How a conservative culture shift under Trump could save the world

Paradoxically, a turn away from ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ values has the potential to defuse some of America’s belligerence

Recently, one of America’s most conservative as well as influential newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, ran two intriguing pieces. One observed that “MAGA is taking back the culture,” the other – by the well-known academic and public intellectual Walter Russell Mead – argued that “American exceptionalism is back.” Together they raise important, perhaps vital questions.

The essence of “MAGA is taking back the culture” is that the return of Donald Trump to the presidency comes with a noticeable shift in US culture, broadly understood. Trump’s first term in office saw him hold the political high ground (if often in a chaotic and beleaguered manner) while facing gale-force headwinds in the public sphere. This time around, however, trends in the latter are converging with the politics of Trumpism. Being traditional is an increasingly popular thing: In June 2023 already, pollster Gallup found that 38% of Americans identify as socially conservative, the highest number since 2012. In addition, 44% considered themselves “economically conservative,” also the highest score since 2012. 

Anecdotal but intriguing evidence now includes American Football players performing Trump’s trademark shimmy as a victory dance, Disney cutting a story line about transgender issues out of an animated series, and MAGA baseball caps making appearances among students at elite university campuses. As Italian Marxist classic Antonio Gramsci – a brave intellectual as well as a victim of Mussolini’s Fascism – might have sighed, it looks as if the reactionaries have the ideological hegemony, again. 

Mead’s “American Exceptionalism is Back” also makes a simple claim: In the US, and only there, populism (of the right-wing variety, of course) and high-tech capitalism (and its “tech-lords,” Mead’s term) can form more than a temporary coalition. That combination, Mead believes, can last by reconciling the crackling-high tension built into it – think Steve Bannon vs. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg – and becoming the basis for an American resurgence. The US, the conservative maître-penseur promises – or warns – may still “renew itself in unlikely and even unseemly ways.” 

Mead’s argument is really about class, even if he does not use such rude terms. His point is that somehow America still has a special magic – call it the American Dream or reach for Philipp Roth’s “American Berserk,” if you wish – which means that the angry MAGA masses from below and what Bannon would call the techno-feudalists around Trump at the top can not only co-exist but cooperate, and all to the greater glory of the “indispensable nation,” once again.

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It remains to be seen how much of this wishful thinking survives reality. What Mead is not addressing, in any case, is what place this renewed America would seek to claim in the international order: Still the same tired old “primacy”? If so, things might get very “unseemly” indeed, and not because of anything Americans agree or disagree about among themselves, but because much of the world does not agree with US domination anymore, and there’s no way back from that.  

What are the chances for an alternative: For America becoming an even slightly less rogue, less asocial member of the international community? It may be counterintuitive, but let’s not leap to conclusions from Trumpist braggadocio about Canada, Greenland, and Panama. Disruptive as the new US claims to and threats against these countries may be, these initiatives – whichever way they will play out – won’t be the whole story. Much of that will unfold in the relationship with rival great powers, that is, China and Russia, as well as the rising Global South as a whole. 

That is why we need to return to the issue of a broader social-conservative shift in the US. For two reasons: It demonstrates that America is perfectly capable of being anything but exceptional, and it bears not only on domestic but also on international politics. Here is how:

While neat and well-defined ideologies tend to be academic, in both senses of the term, that is, heavy on big concepts and fine distinctions but of limited real-world effect, ideological movements with genuine oomph are sprawling and messy: the kind of thing that you know when you see it but that always evades a clean definition.

At this moment, we are looking at such a thing on a global scale, unfolding and accelerating in real-time. It goes by different names: not only “social conservatism” but also, for instance, “family values,” “traditionalism,” or – especially for those who can’t stand it – “cultural backlash.” These words do not mean exactly the same thing; some are capacious (family values), while others are narrower in scope (traditionalism). However, they all point to the same big underlying change in attitudes and therefore politics.

There is a virtually unanimous consensus that this shift is almost everywhere, from India and Russia to the US. Its manifestations are varied and pervasive. As is well-known, in Russia, for instance, it has essentially been state policy for well over a decade, as it is becoming now in the US. Less prominent effects include the rapid rise of a whole new German party that, as well-known sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has explained, combines left-wing appeals for economic justice with culturally conservative positions, and an electorally significant conservative backlash against “liberalizing gender debates” in Sweden (yes, even in Sweden).

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The relationship between this large-scale change in the Zeitgeist and politics is like that between tectonic plates and earthquakes: the plates keep moving, comparatively slowly but inexorably; the politics, all over the world, register the results, particularly when the plates clash. And yes, for the theoretically minded: ideas can be the drivers of historical change; Marx, have mercy on me.   

The two most active plates that have been clashing for the last decades are not hard to identify. On one side, you still have the legacies of what some scholars have called the “silent revolution” of those long 1970s that started, symbolically, in 1968:  a turn away from traditional and toward, for want of better terms, “progressive” values and attitudes. 

These have included, in (neo-liberal capitalist) practice, an emphasis on individualism, or really on individual gratification; a rejection or, at least, a pro-active neglect of many traditional moral and religious restraints as well as formerly authoritative high-culture canons; a demand for equality among consumer and sexual lifestyles (but not of income, wealth, or power – that would be the no-no of socialism); and, last but not least, a form of identity politics that has replaced the older ideal of social and political justice with the pursuit of fairness (or “equity”) between relentlessly rat-racing individuals, to be achieved through an endless arithmetic of tradeable personal qualities, some chosen, some not. Finally, the importance of the nation is downplayed. In a world organized by these rules, you are “free” to buy marijuana, you need not know your classics, being LGBTQ+ can help your career, and you are encouraged to joke about how silly patriotism can get.

The contours of the other tectonic plate, the one colliding with all of the above, are clear enough, too: There are demands to abide by – and subject others to – traditional moral standards, especially regarding family life, education, gender roles, and sex; a yearning for binding cultural canons (even if only to honor them in the breach); a rejection of secularism in favor of religion or, at least, values claiming religious sanction; and a refusal to accept liberal identity politics and their policy consequences. Finally, the nation, sometimes defined in civilizational terms, is serious business. In a world ordered on those lines, you are “free” to be yourself but your idea of yourself should not be too individual; you better be able to pretend you know your classics, especially the national ones; being a straight family person can help your career (even if you cheat like hell, see American presidents); and don’t get caught making fun of patriotism.       

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Regarding ideas about how international politics should work, a substantial part of the “progressive” camp tends to align not with pacificism (as you might have expected in the past) but a secularized crusading ideology: as long as adversaries appear sufficiently “illiberal,” they are seen as fair game for any kind of pressure, including demonization campaigns, NGO/“civil-society”-style subversion and “color revolution” regime change, economic warfare, and, ultimately, war, by proxy or directly. On the other side, you will find social conservatism aligned with an emphasis on state sovereignty in the name of protecting national distinctiveness and a rejection of “progressive” elites denounced as globalist, that is, no longer loyal to their own countries.

And here is the twist: It is possible – by no means certain, perhaps not even probable, but possible – that a US that fully joins the global trend of increasing social conservatism could be less belligerent than its preceding “progressive” version. Not only because its secularized crusading spirit might wilt (although that would certainly be welcome) but also because a cause of deep ideological tension could be neutralized. 

Recall that distinction between well-defined yet academic ideologies and broad, vague yet powerful ideological movements? An underlying convergence (which is not the same as an agreement but something less open to deliberate control and more solid) of Zeitgeist and attitudes that go beyond politics, no matter in what direction, could provide an element of stability. Not improvement, not progress, not kumbaya, but stability. In a world as on the brink as ours, stability is the key to survival.