简体中文
**Editor's note: **Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) concluded this past weekend and revealed several interesting things about the direction of America's current opposition party, the Republican Party. Former President Donald Trump, who made his first public appearance since leaving office six weeks ago, has obviously dominated headlines after the event.
Several key questions have loomed about the future of the Republican Party and America's conservative movement, one of the most important being if Trump would remain a major figure in the party. Trump answered this question at CPAC, saying that indeed his movement was not going anywhere and that he might even run again in 2024.
In fact, he took this opportunity to attack his critics within his own party and, after naming each of them, called for the congressional Republicans who voted to impeach him during his second impeachment trial to be ousted in primary elections.
"Get rid of them all," Trump told the audience.
Events like CPAC are important in American politics because they are a key indicator of who could potentially be the next major presidential candidate. It's an easy opportunity for possible candidates to try out messaging and slogans.
According to the results of the CPAC straw poll for the 2024 nomination (which is not a scientific poll), 55 percent of the attendees favored Trump; however, of this highly ultra-conservative-biased sample, only 68 percent said they wanted him to run for president again in 2024. Another 15 percent said they do not want him to run, while 17 percent were unsure.
There is a clear opportunity for a Trump challenger that may only widen in the next few years. One up-and-coming Republican who is obviously planning a presidential bid really stuck out to me and that was Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
In his speech on Friday, Hawley painted Trump supporters as victims who are attacked by mainstream society for supporting the twice-impeached former president. He also said explicitly that large corporations are colluding with "the left" at the behest of "policy experts in Washington, D.C. and the elected officials there for decades on end."
To fight against this conspiracy, Hawley said, "What we need is a new nationalism, a new agenda to make the rule of the people real in this country, and give the people America back."
Members of the far-right group Proud Boys walk past the U.S. Capitol during a march in support of then President Donald Trump to protest against the results of the U.S. presidential election, in Washington, November 14, 2020. /Reuters
The first way to achieve this, Hawley said, is to break up large tech companies "in the name of the rule of the people." Of course, the senator's message is not based on any class analysis, but it does show populist maneuvering that may usurp working-class support from the Democratic Party in the future.
This is particularly dangerous because Hawley is employing familiar tactics, for example, he went on to paint a picture of the American nation that ignores the serious divisions in society along with class, racial, gender and other lines. There was no articulated discussion of pressing issues like income inequality, lack of health insurance, and racial discrimination, but instead the categorization of America as "a family" under threat of division by "oligarchs."
It reminds one of the monistic values of fascism that, as political scientist Michael Parenti once wrote, "supports the economic status quo by cloaking the ongoing system of class exploitation."
These monistic values are always dolled up with appeals to the roots of the people. For fascist Italy, this was ancient Rome; for Nazi Germany, this was the ancient Volk. For Hawley, this is the idealization of the country's founders.
He said, "We're proud to have lived in a country that started with nothing and became the greatest country on the face of the Earth. We're proud of living in a country that liberated slaves."
In this excerpt, Hawley, who holds a history degree from Stanford University, purposely omitted the fact that American settlers didn't start from scratch; rather, they stole from the Native American population and, of course, they were the ones who propagated the institution of slavery. Just after this segment, he explicitly called any acknowledgment of America's past crimes "false."
If the dangerous undertones of Hawley's speech were not clear enough, he proudly concluded his speech to thundering applause with the phrase, "America now, America first, America forever!" The obvious historical parallel here is Alabama Governor George Wallace's famous declaration, "Segregation now, segregation forever!"
Hawley's "new nationalism" is not new at all. Whenever the fringes of the political right offer anything supposedly "new," it is always a false message that redirects support to the same powerful interests that control the status quo. It was true for Donald Trump, the son of a real estate emperor, just as it is for Josh Hawley, the son of a wealthy banker. This plain truth, however, does not make his invocations at CPAC any less chilling.
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at [email protected].)
