Right-wing conspiratorial resentment centers on a felt loss of America

Evidence

The modern right wing,” Hofstadter suggested, felt uniquely dispossessed: “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans.” He was making that point as a coalition of movements—civil rights, second-wave feminism, anti–Vietnam War activism—aimed to fundamentally reshape American life. And his ideas about far-right discontent came before the conservative backlash of the 1970s, when aggrieved right-wingers began to mobilize and articulate a vision of social and familial “traditionalism” that became central to the Republican Party’s vision of itself. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 65

Categorization

• XREF: The dispossession-and-backlash frame connects to vault claims about authoritarian right-wing politics and moral-panic mechanisms rooted in identity threat. — connects to: Conspiracy theories give concrete form to a group’s sensed loss of power — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 58; Conspiracist delegitimation frames electoral defeat as existential national transformation — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 206; Distrust, immobility, and fear of outsiders conspiratorialize American politics — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 59
• ADDENDUM: Hofstadter’s paranoid-style genealogy could serve as the deep-history pivot connecting this conspiracy machinery to the Christian-nationalism claims in the 2016-2020 chapter.

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy theories give concrete form to a group’s sensed loss of power #expands (0.85) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 58
• Conspiracist delegitimation frames electoral defeat as existential national transformation #expands (0.78) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 206
• Distrust, immobility, and fear of outsiders conspiratorialize American politics #complicates (0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 59