I don't think the current conservative right can be called a counter-culture as they are now in charge but they come from a few. The Christian Right, courted by Ronald Reagan. The 'shock jocks' on talk radio, soon followed by the likes of Alex Jones with Infowars and the rest of the online radicals. The Tea Party, and then MAGA. They've all started from a position explicitly in opposition to the mainstream, which they define as wet, liberal, elitist, coporatist and more recently, woke. The current right are an uneasy coalition of these, with the more traditional right, pulled together by Trump.
In the end, every counter culture sells out. The rebel becomes 'The Man'. Then they become yesterday's man.
So the narrative on the Right is that they are the counterculture. But I think that is often self-serving. I would split those people that you mention into different groups.
1. Some on the Christian Right do seek to create a wholly separate counter culture. Miller ends his books on the 60s communes with the following comment:
"The most distinctive new emphasis in post-1975 community has been what Michael Barkun has called the dark side of community, the growth of communitarianism within the political ultraright in the United States. The 1980s and 1990s have seen a rise in the visibility of antigovernment, antitax, and racist sentiments, and one strand of this rightist ascendancy has been the Christian Identity movement. Simply put, Identity here refers to the belief that Anglo-Saxon and/or other northern European peoples (and not the contemporary Jews) are the true descendants of ancient Israel and as such God’s chosen people. Other peoples, the theory has it, are inferior. In practice Identity tends to be a white supremacy movement, and it has spawned several communes, notably in Idaho and in the Ozarks of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Although the communal adherents of Identity doctrine are not terribly numerous, they have received a good deal of press attention, especially because of their putative connections to certain violent acts (such as the bombing of the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City in 1995) committed by individuals of ultrarightist conviction."
2. There is a clear difference between The Shock Jocks and Alex Jones. Rush Limbaugh was part of the Republican Establishment whereas Alex Jones is a far more marginal figure. I don't think he's ever spoken at CPAC.
3. The Tea Party and MAGA are not counter cultures. They are insurgent groups erupting within the Conservative Establishment and seeking to wrestle control of it. Identify politics groups (such as BLM) play a similar role within the Left Liberal Establishment.
4. As I mentioned elsewhere, I think there are multiple trajectories - the counterculture either: "withers away or builds its own institutions to the point that it becomes a shadow state or it ends up being either taking over or being incorporated into existing institutions. I think a permanent counter culture may be an oxymoron".
As for your last sentence, I am reminded of what happens to he who fucks nuns...
I don't think the current conservative right can be called a counter-culture as they are now in charge but they come from a few. The Christian Right, courted by Ronald Reagan. The 'shock jocks' on talk radio, soon followed by the likes of Alex Jones with Infowars and the rest of the online radicals. The Tea Party, and then MAGA. They've all started from a position explicitly in opposition to the mainstream, which they define as wet, liberal, elitist, coporatist and more recently, woke. The current right are an uneasy coalition of these, with the more traditional right, pulled together by Trump.
In the end, every counter culture sells out. The rebel becomes 'The Man'. Then they become yesterday's man.
So the narrative on the Right is that they are the counterculture. But I think that is often self-serving. I would split those people that you mention into different groups.
1. Some on the Christian Right do seek to create a wholly separate counter culture. Miller ends his books on the 60s communes with the following comment:
"The most distinctive new emphasis in post-1975 community has been what Michael Barkun has called the dark side of community, the growth of communitarianism within the political ultraright in the United States. The 1980s and 1990s have seen a rise in the visibility of antigovernment, antitax, and racist sentiments, and one strand of this rightist ascendancy has been the Christian Identity movement. Simply put, Identity here refers to the belief that Anglo-Saxon and/or other northern European peoples (and not the contemporary Jews) are the true descendants of ancient Israel and as such God’s chosen people. Other peoples, the theory has it, are inferior. In practice Identity tends to be a white supremacy movement, and it has spawned several communes, notably in Idaho and in the Ozarks of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Although the communal adherents of Identity doctrine are not terribly numerous, they have received a good deal of press attention, especially because of their putative connections to certain violent acts (such as the bombing of the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City in 1995) committed by individuals of ultrarightist conviction."
And there's a whole chapter dedicated to these groups in his following book: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvj7wp04
Another version of this is Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Benedict_Option
2. There is a clear difference between The Shock Jocks and Alex Jones. Rush Limbaugh was part of the Republican Establishment whereas Alex Jones is a far more marginal figure. I don't think he's ever spoken at CPAC.
3. The Tea Party and MAGA are not counter cultures. They are insurgent groups erupting within the Conservative Establishment and seeking to wrestle control of it. Identify politics groups (such as BLM) play a similar role within the Left Liberal Establishment.
4. As I mentioned elsewhere, I think there are multiple trajectories - the counterculture either: "withers away or builds its own institutions to the point that it becomes a shadow state or it ends up being either taking over or being incorporated into existing institutions. I think a permanent counter culture may be an oxymoron".
As for your last sentence, I am reminded of what happens to he who fucks nuns...