Conservaphobia creates a pervasive sense of danger for those who hold traditional views. In his book-in-progress Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression, Rony Guldmann argues that this feeling of being unsafe stems from an institutionalized liberal world view. This view treats conservative thought as a psychological defect rather than a valid opinion.
Liberal institutions pathologize conservative beliefs. Psychologists often describe traditional values as signs of fear or low intelligence. This makes conservatives feel like patients under observation. They feel that experts diagnose their souls instead of listening to their arguments.
Social death acts as a constant threat. The fear of being labeled a bigot or a racist carries a heavy price. This stigma leads to ostracism from professional and social circles. It functions as a form of exile within one’s own country. Conservatives feel they must hide their true thoughts to keep their jobs.
Liberal control of schools and media creates a sense of cultural homelessness. The anointed class treats conservative symbols like the flag or the church as half savage relics. Deconstructing these symbols attacks the conservative hero system. This creates existential dread. When the state treats a person’s deepest values as obstacles to progress, that person feels like an enemy of the state.
Speech codes force the use of liberal terms. These rules require people to speak in ways that violate their own sense of reality. This feels like a violation of personal integrity. It is a form of epistemic coercion.
The ruling coalition dismisses legitimate safety concerns as mere prejudice. When conservatives notice patterns in crime or mental illness, experts call it bias. This leaves people feeling physically and socially vulnerable. They feel they cannot speak about risks without facing a moral trial.
Moral hierarchies place liberal values at the top and conservative values at the bottom. This vision of the anointed creates a world where some people are experts and others are problems to be solved. This asymmetry makes conservatives feel like they are subjects of a managerial elite.
Legal threats target traditional practices. Fights over marriage and gender identity make people feel that the law is a weapon. They fear that their way of making sense of the universe counts for nothing in court.
The loss of a shared national story leaves people without a sense of belonging. If the history of the country is only a story of oppression, then the patriot is a fool. This destruction of meaning feels like a cosmic terror. It removes the psychological shield that a shared culture provides.
Guldmann shows that these claims of oppression are not just about policy. They are about the right to exist in a social order that recognizes your humanity. The liberal world view denies this right to those it deems backward. This denial is the root of the conservative sense of being unsafe.
Experts treat traditional ideas as psychological symptoms. When a person values tradition, the elite class describes it as a fear of change. This pathologization turns a political debate into a medical observation. The citizen feels like a patient rather than a peer. The ruling coalition claims a monopoly on compassion. They frame their policies as the only way to care for people. This makes anyone who disagrees feel like a person of malice. A person feels they must defend their character before they can even speak about a policy.
Liberal institutions use asymmetric transparency. They demand that traditional groups reveal every donor and motive. Yet they hide their own decisions behind the shield of expert consensus. This makes the non-expert feel like the state is watching them while they are not allowed to watch the state. The vision of the anointed denies individual agency. Experts often say that people only vote for traditional values because they are victims of propaganda. This treats the voter as a person without a mind. It is a form of intellectualized anti-intellectualism.
Ruling coalitions use strategic unpredictability. They constantly update the moral language. A word that was safe yesterday becomes a sign of hate today. This keeps people in a state of fear. They never know when their vocabulary will become a reason for their firing. The state treats traditional symbols as half-savage relics. When the ruling class mocks a flag or a religious icon, they attack the hero system of the public. This creates a sense of cultural homelessness. The citizen feels like a stranger in their own country.
Experts redefine safety as the absence of offense. They argue that words can be a form of violence. This allows the coalition to censor any thought that challenges their reality. It makes the conservative feel that their presence in a room is a health hazard to others. The ruling class denies the value of reciprocity. They feel entitled to change traditional institutions like churches or schools. But they do not allow the public to influence the universities or the media. This asymmetry makes people feel like they are under a foreign occupation.
Elites use institutional gaslighting. They claim that a clear problem does not exist even when everyone can see it. They say a border is secure when it is not. This forces the public to choose between their own eyes and their social survival. The ruling coalition treats the past only as a crime scene. They frame history as a story of oppression. This makes the patriot feel like a fool for loving his home. It destroys the meaning that people find in their ancestors.
This system is a tool for coalition coordination. It does not seek truth. It seeks to maintain the status of the managers. When the experts define the traditional way of life as a psychological defect, they remove it from the list of admissible realities. DTG might be a reaction to this erasure. The populist revolt is a attempt to reclaim the right to define what is honorable and what is safe. Stability returns only when the public accepts the hero system of the state. Right now the public sees the expertise as a sham used to keep them in a state of permanent anxiety.
