This is a really interesting point - that fascist political identities are increasingly built around a willingness to believe the unreal, ignoring left/right beliefs.
But it also massively overstates how much commitment people had to those ideas to begin with. For example:
No “conservative” defender of traditional family values would propose, as ambassador to France, a convicted felon who sent a prostitute to seduce his sister’s husband in order to create a compromising tape
Family values Republicans have always been rape-friendly hypocrites who accept any behavior from their priest-kings.
Giving the powerful free-reign is the conservative value. Everything else is secondary.
Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, and agency the prerogative of the elite.
Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.
Corey Robin: The Reactionary Mind
Rah rah Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine…
It was a shame how he carried on…
Yeah, this song is gonna be stuck in my head for the rest of the day now. I did it to myself though.
