American conservatism shifted from liberal individualism toward anti-worker agitation.

Evidence

But Adorno suspected that there were hardly any genuine conservatives left in the United States. In his view they were being driven into the liberal camp as a result of changing conditions, in which being conservative increasingly tended to mean stirring up hatred against the workers and against minorities. … In the United States, the liberal camp comprised those who supported the concepts of social reform represented by the New Deal and approved of state intervention to assist weaker members of society. The majority of the interviewees with conservative political and economic views were accordingly seen as pseudo-conservative. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the New Deal-era conjuncture and to later notions of pseudo-conservatism in American political sociology (Hofstadter’s ‘pseudo-conservative revolt’).