Paléo-conservatisme

Paleoconservatism is a political philosophy and strain of conservatism in the United States stressing American nationalism, Christian ethics, regionalism, and traditionalist conservatism. Paleoconservatism's concerns overlap with those of the Old Right that opposed the New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s as well as with paleolibertarianism and right-wing populism. The terms neoconservative and paleoconservative were coined following the outbreak of the Vietnam War and a divide in American conservatism between the interventionists and the isolationists. Those in favor of the Vietnam War then became known as the neoconservatives (interventionists), as they marked a decisive split from the nationalist-isolationism that the traditionalist conservatives (isolationists) had subscribed to up until this point. According to international relations scholar Michael Foley, "paleoconservatives press for restrictions on immigration, a rollback of multicultural programs and large-scale demographic change, the decentralization of federal policy, the restoration of controls upon free trade, a greater emphasis upon economic nationalism and non-interventionism in the conduct of American foreign policy". Historian George Hawley states that although influenced by paleoconservatism, Donald Trump is not a paleoconservative, but rather a right-wing nationalist and populist. Hawley also argued in 2017 that paleoconservatism was an exhausted force in American politics, but that for a time it represented the most serious right-wing threat to the mainstream conservative movement. Regardless of how Trump himself is categorized, others regard the movement known as Trumpism as supported by, if not a rebranding of, paleoconservatism. From this view, the followers of the old right did not fade away so easily and continue to have significant influence in the Republican Party and the entire country. The prefix paleo derives from the Greek root παλαιός (palaiós), meaning "ancient" or "old".