Funhouse-Mirror Fusionism
28th March 2024
After the end of the Second World War, the American Old Right underwent a transformation from being a loosely connected band of libertarians, nativists, and isolationists towards a more cohesive ideological conservative movement aimed at confronting the threat of collectivism and atheism posed by the Soviet Union abroad and the left at home. A small band of libertarians and traditionalists debated and discussed first principles, which ultimately resulted in what Frank Meyer termed “fusionism”—a compromise position that incorporated both traditions’ insights. 70 years later, after the Soviet threat was extinguished, that consensus has fractured, and a possible anti-elitist successor has emerged, colloquially known as the New Right. And as it’s begun to take form, it finds itself in an eerily similar place to the early conservatism.