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November 2004

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Hard Right Styles, Frames, & Narratives

By Chip Berlet
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Out past the Republicans are a whole series of social and political movements sometimes called the Hard Right. This category includes everyone from the most zealous members of the Christian Right, through members of the armed militias and patriot groups like the John Birch Society, to the Ultra Right neo-Nazis and race hate groups. These are very different movements and it is not fair to lump them together as identical or even cooperative. Yet there are some commonalities in the styles, frames, and narratives they use. 

When sociologists look at social movements, they look at how organizers mobilize and recruit people using different tools such as a particular rhetorical “style.” The term “frame” refers to a frame of reference that highlights particular aspects of reality to explain and move forward an ideological goal. A narrative is simply a story with a plot, a hero, a villain, and a moral or political lesson. 

The Hard Right is not going to simply vanish, so understanding how they mobilize support for their ideologies is useful. The basic building blocks for Hard Right styles, frames, and narratives are listed below. Different organizations put different emphasis on different elements in the list but in any Hard Right campaign, it should be possible to identity several specific texts and subtexts from this list. 

Individualism

SOCIAL DARWINISM: as in rugged individualism; the mythopoetic wet dream of libertarians. People who need government laws and regulations to protect them are (in Arnold-speak) girlymen—a mascu- linist worldview. Rugged individualism values individual liberty over any collective or community obligation. The strong rise and the weak fall; it’s the law of nature. Optimism trumps systemic oppression and institutional hierarchies. Search the Internet for “Horatio Alger” to see a historic narrative cast from this moldy myth of bootstrapping yourself from rags to riches while riding the rails with the Little Engine that Could. 

Capitalism

ECONOMIC DARWINISM: laissez faire capitalism (or neoliberalism) should really be called market fundamentalism, says linguist George Lakoff. According to the economic theology of market fundamentalism, capitalism’s unseen hand strokes the engine of production and wealth. Neoliberal capitalism is often seen by Rightists as synonymous with (or at least a necessary element of) “liberty” and “democracy.” 

Calvinism

CULTURAL DARWINISM: the influence of Calvinism is felt in a series of ideas that were planted by Puritan settlers in the colonial period and grew into the public consciousness. This popularized version of the theology (which is bad enough) has nurtured several beliefs. Only certain people blessed by God go to heaven. People are born bad (in sin) and if they refuse to behave properly through love, then a slap upside the head in the form of punishment, shame, and discipline will set them straight. The undeserving poor, the weak, the sick, the disabled, have been damned by God, so wasting tax dollars on them is pointless. Material success is evidence of God’s grace. 

Dualism

DUALISM is a form of binary thinking that divides the world into good versus evil with no middle ground tolerated. There is no acknowledgment of complexity, nuance, or ambiguity in debates. Calls for pluralism, coexistence, toleration, pragmatism, compromise, or mediation are met with hostility. Dualism (or Manicheaism) generates demonization and scape- goating. When Samuel P. Huntington writes about a “clash of civilizations,” he employs a form of dualism that demonizes Islam. 

Apocalypticism

The word APOCALYPSE refers to the idea that a huge approaching confrontation or transformation will dramatically change society. This can have positive outcomes; and, in a sense, all social change organizers are somewhat apocalyptic. Apocalyptic (or millennialist or millenarian) social movements on the Right, however, often combine their apocalypticism with dualistic demonization and scapegoating in a way that promotes hatred and violence directed at an “Other.” Some in the Christian Right employ apocalyptic frames and narratives drawn from the Bible’s book of “Revelations” to justify hostility toward the “sin” of gay marriage or support for the most aggressive policies of the Israeli government toward Palestinians. 

Conspiracism

CONSPIRACISM is a particular narrative form of apocalyptic scapegoating that frames demonized individuals as part of a vast, insidious, omniscient, timeless plot against the common good. At the same time, conspiracism valorizes the conspiracy-mongering scape- goater as a hero for sounding the alarm, even as people go running off in the wrong direction chasing individual villains rather than confronting structural barriers to equality and justice. Conspiracism should not be confused with power structure research or investigative journalism that exposes actual conspiracies. Conspiracism across the Hard Right is a masculinist narrative that engenders confrontation. Conspira- cism is also used by the Bush administration to create fears of a vast terrorist web and subversive underground apparatus. 

Populism

POPULISM is a rhetorical style that seeks to mobilize “the people” as a social or political force and it is generally a response to economic, social, or cultural stress. Left-wing populism has a long history of challenging institutional unfairness and prompting substantial social reforms. Right-wing movements often use populist anti-elitist rhetoric to claim the current regime as indifferent, corrupt, or traitorous. Instead of seeking to reform or change institutions, though, right-wing populism individualizes the problems and proposes the solution is to, “Throw the bums out.” The growing population of angry, alienated people is mobilized into a cross-class revolt through demagogic framing that portrays hard-working producers in the middle being squeezed by a conspiracy involving secret elites above and lazy, sinful, and subversive parasites below. This frame is called producerism. Arnold Schwarzenegger “terminated” his opponents in the 2003 California governor’s race using populist producerism as his mantra. 

Authoritarianism

AUTHORITARIANISM appears as an assertion of dominance—the relative perceived need for authoritarian enforcement of top-down total control over social, cultural, and political relations. Dominance involves political and economic power along with the entitlements of privilege. The people who hold dominant power need not be the numerical majority in a population; White control over colonial India or South Africa are examples. Groups that lack dominance can still see it as their ultimate goal. The justification for asserting dominance is frequently based on the self-perceived supremacy of the group making the assertion and this can be articulated in biological or cultural terms. 

We’ve Been Framed

All of these styles, frames, and narratives reinforce each other throughout our society. Linda Kintz notes the “linkage between God, the Constitution, and masculinity provides a powerful foundation of emotion.” This makes it difficult for Left activists to even find a common language with which to start discussions about progressive social change. 

When the Hard Right is strong, it pulls the Republicans further to the right as skillful right-wing political operatives try to find some way to capture the energy and steer it into the voting booth. Learning how right-wing frames are assembled is the first step in learning how to reframe the debate and challenge the political Right. 

Chip Berlet is an analyst at Political Research Associates. This article was adapted from “Mapping the Political Right” in Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism, edited by Abby Ferber.
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