In the politics of the United States, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards ultraconservatism, white nationalism, white supremacy, or other far-rightideologies in a hierarchical structure which is paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations.[1][2][3][4] The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as the John Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide.[5] The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental (hence "radical") changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests from political life.[6]
Among academics and social scientists there is disagreement in the past over how right-wingpolitical movement should be described, and no consensus over what the proper terminology should be exists, although the terminology which was developed in the 1950s, based on the use of the words "radical" or "extremist", is the most commonly used one. Other scholars simply prefer to call them "The Right" or "conservatives", which is what they call themselves. The terminology is used to describe a broad range of movements.[5] The term "radical right" was coined by Seymour Martin Lipset and it was also included in a book titled The New American Right, which was published in 1955.[7] The contributors to that book identified a conservative "responsible Right" as represented by the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower and a radical right that wished to change political and social life.[8] Further to the right of the radical right, they identified themselves as the "ultraright", adherents of which advocated drastic change, but they only used violence against the state in extreme cases. In the decades since, the ultraright, while adopting the basic ideology of the 1950s radical right,[9] has updated it to encompass what it sees as "threats" posed by the modern world. It has leveraged fear of those threats to draw new adherents, and to encourage support of a more militant approach to countering these perceived threats. A book written by Klaus Wah in the year 2000, The Radical Right, contrasts the radical right of the 1950s, which obtained influence during the Reagan administration, to the radical right of today, which has increasingly turned to violent acts beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.[1][2][10]
Wahl's book documents this evolution: "Ideologies of [today's] radical right emphasize social and economic threats in the modern and postmodern world (e.g., globalization, immigration). The radical right also promises protection against such threats by an emphatic ethnic construction of 'we', the people, as a familiar, homogeneous in-group, anti-modern, or reactionary structures of family, society, an authoritarian state, nationalism, the discrimination, or exclusion of immigrants and other minorities ... While favoring traditional social and cultural structures (traditional family and gender roles, religion, etc.) the radical right uses modern technologies and it does not ascribe to a specific economic policy; some parties advocate a liberal, free-market policy, but other parties advocate a welfare state policy. Finally, the radical right can be scaled by using different degrees of militancy and aggressiveness from right-wing populism to racism, terrorism, and totalitarianism."[11]
Ultraright groups, as The Radical Right definition states, are normally called "far-right" groups,[12] but they may also be called "radical right" groups.[13] According to Clive Webb, "Radical right is commonly, but not exclusively used to describe anticommunist organizations such as the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society... [T]he term far right ... is the label most broadly used by scholars ... to describe militant white supremacists."[14]
Sociological perspectives
McCarthyism
The study of the radical right began in the 1950s as social scientists attempted to explain McCarthyism, which was seen as a lapse from the American political tradition. A framework for description was developed primarily in Richard Hofstadter's "The pseudo-conservative revolt" and Seymour Martin Lipset's "The sources of the radical right". These essays, along with others by Daniel Bell, Talcott Parsons, Peter Viereck and Herbert Hyman, were included in The New American Right (1955). In 1963, following the rise of the John Birch Society, the authors were asked to re-examine their earlier essays and the revised essays were published in the book The Radical Right. Lipset, along with Earl Raab, traced the history of the radical right in The Politics of Unreason (1970).[15]
The central arguments of The Radical Right provoked criticism. Some on the Right thought that McCarthyism could be explained as a rational reaction to communism. Others thought McCarthyism should be explained as part of the Republican Party's political strategy. Critics on the Left denied that McCarthyism could be interpreted as a mass movement and rejected the comparison with 19th-century populism. Others saw status politics, dispossession and other explanations as too vague.[16]
Paranoid-style politics
Two different approaches were taken by these social scientists. The American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an analysis in his influential 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Hofstadter sought to identify the characteristics of the groups. Hofstadter defined politically paranoid individuals as feeling persecuted, fearing conspiracy, and acting over-aggressive yet socialized. Hofstadter and other scholars in the 1950s argued that the major left-wing movement of the 1890s, the Populists, showed what Hofstadter said was "paranoid delusions of conspiracy by the Money Power".[17]
Historians have also applied the paranoid category to other political movements, such as the conservative Constitutional Union Party of 1860.[18] Hofstadter's approach was later applied to the rise of new right-wing groups, including the Christian right and the Patriot movement.[15]
Current size
Political scientist Gary Jacobson[19] gives an estimate of the "size of the extremist vote" as a fraction of Republican Party voters (there being essentially no right-wing extremists in the Democratic party), based on sympathizers as well as active supporters of the "Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon etc.". He points to survey data of Republicans who answered "yes" to questions such as whether they had a "favorable opinion of the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6", thought it likely that Donald Trump would "be reinstated as president before the end of 2021", and whether it was "definitely true" that "top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings." Based on the results, which were stable over 2020–2022, he estimated that "20 to 25 percent of the Republican electorate can be considered extremists".[20]
Social structure
Sociologists Lipset and Raab were focused on who joined these movements and how they evolved. They saw the development of radical right-wing groups as occurring in three stages. In the first stage certain groups came under strain because of a loss or threatened loss of power and/or status. In the second stage they theorize about what has led to this threat. In the third stage they identify people and groups whom they consider to be responsible. A successful radical right-wing group would be able to combine the anxieties of both elites and masses. European immigration for example threatened the elites because immigrants brought socialism and radicalism, while for the masses the threat came from their Catholicism. The main elements are low democratic restraint, having more of a stake in the past than the present and laissez-faire economics. The emphasis is on preserving social rather than economic status. The main population attracted are lower-educated, lower-income and lower-occupational strata. They were seen as having a lower commitment to democracy, instead having loyalty to groups, institutions and systems.[21]
However, some scholars reject Lipset and Raab's analysis. James Aho, for example, says that the way individuals join right-wing groups is no different from how they join other types of groups. They are influenced by recruiters and join because they believe the goals promoted by the group are of value to them and find personal value in belonging to the group. Several scholars, including Sara Diamond and Chip Berlet, reject the theory that membership in the radical right is driven by emotionality and irrationality and see them as similar to other political movements. John George and Laird Wilcox see the psychological claims in Lipset and Raab's approach as "dehumanizing" of members of the radical right. They claim that the same description of members of the radical right is also true of many people within the political mainstream.[22]
Richard Hofstadter found a common thread in the radical right, from fear of the Illuminati in the late 18th century, to anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic movements in the 19th to McCarthyism and the John Birch Society in the 20th. They were conspiracist, Manichean, absolutist and paranoid. They saw history as a conspiracy by a demonic force that was on the verge of total control, requiring their urgent efforts to stop it. Therefore, they rejected pluralistic politics, with its compromise and consensus-building. Hofstadter thought that these characteristics were always present in a large minority of the population. Frequent waves of status displacement would continually bring it to the surface.[23]
D. J. Mulloy, however, noted that the term "extremist" is often applied to groups outside the political mainstream and the term is dropped once these groups obtain respectability, using the Palestinian Liberation Organization as an example. The mainstream frequently ignores the commonality between itself and so-called extremist organizations. Also, the radical right appeals to views that are held by the mainstream: antielitism, individualism, and egalitarianism. Their views on religion, race, Americanism and guns are held by a significant proportion of other white Americans.[24]
Common to most of these theories is an overarching belief in the existence of New World Order intent on instituting a one-world, communist government.[25]Climate change being viewed as a hoax is also sometimes associated with the radical right.[26]
Since 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory has been widely promulgated among fringe groups on the far-right.[27]
From the 1990s onward, parties that have been described as radical right became established in the legislatures of various democracies including Canada, Australia, Norway, France, Israel, Russia, Romania, and Chile, and they also entered coalition governments in Switzerland, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, and Italy. However, there is little consensus about the reasons for this.[29] Some of these parties had historic roots, such as the National Alliance, formed as the Italian Social Movement in 1946, the French National Front, founded in 1972, and the Freedom Party of Austria, an existing party that moved sharply to the right after 1986. Typically new right-wing parties, such as the French Poujadists, the U.S. Reform Party and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List enjoyed short-lived prominence.[30] The main support for these parties comes from both the self-employed and skilled and unskilled labor, with support coming predominantly from males.[31]
However, scholars are divided on whether these parties are radical right, since they differ from the groups described in earlier studies of the radical right. They are more often described as populist.[32] Studies of the radical right in the United States and right-wing populism in Europe have tended to be conducted independently, with very few comparisons made. European analyses have tended to use comparisons with fascism, while studies of the American radical right have stressed American exceptionalism. The U.S. studies have paid attention to the consequences of slavery, the profusion of religious denominations and a history of immigration, and saw fascism as uniquely European.[33]
Although the term "radical right" was American in origin, the term has been consciously adopted by some European social scientists. Conversely the term "right-wing extremism", which is European in origin, has been adopted by some American social scientists. Since the European right-wing groups in existence immediately following the war had roots in fascism they were normally called "neo-fascist". However, as new right-wing groups emerged with no connection to historical fascism, the use of the term "right-wing extremism" came to be more widely used.[34]
Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg argued that the radical right in the U.S. and right-wing populism in Europe were the same phenomenon that existed throughout the Western world. They identified the core attributes as contained in extremism, behaviour and beliefs. As extremists, they see no moral ambiguity and demonize the enemy, sometimes connecting them to conspiracy theories such as the New World Order. Given this worldview, there is a tendency to use methods outside democratic norms, although this is not always the case. The main core belief is inequality, which often takes the form of opposition to immigration or racism. They do not see this new Right as having any connection with the historic Right, which had been concerned with protecting the status quo.[35] They also see the cooperation of the American and European forms, and their mutual influence on each other, as evidence of their existence as a single phenomenon.[36]
Daniel Bell argues that the ideology of the radical right is "its readiness to jettison constitutional processes and to suspend liberties, to condone Communist methods in the fighting of Communism".[37] Historian Richard Hofstadter agrees that communist-style methods are often emulated: "The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy". He also quotes Barry Goldwater: "I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not".[38]
The American Patriots who spearheaded the American Revolution in the 1770s were motivated primarily by an ideology that historians call Republicanism.[40] It stressed the dangers of aristocracy, as represented by the British government, corruption, and the need for every citizen to display civic virtue. When public affairs took a bad turn, Republicans were inclined to identify a conspiracy of evil forces as the cause.[41]
Against this background of fear of conspiracies against American liberties the first Radical Right-style responses came in the 1790s.[42] Some Federalists warned of an organized conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and recent arrivals from Europe, alleging that they were agents of the French revolutionary agenda of violent radicalism, social equalitarianism and anti-Christian infidelity.[43] The Federalists in 1798 acted by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to protect the country against both foreign and domestic radicals. Fear of immigration led to a riot in New York City in 1806 between nativists and Irishmen, which led to increased calls by Federalists to nativism.[42][44]
In America, public outrage against privilege and aristocracy in the United States was expressed in the Northeast by advocates of anti-Masonry, the belief that Freemasonry comprised powerful evil secret elites which rejected republican values and were blocking the movement toward egalitarianism and reform. The anti-Masons, with a strong evangelical base, organized into a political party, the Anti-Masonic Party that pledged to rid Masons from public office. It was most active in 1828–1836. The Freemason movement was badly damaged and never fully recovered; the Anti-Mason movement merged into the coalition that became the new Whig Party. The anti-Masonry movement was not "radical"; it fully participated in democracy, and was animated by the belief that the Masons were the ones subverting democracy in America.[45][46] While earlier accounts of the antimasons portrayed their supporters as mainly poor people, more recent scholarship has shown that they were largely middle-class.[47]
The arrival of large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s led to a reaction among Americans, who were alarmed by the levels of crime and welfare dependency among the new arrivals, and the danger of political power in the hands of the Pope. This led to the organized Nativists and xenophobes. Nativists in New York formed the American Republican Party. It merged into the Know Nothings in the 1850s. The Know-Nothing activists and Irish Catholics fought a series of election-day confrontations especially in the 1856, with multiple injuries and a few deaths.
The Know Nothing party split over the issue of slavery and its northern wing merged into the Republican Party in the late 1850s.[48][49]
White paramilitary organizations in the Southern United States
Starting in the 1870s and continuing through the late 19th century, numerous white supremacist paramilitary groups operated in the South, with the goal of intimidating African-American supporters of the Republican Party. Examples of such groups included the Red Shirts and the White League.[50]
American Protective Association
In the Midwestern United States in 1887, the American Protective Association (APA) was formed by Irish Protestants from Canada who wanted to fight against the political power of Irish Catholic politicians. It was a secret organization with vastly exaggerated membership claims whose members campaigned for Protestant candidates in local elections and it opposed the hiring of Catholics for government jobs. The movement relied on forged documents and was rejected by mainstream Republicans. Anti-Catholicism was declining in America as the Catholics moved up the social ladder, and the APA quickly faded away in the mid-1890s.[51][52][53]
Second Ku Klux Klan
The Second Ku Klux Klan, was formed in 1915 but grew very slowly until the early 1920s. Then entrepreneurs took it over as a cash machine whereby well-paid state and local organizers formed a local chapter and collected initiation fees, while the national office sold expensive white robes with masks. The organizers collected the money and moved on, leaving locals with weak leadership.[54] Once the state leaders were exposed as frauds in the mid-1920s, the KKK collapsed rapidly. Organizers promised membership would be secret, and appealed to Anti-Catholicism as well as hostility to Jews and African Americans. Protestant fundamentalists were the main recruits, along with poorly educated men. The Klan organizers claimed that Catholics were controlled by the Pope. They supported prohibition and public schools. The Klan was anti-elitist and it also attacked "the intellectuals", seeing itself as the egalitarian defender of the common man.[55] The Klan was denounced by the Republicans, but the Democrats split bitterly on a proposal to denounce the Klan in 1924.[56][57]
Charles Coughlin (Father Coughlin) was a Catholic priest who immigrated from Canada to Detroit and began broadcasting on religious matters in 1926. When his program went national in 1930, he began to comment on political issues, promoting a left-wing attack that was highly critical of American capitalists. By 1932 he had millions of regular listeners. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and promoted the early New Deal.[59] He broke with Roosevelt in 1935 on foreign policy. Coughlin then denounced the New Deal, which he claimed had accomplished little but instead had strengthened the position of the bankers.[60]
In 1934 he set up the "National Union for Social Justice", as a network of local clubs he would control. The National Union never flourished and it closed in 1936.[61] Instead he endorsed the left-wing presidential campaign of William Lemke, who campaigned on the Union Party ticket, as a new third party. Lemke was also supported by Gerald L. K. Smith, head of the remnants of the Share Our Wealth movement and Dr. Francis Townsend, head of the left-wing Townsend Old Age movement. In the election, however, Lemke received fewer than 900,000 votes.[62][63]
After 1936 Coughlin used his radio show and magazine to push America far to the right.[64] He endorsed the fascism of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Nazi Germany. At home he attacked labor unions and liberal politicians for being pro-Communist. He called for a corporate state and setting up "Social Justice Councils", which excluded non-Christians from their membership. His magazine, Social Justice, named Benito Mussolini as man of the year in 1938 and defended Hitler's "persecution" of Jews, whom he linked with Communism. Major radio stations then refused to air his broadcasts and the Post Office banned Social Justice from the mails in 1942 after the U.S. entered World War II. The previous Catholic archbishop of Detroit had defended Coughlin but the new archbishop ordered him to cease his political activities and radio broadcasts. Coughlin did so and retired from political life.[65][66][67]
Smaller fringe groups
The Black Legion, which had a peak membership of 40,000 was formed by former Klansmen and operated in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Unlike the Klan, its members dressed in black and its organizational hierarchy was based on the organizational hierarchy of the military, not on the organizational hierarchy of fraternal organizations. Its members swore an oath to keep "the secrets of the order to support God, the United States Constitution, and the Black Legion in its holy war against Catholics, Jews, Communists, Negroes, and aliens". The organization went into decline after more than fifty members were convicted of various crimes in support of the organization. The typical member was from a small farm in the South, lacked a high school graduation diploma, was married with children and worked in unskilled labor.[68]
Gerald B. Winrod, a fundamentalist Christian minister who founded the Defenders of the Christian Faith revived the Illuminati conspiracy theory that was originally introduced into the United States in 1798. He claimed that the French and Russian Revolutions were both directed by the Illuminati and he also claimed that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an accurate expose of a Jewish conspiracy. He believed that the Jews, the Catholics, the communists and the bankers were all working together and plotting to destroy American Protestantism. Although Winrod's appeal was mainly limited to rural, poor, uneducated fundamentalist Christians, his magazine The Defender reached a peak circulation of 100,000 in the late 1930s.[69]
William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts movement was overtly modelled on European fascism and introduced a populist statist plan for economic organization. The United States would be reorganized as a corporation, with individuals paid according to their contributions, although African Americans, aboriginals and aliens would be treated as wards of the state and therefore hold a lower status. The organization blamed the Jews for the depression, communism, and the spread of immorality, but it openly accepted Catholics as members. Its membership was largely uneducated, poor and elderly, with a high proportion of neurotics, and it also had a large female membership. Its main base of support was in small communities in the Midwest and on the West Coast, and it had almost no presence in the Southern States.[70]
Although the United States emerged from the Second World War as the world's most powerful country economically and militarily, communism had also been strengthened. Communism had spread in Eastern Europe and southeast Asia, and there were numerous Communist insurgencies.[71] At the same time, Communist espionage had been found in the U.S. Responding to the fears the new enemy presented, Joe McCarthy, a Republican U.S. senator from Wisconsin, claimed in 1950 that there were 205 Communist spies in the State Department.[72] The main target of McCarthyism, however, was ideological nonconformism, and individuals were targeted for their beliefs. Black lists were established in many industries restricting the employment of suspected nonconformists, and libraries were pressured to remove books and periodicals that were considered suspect. McCarthy investigated Voice of America and although no communists were found, 30 employees were fired as a result.[73] The strongest support for McCarthyism came from some of the German and Irish Catholics, who had been isolationist in both world wars, had an anti-British bias, and opposed socialism on ostensibly religious grounds. Catholic support was far from uniform, and many Catholics were actively opposed to McCarthy and his methods.[74] Much of the hostility was directed against the Eastern elites.[75] Following the GOP landslide in 1952, McCarthy continued his investigations into the new Republican administration until the Republican party turned against him.[76]
John Birch Society
The John Birch Society, which was created in 1958, combined economic liberalism with anti-communism. The founder, Robert Welch Jr., believed that the greatest enemy of man was government, and the more extensive the government, the greater the enemy. To him, government was inherently corrupt and a threat to peace. He advocated private institutions, local government and rigid individualism.[77][78]
American Independent Party
The 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace created a new party called the American Independent Party (AIP) which in later years came under the control of Radical Right elements. In 1969, the party had split into two groups, the anti-communist American Party under the leadership of T. Coleman Andrews and another group under the AIP founder Bill Shearer. Both groups opposed federal intervention into schools, favored police suppression of domestic disorder and victory in the Vietnam War. The two groups united under the American Party banner in order to support the 1972 presidential campaign of George Wallace, but after he withdrew they nominated U.S. Representative John G. Schmitz.[79]
Although small militias had existed throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the groups became more popular during the early 1990s, after a series of standoffs between armed citizens and federal government agents, such as the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege and 1993 Waco Siege. These groups expressed concern for what they perceived as government tyranny within the United States and generally held libertarian and constitutionalist political views, with a strong focus on the Second Amendment gun rights and tax protest. They also embraced many of the same conspiracy theories as predecessor groups on the radical right, particularly the New World Order theory. Currently active examples of such groups are the 3 Percenters and the Oath Keepers. A minority of militia groups, such as Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations, were white nationalists and saw militia and patriot movements as a form of white resistance against what they perceived to be a liberal and multiculturalist government. In the 21st century, militia and patriot organizations were notably involved in the 2014 Bundy standoff, the 2016 Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.
Paul Gottfried first coined the term paleoconservatism in the 1980s. These conservatives stressed (post-Cold War) non-interventionist foreign policy, strict immigration law, anti-consumerism and traditional values and opposed the neoconservatives, who had more liberal views on these issues. The paleoconservatives used the surge in right-wing populism during the early 1990s to propel the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan in 1992, 1996 and 2000. They diminished in number after the September 11 attacks, where they found themselves at odds with the vast majority of American conservatives on how to respond to the threat of terrorism.
Jim Gilchrist, a conservative Republican, founded the Minuteman Project in April 2005. The Minutemen, inspired by the earlier Patriot movement and the original revolutionary Minutemen, advocated greater restrictions on illegal immigration and in the Southwestern United States, they engaged in volunteer activities and directed them against people who they believed were illegal immigrants. The group drew much criticism from people whose views on the immigration issues were more liberal, and President George W. Bush condemned them as "vigilantes". The Minuteman Project was similar to the earlier Ranch Rescue organization, which played a very similar role.
↑ Wahl, Klaus (2020). The Radical Right. Biopsychosocial Roots and International Variations. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p.14. ISBN978-3-030-25130-7. OCLC1126278982.
↑ Robert E. Shalhope, "Republicanism and Early American Historiography," William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 39, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 334–56 JSTOR1918756
↑ Gordon S. Wood, "Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1966), pp. 3–32 JSTOR2936154
↑ Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (1994)
↑ J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (Yale UP, 1974) online.
↑ John Higham, Strangers in the Land(1955) pp. 62, 80-87, 108; online
↑ Donald Kinzer, An episode in anti-Catholicism: the American Protective Association (1964)
↑ Charles C. Alexander, "Kleagles and cash: The Ku Klux Klan as a business organization, 1915-1930." Business History Review 39.3 (1965): 348-367 online.
↑ Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin The Father of Hate Radio (The Free Press, 1996) online.
↑ Lucilla Cremoni, "Antisemitism and populism in the United States in the 1930s: The case of father Coughlin." Patterns of prejudice 32.1 (1998): 25-37.
Berlet, Chip. Lyons, Matthew Nemiroff. Right-wing populism in America: too close for comfort. New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2000 ISBN1572305622
Courser, Zachary. "The Tea 'Party' as a Conservative Social Movement". In SYMPOSIUM: THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL CONSERVATISM, Published online, Springer Science Media, LLC 2011
Davies, Peter. Lynch, Derek. The Routledge companion to fascism and the far right. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN0415214947
Diamond, Sara. Roads to dominion: right-wing movements and political power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press, 1995 ISBN0898628644
Ignazi, Piero. "The extreme right: defining the object and assessing the causes" inn Martin Schain, Aristide R. Zolberg, Patrick Hossay (Eds.), Shadows over Europe: the development and impact of the extreme right in Western Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ISBN0312295936
Kaplan, Jeffrey and Weinberg, Leonard. The emergence of a Euro-American radical right. NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998 ISBN0813525640
Lipset, Seymour Martin. "The sources of the "Radical Right". In Daniel Bell (Ed.), The radical right, Volume 2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002 ISBN0765807491
Lipset, Seymour Martin. Raab, Earl. The Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970. New York: Harper & Row, 1970 ISBN
Mulloy, D. J. American extremism: history, politics and the militia movement. London: Routledge, 2004 ISBN0-415-32674-5
Norris, Pippa, "The Right in Elections" Paper in APSA Panel 36–15 at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2004, Chicago.
Plotke, David. "Introduction to the Transaction edition: the success and anger of the modern American Right". In Daniel Bell (Ed.), The radical right, Volume 2000. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002 ISBN0765807491
Webb, Clive. Rabble rousers: the American far right in the civil rights era. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2010 ISBN0820327646
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Further reading
Art, David (2011). Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-1394-9883-8.
Crawford, Alan (1980). Thunder on the Right: The "New Right" and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN978-0-3945-0663-0.
Forster, Arnold; Epstein, Benjamin R. (1964). Danger on the Right: The Attitudes, Personnel and Influence of the Radical Right and Extreme Conservatives. New York: Random House.
Hochschild, Anne Russell (2016). Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York: The New Press. ISBN978-1-6209-7225-0.
Huntington, John S. (2021). Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN978-0-8122-9810-9.
Minkenberg, Michael. "The Radical Right and Anti-Immigrant Politics in Liberal Democracies since World War II: Evolution of a Political and Research Field." Polity 53.3 (2021): 394-417. doi.org/10.1086/714167
Redekop, John H. (1968). The American Far Right: A case study of Billy James Hargis and Christian Crusade. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property, religion, biology, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.
Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of the common people and often position this group in opposition to a perceived elite group. It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed in the late 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, often as a pejorative. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether.
Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are typically marked by radical conservatism, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the right, distinguished from more mainstream right-wing ideologies by its opposition to liberal democratic norms and emphasis on exclusivist views. Far-right ideologies have historically included fascism, Nazism, and Falangism, while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, white supremacism, and various other movements characterized by chauvinism, xenophobia, and theocratic or reactionary beliefs.
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The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.
Richard Hofstadter was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier historical materialist approach to history, in the 1950s he came closer to the concept of "consensus history", and was epitomized by some of his admirers as the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus." Others see in his work an early critique of the one-dimensional society, as Hofstadter was equally critical of socialist and capitalist models of society, and bemoaned the "consensus" within the society as "bounded by the horizons of property and entrepreneurship", criticizing the "hegemonic liberal capitalist culture running throughout the course of American history".
The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that were first described in Western Europe following the Second World War. Developed in the context of the Cold War, it developed its name through the claim that it represented a third position between the capitalism of the Western Bloc and the communism of the Eastern Bloc.
Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalism. Conservative and liberal centre-right parties have historically been more successful in the Anglosphere, while Christian democracy has been the primary centre-right ideology in Europe.
"The Paranoid Style in American Politics" is an essay by American historian Richard Hofstadter, first published in Harper's Magazine in November 1964. It was the title essay in a book by the author the following year. Published soon after Arizona senator Barry Goldwater won the Republican Party presidential nomination over the more moderate Nelson Rockefeller, Hofstadter's article explores the influence of a particular style of conspiracy theory and "movements of suspicious discontent" throughout American history.
The Common Man's Front, also translated as Front of the Ordinary Man, was a short-lived right-wing populist, monarchist and anti-communist political party in Italy. It was formed shortly after the end of the Second World War and participated in the first post-war election for the constituent assembly in 1946. Its leader was the Roman writer Guglielmo Giannini, and its symbol was the banner of Giannini's newspaper L'Uomo qualunque.
Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right populism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking to or for the common people. Recurring themes of right-wing populists include neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism, and fiscal conservatism. Frequently, they aim to defend a national culture, identity, and economy against perceived attacks by outsiders. Right-wing populism has associations with authoritarianism, while some far-right populists draw comparisons to fascism.
American political ideologies conventionally align with the left–right political spectrum, with most Americans identifying as conservative, liberal, or moderate. Contemporary American conservatism includes social conservatism and fiscal conservatism. The former ideology developed as a response to communism and the civil rights movement, while the latter developed as a response to the New Deal. Contemporary American liberalism includes social liberalism and progressivism, developing during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Besides conservatism and liberalism, the United States has a notable libertarian movement, developing during the mid-20th century as a revival of classical liberalism. Historical political movements in the United States have been shaped by ideologies as varied as republicanism, populism, separatism, fascism, socialism, monarchism, and nationalism.
Far-left politics, also known as extreme left politics or left-wing extremism, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single, coherent definition; some scholars consider it to be the left of communist parties, while others broaden it to include the left of social democracy. In certain instances—especially in the news media—far left has been associated with some forms of authoritarianism, anarchism, communism, and Marxism, or are characterized as groups that advocate for revolutionary socialism and related communist ideologies, or anti-capitalism and anti-globalization. Far-left terrorism consists of extremist, militant, or insurgent groups that attempt to realize their ideals through political violence rather than using democratic processes.
Left-wing populism, also called social populism, is a political ideology that combines left-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric often includes elements of anti-elitism, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking for the "common people". Recurring themes for left-wing populists include economic democracy, social justice, and skepticism of globalization. Socialist theory plays a lesser role than in traditional left-wing ideologies.
The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right is a 2012 political science and public affairs non-fiction book by the writer and editor Arthur S. Goldwag, published by Pantheon Books. The book discusses the history of conspiracy theories among right-wing populists in the United States, in particular what Goldwag considers personalized economic conspiracy theories driven by fear and hate within the radical right and the contemporary Tea Party movement.
In political science, the terms radical right, reactionary right and populist right have been used to refer to the range of nationalist, right-wing and far-right political parties that have grown in support in Europe since the late 1970s. Populist right groups have shared a number of causes, which typically include opposition to globalisation and immigration, criticism of multiculturalism, and opposition to the European Union, with some opposing liberal democracy or rejecting democracy altogether in favor of "Illiberal democracy" or outright authoritarian dictatorship.
The 1936 United States presidential election in North Dakota took place on November 3, 1936, as part of the 1936 United States presidential election. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Extremism of the centre is a term in sociology introduced by Seymour Martin Lipset. In his book Political Man (1960) he wrote that left-wing extremism has its basis in the lower classes and the working class, while right-wing extremism is anchored in the upper classes, and fascism originates in the socioeconomic middle class. He did not define the term fascism further. This analysis was extended by the sociologist Theodor Geigers, who explained the election success of the Nazi Party in the early 1930s as a reaction from the Mittelstand, and related his analysis to the contemporary analysis of extremist and anti-democratic movements of the middle of society. This added a new type to the extremism of the left and right, and explained fascism as a typically middle-class movement.
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