It has become commonplace to observe that the right is now the bastion of countercultural provocation. Long associated with stability and the defense of norms, the movement’s symbols have paradoxically emerged as an aesthetic of rebellion. When your boss has pink hair and lives in a polycule, can there be anything more punk than having kids and going to church?
But the contemporary left and right aren’t as opposed as they seem. On the contrary, both should be understood as reactionary tendencies, equally bent on limiting freedom in different ways. Joseph de Maistre’s famous line that “man is too wicked to be free” is a shared consensus—with “wicked” substituted on the left with “too vulnerable” or maybe “too ecologically destructive.” Neither camp believes in the human subject whose radical freedom was once the lodestar of the left, and this is why there is no meaningful opposition to the authoritarian drive to shut down that impulse. While progressives promise to protect the masses from disinformation, the right looks opportunistically to give them a taste of their own medicine.