Does the Right Think Obama's a "Socialist"

To be honest, I don't think so in most cases.

My impression of conservatives is that their name-calling is more of a form of "identity politics" than anything else. A big chunk of right-wing culture is bound up in the politics of gestures like wearing an American flag lapel pin, flying a flag, or sticking Support the Troops bumper stickers on cars. Far from indicating a love of country, this kind of symbolism is mostly about asserting a conservative identity and declaring a person's opposition to what they view as liberalism. In other words, the patriotic displays of conservatives are more about conservative identity politics than anything else. If anything, these kinds of patriotic displays represent the strong sense of ambivalence conservatives have over having to share the United States with liberals and (non-conservative) minorities.

The intensive name-calling of Barack Obama by conservatives should be understood along the same lines. Certainly, some people on the right believe that Obama is a socialist according to their very loose definitions of socialism. In the same way, I imagine that the poor woman at the McCain rally who thought Obama was an Arab was being serious.

But the connection between the insult and the reality doesn't concern most people on the right.

That's because calling Obama a "socialist," "terrorist," "traitor" or "Muslim" is more a way for conservatives to assert their identity as conservatives than anything else. In other words, conservatives are not making a claim about Obama so much as they're making a claim about themselves being the kind of person who would insult Obama in these ways. It's the gesture itself that counts rather than the reference of the gesture to any reality.

In a way, conservatives seem to enjoy these kinds of gestures more to the extent that they don't refer to anything outside themselves. In saying something that is rude or inflammatory, people on the right are indicating the social taboos that they're willing to violate in order to assert their conservatism. Once again, give that conservative identity is constructed primarily in opposition to white liberals and all the taboos of "political correctness" that liberals and their minority allies are viewed as enforcing, breaking those of taboos is an especially pleasurable way to reaffirm a person's allegiance to the conservative cause.

From the point of view of many conservatives, "truth" is just another taboo that they are glad to violate. If they can come up with one fact that vindicates the insult (say Obama's middle name of Hussein), that's more than enough to justify the "socialist" or "terrorist" accusation from the conservative point of view. They don't care whether Obama actually is a socialist or terrorist or not. Indeed, the fact that Obama is not a socialist gives a special relish to enunciating the insult.

So how should people on the left respond?

My opinion is that we on the left should focus on criticizing the phony, dishonest, character of the gesture rather than waste our time denying that Barack Obama is a socialist, terrorist, or traitor. In doing so, we get at more of the truth of what conservatives are saying.