The Heritage Foundation, an influential rightwing thinktank currently mired in controversy over its president’s apparent apology for extremism, has appointed as a director the founder of a secretive all-male network of Christian nationalist fraternal lodges.
Scott Yenor, appointed as Heritage’s new director of the B Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, has also recently offered ultra-conservative opinions on women, marriage and LGBTQ rights in recent podcast appearances and speaking engagements.
They have included that there is an association between homosexuality and pedophilia; that adultery, homosexuality, no-fault divorce, and abortion should be outlawed under a regime of “soft patriarchy”; and that elements of the US Civil Rights Act, including its prohibitions against workplace sex discrimination, should be wound back.
Heritage appointed Yenor despite a string of controversies over his reactionary politics, including his resignation in April from the University of Florida’s board of regents following protests and concern from state legislators over his views about women.
You’re absolutely right.
I think lots of people don’t understand that conservatism is a subset of reactionary ideology; their primary goal is to reverse the empowerment of the people they hate. They wish to “return” to an idealized past that they feel was stolen from them— one where being a white man automatically granted one a certain status.
They have a zero-sum view of rights: if another group is ascendant it must mean that they’re losing out. They have a desire to control the culture; changing norms and increasing diversity means that they’re having to compete with people who they view as beneath them. It’s why they’re constantly whining about things like DEI and blue-haired lesbians: it’s a way to reframe their bigotry to place the blame on others.
The reactionary right are very good at taking the rhetoric of liberation from the left and twisting it to their perverse purposes— namely, cementing a hierarchy of minority rule.