Rednecks, Reactionaries and the Right Wing.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a redneck as follows:

A slang term, usually for a rural white southerner who is politically conservative, racist, and a religious fundamentalist. This term is generally considered offensive. It originated in reference to agricultural workers, alluding to how the back of a person's neck will be burned by the sun if he works long hours in the fields.

According to Wikipedia, the term may originate in reference to Scotland's Presbyterian religious community, thus:

The Scottish Covenenters signed documents stating that Scotland desired a Presbyterian Church government and rejected the Church of England as their official church. In doing so, the Covenanters rejected episcopacy - rule by bishops - the preferred form of church government in England. Many of the Covenanters signed these documents using their own blood, and many in the movement began wearing red pieces of cloth around their neck to signify their position to the public. They were referred to as rednecks. Large numbers of these Scottish Presbyterians migrated from their lowland Scottish home to Ulster, (the northern province of Ireland) and soon settled in considerable numbers in North America throughout the 18th century. Some emigrated directly from Scotland to the American colonies in the late 18th and early 19th-centuries. This etymological theory holds that since many Scots-Irish Americans and Scottish Americans who settled in Appalachia and the South were Presbyterian, the term was bestowed upon them and their descendants.

There are other theories concerning the American origin of the term, often relying on the phenomenon of sunburnt necks that white Southern American farm labourers had. Certainly the outlook and political perspective of many "redneck" Southern Americans and the Irish Presbyterian community in Ulster have some strong points of commonality, including conservatism, ethnic or racial intolerance and religious fundamentalism.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a reactionary as one who is:

Characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism; extremely conservative.

According to Wikipedia, the term reactionary came into usage as follows:

Reactionary (also reactionist) is a pejorative political epithet, originated in the French Revolution denoting the counter-revolutionaries wishing to restore the real or imagined conditions of the monarchical Ancien Regime. In the nineteenth century, the term reactionism denoted those who wished to preserve feudalism and aristocratic and privilege against industrialism, republicanism, liberalism and (some times) socialism.

Though "reactionary" and "redneck" are not synonymous, they have points of commonality. Both are conservative in nature, originate with resistance to change and tend to have very restrictive religious beliefs.

The term right-wing is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as follows:

The conservative or reactionary faction of a group.

Wikipedia has this to say about right wing:

In politics, right-wing, the political right, and the Right are positions that seek to uphold or return to traditional authorities and/or the liberties of a civil society. Its concern is often to preserve the domestic culture usually in the face of external forces for change. Due to its link to tradition, the right has been associated with the church, business and law and order. Although right-wing ideas are associated with a return to the way of the past, some factions of the right acknowledge that an idealized past cannot be brought back and thus they may realize their values for an idealized future.

Wikipedia also gives this origin for the term:

The term originates from the French Revolution, when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies monarchists who supported the Ancien Regime  were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side. It is still the tradition in the French National Assembly for the representatives to be seated left-to-right (relative to the Assembly president) according to their political alignment.

As both "reactionary" and "right wing" owe their origin to the French in the time shortly after the French Revolution, and have similar meanings, they can be seen to be almost interchangeable, although there is certainly a difference in intensity in the modern usage of the two expressions.

Clearly, however, redneck, reactionary and right wing all have similar origins and similar meanings which, while there may be some variation over the years, remain fairly true to this day.

The rednecks resisted the loss of their entrenched social advantages over Catholics in Ireland and Scotland just as rednecks in the United States resisted the loss of their entrenched social advantages over black African Americans. Reactionaries and right-wingers in olden days sought to preserve the institution, power and influence of the monarchy in France and along with it the aristocracy, of which they were almost entirely members. They sought to preserve their entrenched social, economic and political advantages over the common people who led the revolution, deposed the tyrant and began the French Republic. They opposed liberalism, republicanism (in the sense the rest of the world has of the word, not the American usage relating to the Republican Party) and change.

We can see these strains still evident in society today, even if the issues have changed. Right wing politicians today have championed tax cuts which benefit the wealthy, the modern aristocracy, and oppose universal public health care, that benefits the common folk.

In the end, it must be observed, that while not all conservatives can be categorized as rednecks, clearly all rednecks can be catergorized as conservatives.