On the Postliberal Turn
One implication of the Vance nomination
Précis/TL;DR: in which we explore the meaning of J.D. Vance’s nomination as the GOP ticket’s Vice President in light of his ideological orientation and commitments. Vance, a self-described ‘postliberal,’ is now the highest-profile politician representing an important illiberal ideological trend that has been developing over the last decade - although he is not alone. A short list of new publications rounds out the newsletter as always.
On Ideology and Politics
The connection between ideology and actual politics is not always clear. In the American context, with a strict and long-maintained two-party system, both partisan poles are made up of broad coalitions - not only of voters, but of ideological frameworks and orientations. Prior to 2016, the two parties could be described as broadly as ‘center-left’ and ‘center-right,’ and within each were both complementary and competing ideological elements.
For the Democratic Party, those underlying ideological components included moderate pro-labor, liberal-internationalist, left-progressive, and democratic-socialist streams. For the Republican Party, the so-called ‘fusionist’ coalition of military hawks, free market neoliberals, and social conservatives. Libertarians fell into both camps, depending on economic or social emphasis, many others could be counted as generically moderate or ‘establishment,’ and non-ideological ethno-racial groups fit into the picture as well.
Since 2016, we have seen further ideological developments: the increasing dominance of left-progressivism and far-left ‘wokeness’ among elites on the Democratic side; the buildout of a reactionary populist wave under the ‘MAGA’ label on the Republican. The eight years since Donald Trump’s surprise electoral victory opened up the ideological ground for the GOP in particular, and a vast corpus of commentary, prognostication, and academic research has developed trying to tie MAGA to something less inchoate and more ideologically coherent. It seemed that Trump had shattered the ‘fusionist’ consensus - and humiliated the old guard of the GOP represented by Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and others in the process - yet what was emerging remained less clear and heavily disputed.
One side-project of mine has focused on a specific corner of the gyrating and shifting ideological ecosystem on the American right. Captured under the conceptual term ‘illiberalism,’ and connected to similar ideological developments in Europe and elsewhere, it has followed a set of ideological entrepreneurs, political thinkers, and theoreticians trying to make sense of (and provide intellectual justification for) MAGA and the Trump phenomenon beyond simple populist anger.
Illiberal thought, at its core, is ideological reaction against perceived liberal domination and hegemony in politics, economics, culture, and society. And its solutions involve the use of state power, the rejection of autonomous individualism (both in economics and in society), and deep suspicion of existing institutions - in some cases extending to the political regime itself. Naturally, illiberalism is not a monolithic system or singular political philosophy, but rather a shorthand, umbrella descriptor for a variety of ideological factions and camps with esoteric or unknown names such as ‘integralists,’ ‘postliberals,’ ‘governance-futurists,’ ‘national-conservatives,’ ‘vitalists,’ and ‘neo-reactionaries,’ among many others. And that’s just within the American variant.
This research agenda has been entirely elite-focused, and makes no claims to describing the broader views of the center- and right-leaning American electorate. However, as most academic research makes clear, the ideological views of elites sets public cues and informs policy decision-making more directly than polls and surveys of the mass population. Illiberal thinkers in the US context have presented a particularly interesting development, as they diverge sometimes radically from the standard American ways of thinking about politics, especially within the GOP. In tracking them, however, one always runs the risk of emphasizing figures who may not end up mattering, or who may only exist as ephemeral curiosities in online fora.
J.D Vance as a Revealing Signal
The choice of Senator J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 election is a tremendous vote in the affirmative that this research approach has been justified. I’ve been tracking Vance, and several other rising GOP politicians including Sen. Josh Hawley and Gov. Ron DeSantis, for several years now, all of whom have or have developed connections to illiberal strains of thought and networks of illiberal thinkers.
Vance, alongside failed Senatorial candidate Blake Masters, is perhaps the most closely associated upper-tier American politician who can be credibly claimed as clearly tied to illiberal intellectual developments. You can find my summary of these developments here (as of late 2022), in a short paper published at the Illiberalism Studies Program, as well as follow-on paper here that makes comparisons with Eastern European illiberal exemplar states in Hungary and Poland. Larger articles on similar topics are currently stuck in peer-review, but look forward to them later on this year with any luck.
In pursuing this project, I have seen Vance speak twice at conferences I attended on research trips. One at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2022 while he was still running for Senate, where he spoke to a collection of integralists, postliberals, and national-conservatives. Another, at the Catholic University of America in 2023, where he spoke glowingly at an event on Prof. Patrick Deneen’s new postliberal book, Regime Change. And I just missed him at this year’s National Conservatism convention in DC a few weeks ago (he was in the VIP speaking slot that I did not attend - it was our one-year wedding anniversary!), although I did see presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy there give an enlightening talk on ‘national libertarianism.’
Illiberal thought in the American context has been a marginal phenomenon relative to the vast apparatus of traditional right-leaning emphases (think free market/low-tax economics, neocon hawks, or the old pro-life movement). Yet it is winning the new generation of right-leaning elites. And Vance is the vanguard. Not only is he generally oriented in that direction - statist, protectionist economics, forthright cultural nationalism, etc - he is conversant in the more esoteric forms of illiberal thought as well. He describes himself as a postliberal, he knows about the integralist debates from a few years back, he counts America’s premier authoritarian theorist Curtis Yarvin as a friend, and he is directly associated with the right-leaning tech-futurist world of Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and others. That he is the first millennial of any note to achieve such national prominence on the right is no accident.
And he’s not alone. The generational wheels are turning. At the same National Conservatism conference this July, Sen. Hawley gave a speech declaring himself to be a ‘Christian nationalist,’ a follow-up from penning an essay earlier this year marking him as an aspiring protestant postliberal thinker himself. Gov. DeSantis continues to work with the ‘counter-revolutionary’ activist Chris Rufo in developing educational and cultural policy in Florida. Indeed, the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee may be the first postliberal capital in America. And Capitol Hill is already full of staffers (and therefore future would-be politicians) who are far more interested in these sorts of ideological arguments than the old Reaganite consensus.
The Vancian Mélange of Illiberalism
What is interesting about Vance’s specific ideological background, as well as his network of influences, friends, and political associates, is the degree to which it spans a good deal of the breadth of current American illiberal thought. Vance describes himself as a ‘postliberal,’ which in the American context describes a nascent form of political Catholicism often combined with an interest in economic protectionism, a suspicion of big-business, and a general anti-‘woke’ orientation to sociocultural issues. And he is clearly well aware of the critiques and debates pushed forward by other intellectual postliberals like Patrick Deneen, Chad Pecknold, and Gladden Pappin, as well as integralist theorists like Adrian Vermeule.
But he also draws on American nationalist tendencies (and most postliberals are not particularly nationalists, especially the more radical ‘integralist’ subset within that group) and takes on a very populist political persona in his rhetoric. He makes regular reference to the importance of nationhood and has recently intervened in the debate on ‘is America a general idea or a defined people’ - in favor of a people. In this sense he is closer to the ‘national-conservative’ movement within the GOP.
And perhaps most scandalously for some, he also has very much so been inspired by the disruptive ideas coming out of Silicon Valley (sometimes very far afield from postliberalism or even the more communitarian elements of national-conservatism). He is very close to the billionaire tech leader Peter Thiel, and as noted is a friend of America’s most prominent authoritarian theorist Curtis Yarvin. It seems he’s gotten his interest in what is sometimes called RAGE (‘retire all government employees’) from Yarvin, as well as his regular description of the U.S. government as a hostile ‘regime.’ There is no evidence that Vance buys Yarvin’s claims in favor of a CEO-monarchy, but he surely knows about it.
All of these tendencies - postliberalism, nationalism, and tech-reaction - are distinct, and in principle mutually exclusive, corners of the American illiberal ideological ecosystem. Yet Vance they seem to rest relatively comfortably. He even seems to have a working knowledge of the ‘vitalist’ subculture, given his reported opposition to seed-oils (that’s an explanation for another time, or a Google search on your own).
All of these labels are generated by a small clutch of intellectuals and influencers, which means that as time runs its course they may shake out to mean more or less than they have in previous years. Vance’s ‘national postliberalism,’ presented in a populist style and working within America’s democratic institutions as an elected official, suggests that we need to be open to modifying our theories of ideology on the American right and accepting that practice does not always break as neatly into rigid conceptual boxes. Vance is showing us right now how ideology interacts with politics for the upcoming generation of American politicians, and we should be paying close attention.
Further Reading & Listening
There are a few new publications - and podcast appearances! - worth mentioning since the last newsletter:
First, a new peer-reviewed academic article at the Journal of Advanced Military Studies (published by the U.S. Marine Corps University) on governance regimes in permanent space settlements. I suggest that any permanent colonial venture will ultimately be governed as an authoritarian regime. I suggest three options along these lines, and build out the thought experiment with some gestures to historical analogies. You can find it for free here as “Characterizing Future Authoritarian Governance in the Space Domain.”
Second, a podcast discussion alongside my academic colleague Marlene Laruelle hosted by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and its “Bear Market Brief” Russia-focused newsletter program. We discuss whether Russia is ‘fascist.’ No, it is not. And we explain why here! You can find it here as “The F-Word.”
Third, a podcast Q&A interview published in-house at CNA. We focus on Russian civil-military relations and the recent government reshuffle in Russia. You can find it here as: “Vladimir Putin's New Defense Minister Andrey Belousov.”
Fourth, a reminder that our book on authoritarian state institutions is on pre-order sale at the University of Michigan Press website. Our authors’ discount for the entire pre-order period is “POAUG” and gets you a cool 40% off.
Finally, if you missed the last newsletter from May, you can find it here. Some advice for those planning on going into academia… or at least attempting it:
- Julian