Misoneismo

Misoneismo is the hostility to everything new, presented as a principle that can turn resistance to change into a stabilizing force—and into a defense of existing power. Brock Vond finds the idea compelling even though the racist phrenology from which it emerged had long been discredited; the concept lets him read political reaction not as an isolated choice but as a recurring social mechanism.

Definition and Political Use

Drawing on Cesare Lombroso, Vond understands misoneismo as a deep, organic human tendency: a kind of social feedback mechanism that allows society to proceed steadily and coherently. In this account, an abrupt attempt to change the status quo provokes an immediate response, not only from the state but also from the public. The idea thus gives resistance to political transformation the appearance of something natural and protective, rather than a defense of particular interests.

Vond regards Nixon’s election in 1968 as a near-perfect example of the theory. The election serves, in his interpretation, as evidence that a reaction against sudden change can be broadly social as well as governmental. The narrative presents this as Vond’s reading of events, not as proof that the theory is sound: his confidence in misoneismo sits beside the acknowledged history of racist, methodologically crude phrenology from which it was drawn.

Labor Conflict and Institutional Resistance

The concept also frames the account of conflict in the film industry. Newspapers present the dispute as a contest between two unions, while the narrative identifies a deeper anti-union tradition behind it. That tradition had helped draw the industry to California, where producers had benefited from inexpensive labor; when workers’ demands threatened that advantage, IATSE emerged as an employer-directed force, with members sometimes serving as strikebreakers.

The blacklist made the conflict’s outcome appear predetermined. By placing that labor struggle within one of the darkest periods of American misoneismo, the narrative links hostility to change with concrete arrangements of power: resistance is not merely an abstract public reflex, but can operate through organized labor pressure and the exclusion of workers. The contrast between the dispute’s newspaper framing and its material stakes shows how the language of social stability can obscure the interests being protected.