An important discussion is playing out on the political right regarding strategies and tactics for engaging society. A recent exchange between Chris Rufo and Jonah Goldberg, among others, discussed whether conservatives should adopt ideas and tactics from collectivist activists like Antonio Gramsci and Saul Alinsky. Rufo said:
The Right is learning new political tactics [from Gramsci]. We are not going to indulge the fantasies of the ‘classical liberals’ who forfeited all of the institutions. We’re going to fight tooth and nail to recapture the regime and entrench our ideas in the public sphere. Get ready.
Goldberg, however, worries that adopting the tactics of the “enemy” could very easily corrupt those who do so. He dubs these tactics “illiberal” and argues that conservative classical liberals should not use them. Rufo, on the other hand, argues that these tactics are successful and not adopting them dooms one’s movement and ideas to irrelevance.
Though the debate can be somewhat esoteric at times, it has important social ramifications. In fact, we are living through significant political realignment around just these issues. The resurgent political right around the world, perhaps epitomized by Trump and the MAGA movement, appears to be remaking how politics and conservatism look. And this has changed many of the Right’s tactics.
One contested issue involves debate over the definition and status of “classical liberalism.” Rufo says that the “classical liberal” approach to politics is outdated and ineffective. While that sounds like a critique of classical liberalism as a philosophy, Rufo seems to mean that those who called themselves “classical liberals” in the second half of the twentieth century would be better characterized as “civil libertarians” focused on neutrality in the public square:
they are inventing a ‘classical liberalism’ that’s actually postwar libertarianism; the founding fathers were much more ‘illiberal’ on the question of the state, education, religion, and public values.
Rufo claims this emphasis on neutrality was not a conservative value and was only a minor value in classical liberalism itself. And it rendered the political Right less effective in resisting or reversing advances by the Left.
Gramsci is an extremely controversial figure. He was an avowed communist and an important architect of the cultural Marxist school of thought developed in the Frankfurt School and disseminated throughout the American academy — Marcuse, Foucault, Horkheimer, Fromm, Freire, Bell, and others. The social and political goals of Gramsci and the cultural Marxists are deeply antithetical to conservative and classical liberal goals and ideals.
Yet in some ways, Gramsci’s idea that culture matters more than politics matches what conservatives like Russell Kirk have argued at length. Another conservative commentator, Andrew Breitbart, famously said, “Politics is downstream of culture.” This idea of culture driving politics has also been advocated by modern Christian philosophers like James Davison Hunter and Peter Leithart.
Another well-known activist thinker on the political Left was Saul Alinsky. His Rules for Radicals has served as a playbook for cultural and social activists who wanted to transform, disrupt, or even overturn the existing social and political order. Alinsky, like Gramsci, was an avid collectivist who wanted to destroy capitalism, property, and conservative traditions and values. But folks like Rufo argue that people on the Right can adopt parts of Alinsky’s playbook to advance conservative ends in the face of an increasingly collectivist establishment.
Jonah Goldberg describes watching as “many on the right went from demonizing Saul Alinsky to respecting, to outright envying and wanting to emulate him. Many of those people stopped being conservative or classically liberal in the process.”
He also worries that “Adopting illiberal means to achieve liberal or even just “good” ends” tends to develop into “illiberal ends in the hearts of the people employing them.” Afterall, “Imposing your ideas through raw power is already pretty illiberal and leftist sounding.” Finally, “If our ‘team’ gains power but turns its back on free speech, freedom of association, free markets, due process, individual rights etc. there’s nothing to celebrate.”
To summarize Goldberg’s concerns, he sees classical liberalism as a distinct philosophy that is an important part of conservatism. He associates the distinctiveness of classical liberalism (liberal values) with values like: “free speech, freedom of association, free markets, due process, [and] individual rights.” Finally, Goldberg suggests that people on the Right have abandoned these principles when they adopted “illiberal” tactics advocated by the likes of Gramsci and Alinsky.
I doubt Rufo would disagree with the claim that some “illiberalism” has crept into corners of the Right. And he would likely agree that the growth of this illiberalism is bad. But I expect he differs from Goldberg in 1) Why this illiberalism has crept in and 2) Whether all Gramsci/Alinsky’s tactics are inherently illiberal.
No doubt some of Alinsky’s (and Gramsci’s) tactics are off-limits to conservative classical liberals. It would be tough to argue that conservatives should destroy property, for example, as a method of strengthening property rights. It would also be hard to argue that conservatives should engage in lawless acts to strengthen the rule of law. The means and ends in these cases seem antithetical. Goldberg worries about these “illiberal” methods — and not without reason!
The troubling rise of antisemitism and Nazi sympathies among members of the Alt-Right is downright alarming. So is the increasingly cavalier attitude among many on the Right about due process, legal precedent, and the rule of law. Increasing segments of the Right seem to be becoming reactionaries, rather than principled conservative classical liberals.
Several thinkers, including Jordan Peterson, have sounded the alarm on the extremism and radicalism showing up on the fringes of the right. Phil Magness compares this moment to a similar dynamic in the early conservative movement, when Bill Buckley and other conservative thinkers had to purge antisemitism by rejecting folks like the John Birch Society from conservative ranks. A similar house-cleaning needs to happen today.
But how much does this relate to the tactics argument? Are unsavory people — grifters and opportunists rather than true intellectuals and thinkers — being fostered by “illiberal” tactics? Or are they being drawn to ascendant cultural and political power? I don’t know the contours of the Alt-Right well enough to say for sure — though I think the power and influence grift seems more likely.
But Rufo marshals good arguments for a more activist, as opposed to purely intellectual, approach to the culture wars and to US politics. No one can doubt the efficiency of his work reforming several academic and educational institutions. Similarly, Robby Starbuck has pushed tremendous change in corporate America through more activist engagement and social pressure.
Recent political issues abound. States have taken extensive action against financial firms over ESG. They have also reformed school curricula and regulated library books. Leaders on the right have called for boycotts, tax code engineering, and mass social media mobilization. And the administration has engaged in blatant extortion of large law firms. These approaches differ from the editorial and commentary roles taken by myself and many others in the conservative classical liberal tradition.
It may not be a choice between commentary or activism. Research and commentary can lay groundwork for public pressure campaigns. Clarity of values and purpose can help provide direction to activism. But what does activism provide commentators? Perhaps it challenges a certain amount of naivety or passivity when it comes to political power and cultural influence. It also creates tension and conflict, especially when activists move away from or challenge conservative classical liberal values and ideas.
That challenging understandably breeds suspicion. In the world of economics, the nationalism of the New Right creates significant conflict. Folks at American Compass, for example, do not simply take harder activist lines in politics. They seem to be rejecting conservative classical liberal ideas altogether in favor of corporatist and collectivist ideals, though with a more traditionalist flavor than the cultural Marxists. Their attempts to grasp and pull the levers of political and economic power cannot fit with a philosophy that such levers should not be used for any political ends, right or left.
Furthermore, we see substantive disagreements about how the economy and private enterprise work exist. The Trump administration approach to tariffs is exhibit number one. Are “illiberal” tactics like tariffs leading to “illiberal” policies like economic protectionism, or vice versa? Activists understandably favor narratives that require more activism. Job loss and factory closures due to decades of imprudent open trade policies would require political and legal activism to reverse.
I tend to agree with Rufo’s assessment that “liberal/illiberal” is not always a helpful distinction, or at least not a complete one, for assessing strategies for cultural engagement. Certainly some types of activism promoted by Gramsci and Alinsky are deeply illiberal: destroying property, ignoring or flouting legitimate law and legal institutions, and unethical behavior like lying. Such activism should be shunned.
But these are not the sum total of the tactics Rufo thinks we can glean from these thinkers. Others include direct confrontation, public/social censure and pressure campaigns, and legitimate legal “purging” of collectivist ideologues and institutions:
the founders employed virtually all of the Alinsky/Gramsci tactics. Samuel Adams, whom Jefferson believed to be the father of the Revolution, developed a playbook that mobilized a counter-elite, produced propaganda, sieged institutions, changed the system of values, and established a new cultural hegemony, or “common sense.” The ideas of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were only possible because of the tactics of Samuel Adams. Gramsci is useful to the extent that he provides an analysis not at the human scale of the founding — Boston, pop. 15,000 — but at the industrial scale of modernity.
As Rufo puts it, “I am not talking about ‘imposing [my] ideas through raw power.’ Everything I do is geared towards winning public opinion and working through democratic institutions. And for that matter, Gramsci’s whole point is that you can’t impose your ideas through raw power.” Many of the American founders, he argued, were strategic, even Machiavellian, political activists.
They recognized that they needed cultural and social influence to foster political and legal change. They went to work with a zeal to reform or subvert existing institutions to pave the way for the Declaration of Independence and, later, the Constitution. This was not always a clean, polite, philosophical exercise. There was passion, vitriol, and realpolitik involved. Rufo claims that:
Burnham — the most successful anti-communist intellectual of the twentieth century — studied directly under Trotsky, learned from his enemies on the Left, and believed that Machiavellian politics was an essential tradition.
So what guardrails prevented this aggressive activism during the American Revolution from spiraling into abusive tyranny like the French Revolution did? Again, conservatives like Russell Kirk, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Edmund Burke have insight here. They argue we need tradition, moral imagination, classical and Christian virtues, and civic institutions to provide direction for social change and to constrain cultural and political activism.
At the end of the day, we may not be able to arrive at a perfect reconciliation between high-minded ideals and commentary with more nitty-gritty activism. How much political power can be used without comprising the ideals and character of those who wield it? Perhaps the conversation and tension will have a salutary effect on both ends of the spectrum — at least as long as people in both camps engage in good faith conversation and debate.
After all, Rufo claims he wants similar things to Goldberg: “I would dramatically increase ‘free speech, freedom of association, free markets, due process, individual rights’ — all of which have been severely limited by the Left over the past 100 years.”
On the other hand, perhaps it is more important than ever to distinguish between legal exercises of power to scale back the Left’s cultural and social hegemony and the lawless power grabs. Again, the Trump administration provides ample examples of both categories.
Legal: Removing DEI from government; banning biological men in women’s sports; robust civil rights enforcement
Illegal: Ignoring due process (illegal immigrants and Harvard’s tax-exempt status); flouting court orders; extorting political “enemies” (especially law firms); arbitrary special interest favors (tariff levels and exemptions)
Tension and disagreement will continue over whether some policies limit, or even violate, certain procedural values to enhance greater freedom and flourishing. On prudential grounds, conservative classical liberals may disagree about the “terms of engagement.” Perhaps we need more activism now to change the political and cultural game to the more neutral and polite terms civil libertarians want.
But we need to avoid becoming an alternate version of the ideology we reject.