.

The Right then uses this insight to strategically challenge terms that reinforce moralistic institutional power holders (eg the concept of woke). The Right’s vision is not a positive one -it is in the negative space in which the absurdities of liberal thinking is shown to be contradictory that it then invites participants to think there might be a different way. However usually this subtly seeks to draw on taken-for-granted concepts eg. ‘Common sense’ or ‘the natural order’ to assert and police their own categories. Which in the end seeks to create a social order where Natural groups of people are in their Natural place, which have a Natural hierarchy within and between groups.