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A Topical Definition
Selected Right Wing Topical Issues and Approved
State Function
What is it that makes the right the right? The diversity within the right
can be confusing, yet there is a back beat to these many melodies of the
right-the issue of equality. Sara Diamond has offered the most concise
definition that covers the widest variety of right-wing tendencies: "To
be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as enforcer of
order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power
downward and more equitably in society. Throughout the history of U.S.
right-wing movements, we...see this recurring pattern as one organization
after another worked to bolster capitalism, militarism, and moral traditionalism."7
Using Diamond's definition and viewing the right in terms of its political
and social mobilization around certain core themes, Diamond in Roads
to Dominion divided the US right between WWII and the end of the Cold
War into four broad movements: the anticommunist right, the racist right,
the Christian right, and the neoconservatives. Each of these sectors had
adherents that ranged from moderate to militant, pursued various methodological
strategies and tactics, and stressed different themes in an infinite matrix
of individualized combinations. What a particular right-wing social or
political movement views as the legitimate enforcement functions of the
state depends on its key topical demands.
Chart Two
| Sector Opposes |
State Should Defend |
| Economic |
| Economic regulations |
Unrestricted Capitalism |
| Taxation |
Wealth |
| Land use regulations |
Property rights |
| Internationalism |
National business interests |
| Free Trade |
Trade Restrictions |
| Social |
| Collectivism |
Individualism |
| Mass democracy |
Elitist oligarchy |
| Dissent and rebellion |
Law and order |
| Racial diversity |
Racial purity |
| Cultural |
| Unorthodox behavior |
Traditional morality |
| Multiculturalism |
Monoculturalism |
| Religious diversity |
Core religious tenets |
| Feminism & Gay Rights |
Heterosexual patriarchy |
Chart Three
(Note that in any sector actual participants may range from peaceful to violent)
More willing and able to use democratic methods:
"Moderates" |
| Fiscal conservatism |
| Economic libertarianism |
| Neoconservatism |
| Business nationalism |
| Corporatist internationalism |
| Militarism & unilateralism |
| Christian orthodoxy & fundamentalism |
| Social orthodoxy & traditionalism |
| Patriot constitutionalists & regressive populism |
| Reactionary anti-modernism |
| Paleoconservatism |
| Theocratic Christian nationalism |
| White racial nationalism |
| Far Right |
| Revolutionary activism |
| White supremacist genocidalism |
| Fascism |
| Neonazism |
"Extremists"
More willing and able to use authoritarian methods
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Diamond's definition and topical analysis of the right is an important
additional to our analytical tool box, but other dimensions need to be
examined at the same time, especially the methods deemed appropriate by
a particular movement to achieve its goals, (ranging from democratic civil
discourse to armed revolution) which itself is often, but not always, related
to the degree of zealousness of belief.
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7 Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing
Movements and Political Power in the United States. (New York: Guilford,
1995), p. 9.
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