Throughout 2018 democracy has been a constant theme in the political commentary of the west.[1] Illiberalism is rising and it presents a serious challenge to American and world democracy. In a section of Chapter One of It’s Sunday in America entitled “Mobilizing Christian Heritage,” I included a brief assessment of the dangers of illiberal democracy to the religious liberties of minorities.[2] This was in the broader context of mobilizing Christian heritage to preserve western civilisation.
I gave two examples of mobilizing Christian heritage: In America, General Michael Flynn’s suggestion that America should accept its Judeo-Christian foundations in dealing with radical Islamist views; and, in France, François Fillon’s strategy of appealing to Christian heritage to attract conservative voters. Now it appears that a movement closely connected to the Catholic right in France, and founded on the cultural-religious foundations of Europe, is poised to create a new conservative movement in France.[3]
Mark Lilla reports,
Something new is happening on the European right, and it involves more than xenophobic outbursts. Ideas are being developed, and transnational networks for disseminating them are being established. Journalists have treated as a mere vanity project Steve Bannon’s efforts to bring European populist parties and thinkers together under the umbrella of what he calls The Movement. But his instincts, as in American politics, are in tune with the times…In countries as diverse as France, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Italy, efforts are underway to develop a coherent ideology that would mobilize Europeans angry about immigration, economic dislocation, the European Union, and social liberalization, and then use that ideology to govern. Now is the time to start paying attention to the ideas of what seems to be an evolving right-wing Popular Front. France is good place to start.
This new movement in France is championed by young writers who share two convictions: a robust conservatism and a commitment to environmentalism.[4] Lilla writes, “They all seem inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ (2015), a comprehensive statement of Catholic social teaching on the environment and economic justice.” The commitment to Laudato si’is ominous in my view because of the emphasis of Pope Francis on his interconnectedness thesis and the role of Sunday in holding together his agenda in Laudato si’. The reasons for my concern are laid out in detail in Chapter Two of It’s Sunday in America.
Lilla sees two paths for this new movement, one benign, one more menacing. He writes of the first,
And these conservative ideas could have repercussions beyond France’s borders. One possibility is that a renewed, more classical organic conservatism could serve as a moderating force in European democracies currently under stress…If there is a part of the electorate that simply dreams of living in a more stable, less fluid world, economically and culturally—people who are not primarily driven by xenophobic anti-elitism—then a moderate conservative movement might serve as a bulwark against the alt-right furies by stressing tradition, solidarity, and care of the earth.
Of the second, Lilla writes,
A different scenario is that the aggressive form of conservatism that one also sees in France would serve instead as a powerful tool for building a pan-European reactionary Christian nationalism along the lines laid out in the early twentieth century by Charles Maurras, the French anti-Semitic champion of “integral nationalism” who became the master thinker of Vichy. It is one thing to convince populist leaders in Western and Eastern Europe today that they have common practical interests and should work together, as Steve Bannon is trying to do. It is quite another, more threatening thing to imagine those leaders having a developed ideology at their disposal for recruiting young cadres and cultural elites and connecting them at the Continental level for joint political action.
Illiberalism is a natural twin to mobilizing Christian heritage and a reactionary Christian nationalism grounded in Catholic social teaching and Francis’ environmental agenda, with broad appeal to both sides of politics, is not good news for democracy or the rights of minorities on either side of the Atlantic. The political left’s cultural hegemony is clearly under threat. The right in Europe is pushing back, as in America. 2019 seems destined to witness a further intensification of these trends.
[1]For example, see the series, “Is Democracy Dying,” by The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/project/is-democracy-dying/I have also written about illiberal democracy in posts in 2018 on this website.
[2]It’s Sunday in America, 20-24.
[3]Lilla, Mark. “Two Roads for the New French Right.” The New York Review of Books. December 20, 2018 Issue.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/two-roads-for-the-new-french-right/
[4]Lilla, Mark. “Two Roads for the New French Right.”
