The paleoconservatism myth that won't die

The Ghost That Haunts American Politics

They're back. Again.

Every few years, like clockwork, some pundit discovers "paleoconservatism> and declares it the authentic voice of the forgotten American worker. The New York Times profiles a renegade> intellectual. Substack newsletters celebrate the anti-war right.> Podcast hosts fawn over figures who supposedly challenge corporate power from the right.

Stop. Please, just stop.

This isn't intellectual courage. It's a con job dressed in populist clothing. And the people falling for it—especially those on the left who should know better—are getting played by a movement whose entire purpose is preserving the very hierarchies that crush working people.

The paleoconservative myth persists because it serves powerful interests. Not workers. Not communities. The same extractive elite it pretends to oppose.

The Worker-Friendly> Lie They Keep Selling

Here's the pitch: Paleoconservatives reject free-market fundamentalism. They critique globalization. They oppose endless wars. They care about place, community, tradition. Sounds almost... progressive?

Don't fall for it.

What paleoconservatives actually oppose is the modern form of capital mobility—the one that disrupted their preferred social order. They don't object to hierarchy. They object to which hierarchy currently dominates. The movement's intellectual architects, from Russell Kirk through Paul Gottfried and the Chronicles magazine crowd, never met a labor union they didn't despise. Their economic nationalism> isn't about worker power. It's about national capitalist control versus international capitalist control.

The difference matters. Enormously.

When paleoconservatives talk about economic nationalism,> they mean:

• Tariffs that protect domestic corporate profits, not worker wages
• Restrictions on capital flow that benefit national business elites
• Immigration controls designed to maintain labor market discipline and racial composition

When workers talk about economic justice, they mean:

• Collective bargaining power
• Workplace democracy
• Wealth redistribution
• Universal public goods

These aren't overlapping circles on a Venn diagram. They're parallel lines that never meet.

The 2016 election exposed this fraud in real-time. Paleoconservative intellectuals rallied behind Trump's economic nationalism.> What did workers actually get?

• A tax cut for corporations and the wealthy (Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, 2017)
• A National Labor Relations Board that systematically dismantled union protections
• Executive appointments from the most anti-labor law firms in America
• Zero federal minimum wage increase

The paleocon moment> delivered precisely nothing for the working class while delivering everything for the donor class. This wasn't an accident. It was the design.

The White Nationalism They Pretend Isn't There

Let's talk about what gets euphemized as cultural concerns" or > civilizational anxiety.

Paleoconservatism's foundational thinkers didn't hide their views on race. They published them. Repeatedly. In respectable venues. The movement's flagship publication, Chronicles magazine, spent decades promoting scientific racism, defending the Confederacy, and attacking the civil rights movement as "cultural genocide.

Samuel Francis, the movement's most influential theorist after Pat Buchanan, explicitly called for a white identity politics> to counter what he termed the new class> of multicultural elites. His posthumously published work on anarcho-tyranny> —the claim that the state simultaneously oppresses whites while enabling minority criminality—became foundational to the alt-right and remains widely circulated in paleoconservative circles today.

This isn't guilt by association. This is the actual content.

The paleoconservative critique of immigration has never been primarily about wages or labor standards.

• Multiple studies, including research from the National Academy of Sciences (2017), find immigration's net effect on native-born worker wages is small to neutral
• The periods of strongest union power in American history coincided with relatively open immigration policies
• The most effective labor organizing—meatpacking in the 1980s, agriculture consistently—has often been immigrant-led

The paleoconservative fixation on immigration correlates precisely with demographic change, not economic analysis. When European immigration dominated, they found other concerns. The timing isn't mysterious.

What makes this particularly galling is the left's periodic embrace of these figures. When Glenn Greenwald platforms Tucker Carlson's populism,> when certain left podcasts host anti-war> conservatives without examining their full record, they're laundering a movement built on white grievance politics. The anti-imperialism is real. It's also selectively applied—paleoconservatives supported Serbian nationalism, opposed sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and generally favored authoritarian regimes that maintained traditional social hierarchies.

The Anti-War Pose That Falls Apart Under Pressure

Yes, paleoconservatives opposed the Iraq War. So did millions of others. The difference is why.

For the left, opposition to Iraq was about:

• The lies that launched it (no WMDs, no 9/11 connection)
• The civilian death toll (estimated 200,000+ direct deaths per Iraq Body Count)
• The diversion from domestic needs
• The precedent of preventive war

For paleoconservatives, opposition was about:

• Israel's perceived influence on American policy
• The disruption of organic> authoritarian regimes
• The diversion from real> American interests—defined as hemispheric dominance and domestic racial order
• Contempt for the new class> of cosmopolitan managers running the war

These produced temporary tactical alignment. They don't produce strategic solidarity.

When the war was actually happening, paleoconservatives offered no meaningful support for the anti-war movement's infrastructure. No organizing. No coalition-building. No structural opposition to the military-industrial complex they theoretically opposed. Just commentary. Always commentary.

More revealing is what happened after.

• Russia's 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine
• Assad's destruction of Syrian cities
• Orban's dismantling of Hungarian democracy
• Various strongman> regimes globally

Their non-interventionism> applies exclusively to American military action. Other powers' interventions—especially those defending traditional authority against liberal challenges—receive enthusiastic support. This isn't pacifism. It's great-power reactionism with America in a supporting role.

The Real Agenda: Hierarchy Preservation

Strip away the populist rhetoric and here's what paleoconservatism actually offers:

• Economic policy: Managed capitalism with national characteristics, not worker control
• Social policy: Restoration of pre-1960s hierarchies by race, gender, and sexuality
• Foreign policy: Multipolarity among authoritarian great powers
• Political method: Elite manipulation of mass grievance, never mass organization

Every element serves existing power. The forgotten> American is rhetorically central, structurally excluded.

The movement's hostility to organized labor reveals everything. Unions democratize workplaces. They create counter-power to capital. They build multi-racial solidarity through shared struggle. Paleoconservatives oppose all of this—not because unions are corrupt" or "bureaucratic> (true of many institutions) but because they threaten the social order paleoconservatives wish to restore.

Their preferred alternative? Worker councils" or "guilds> organized by employers, without collective bargaining rights, without strike capacity, without independent political action. Company unions with medieval aesthetics. The Wagner Act wasn't opposed for failing workers. It was opposed for empowering them too much.

Why This Should Make You Angry

The paleoconservative myth persists because it's useful. To whom?

• Media elites: It provides balance> without threatening actual power structures
• Conservative donors: It channels populist energy away from economic redistribution
• Certain leftists: It offers anti-imperialism without the difficulty of building working-class power across difference

Everyone wins except the people actually suffering.

The material conditions that produce legitimate grievance—deindustrialization, precarious work, collapsing infrastructure, ecological destruction—remain unaddressed while intellectuals debate which conservative tradition really" cares about workers. The answer, verified by decades of policy outcomes: none of them.

What would actually help?

• Sectoral bargaining that raises wages across industries, not just unionized firms
• Public investment in green infrastructure that creates good jobs
• Universal programs—healthcare, childcare, education—that reduce competition for scarce resources
• Immigration reform that protects all workers through labor standards enforcement, not border militarization
• Global labor solidarity that challenges capital mobility rather than accepting national capitalist frameworks

These require confronting power directly. Building organizations. Sustaining coalitions across difference. The hard work paleoconservatism explicitly rejects in favor of elite intellectual production and periodic electoral gambits.

The myth won't die because too many people profit from its survival. The question is whether the rest of us will keep falling for it.

Sources

[Paleoconservatism - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.

[Paleoconservatism | Encyclopedia MDPI](https://encyclopedia.

[Paleoconservatism | Meaning, Definition, Neoconservativism, & Examples | Britannica](https://www.britannica.

[The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration - National Academy of Sciences](https://www.nap.

[Iraq Body Count](https://www.iraqbodycount.

[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 - Congressional Research Service](https://crsreports.congress.