Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Author: A. James McAdams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2021-09-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000431967

This book is the first systematic analysis of the efforts of a broad range of contemporary far-right thinkers to popularize their critiques of liberal-democratic norms and institutions and make their ideas the subjects of sustained political and academic debate. The book focuses on outspoken thinkers in western and eastern Europe, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Australia. They include Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Götz Kubitschek, Pat Buchanan, Fróði Midjord, Jason Jorjani, contributors to the online magazine Quillette, and the elusive personality known as the Bronze Age Pervert. The book explores the diverse intellectual foundations of these thinkers’ positions, the similarities and differences in their ideas, and their prospects for influencing attitudes about democratic politics within their respective countries. It examines diverse movements and schools of thought, including the European New Right, Paleoconservatism, the Alt-right, Identitarianism, White nationalism, and antifeminism. Providing a much-needed global perspective, this book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of populism, right-wing extremism, identity politics, fascism, racism, and conservatism.

Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Author: A. James McAdams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2021-09-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000431908

This book is the first systematic analysis of the efforts of a broad range of contemporary far-right thinkers to popularize their critiques of liberal-democratic norms and institutions and make their ideas the subjects of sustained political and academic debate. The book focuses on outspoken thinkers in western and eastern Europe, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Australia. They include Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Götz Kubitschek, Pat Buchanan, Fróði Midjord, Jason Jorjani, contributors to the online magazine Quillette, and the elusive personality known as the Bronze Age Pervert. The book explores the diverse intellectual foundations of these thinkers’ positions, the similarities and differences in their ideas, and their prospects for influencing attitudes about democratic politics within their respective countries. It examines diverse movements and schools of thought, including the European New Right, Paleoconservatism, the Alt-right, Identitarianism, White nationalism, and antifeminism. Providing a much-needed global perspective, this book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of populism, right-wing extremism, identity politics, fascism, racism, and conservatism.

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Author: David M. Elcott
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0268200599

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy. In Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, David Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann present a pragmatic and modernist exploration of how religion engages in the public square. Elcott and his co-authors are concerned about the ways religious identity is being used to foster the exclusion of individuals and communities from citizenship, political representation, and a role in determining public policy. They examine the ways religious identity is weaponized to fuel populist revolts against a political, social, and economic order that values democracy in a global and strikingly diverse world. Included is a history and political analysis of religion, politics, and policies in Europe and the United States that foster this illiberal rebellion. The authors explore what constitutes a constructive religious voice in the political arena, even in nurturing patriotism and democracy, and what undermines and threatens liberal democracies. To lay the groundwork for a religious response, the book offers chapters showing how Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism can nourish liberal democracy. The authors encourage people of faith to promote foundational support for the institutions and values of the democratic enterprise from within their own religious traditions and to stand against the hostility and cruelty that historically have resulted when religious zealotry and state power combine. Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy is intended for readers who value democracy and are concerned about growing threats to it, and especially for people of faith and religious leaders, as well as for scholars of political science, religion, and democracy.

The Rise of Illiberalism

The Rise of Illiberalism
Author: Thomas J. Main
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815738501

" How a more positive form of identity politics can restore public trust in government Illiberalism, Thomas Main writes, is the basic repudiation of liberal democracy, the very foundation on which the United States rests. It says no to electoral democracy, human rights, the rule of law, toleration. It is a political ideology that finds expression in such older right-wing extremist groups as the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists and more recently among the Alt-Right and the Dark Enlightenment. There are also left-of-center illiberal movements, including various forms of communism, anarchism, and some antifascist movements. The Rise of Illiberalism explores the philosophical underpinnings of this toxic political ideology and documents how it has infiltrated the mainstream of political discourse in the United States. By the early twenty-first century, Main writes, liberal democracy’s failure to deal adequately with social problems created a space illiberal movements could exploit to promote their particular brands of identity politics as an alternative. A critical need thus is for what the author calls “positive identity politics,” or a widely shared sense of community that gives a feeling of equal importance to all sectors of society. Achieving this goal will, however, be an enormous challenge. In seeking actionable remedies for the broken political system of the United States, this book makes a major scholarly contribution to current debates about the future of liberal democracy. "

Why Liberalism Failed

Why Liberalism Failed
Author: Patrick J. Deneen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300240023

"One of the most important political books of 2018."—Rod Dreher, American Conservative Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Key Thinkers of the Radical Right

Key Thinkers of the Radical Right
Author: Mark Sedgwick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190877618

Since the start of the twenty-first century, the political mainstream has been shifting to the right. The liberal orthodoxy that took hold in the West as a reaction to the Second World War is breaking down. In Europe, populist political parties have pulled the mainstream in their direction; in America, a series of challenges to the Republican mainstream culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In Key Thinkers of the Radical Right, sixteen expert scholars explain sixteen thinkers, providing an introduction to their life and work, a guide to their thought, and an explanation of their work's reception. The chapters focus on thinkers who are widely read across the political right in both Europe and America, such as Julius Evola, Alain de Benoist, and Richard B. Spencer. Featuring classic, modern, and emerging thinkers, this selection provides a good representation of the intellectual right and avoids making political or value judgments. In an increasingly polarized political environment, Key Thinkers of the Radical Right offers a comprehensive and unbiased introduction to the thinkers who form the foundation of the radical right.

Political Theology

Political Theology
Author: Saul Newman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2018-11-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509528431

God is dead, but his presence lives on in politics. This is the problem of political theology: the way that theological ideas find their way into secular political institutions, particularly the sovereign state. In this intellectual tour-de-force, leading political theorist Saul Newman shows how political theology arose alongside secularism, and relates to the problem of legitimising power and authority in modernity. It is not about the power of religion so much as about the religion of power. Examining the current crisis of the liberal order, he argues that recent phenomena such as the rise of populism, the renewed demand for strong national sovereignty and the return of religious fundamentalism may be understood through this paradigm. He illustrates his argument through an exploration of themes such as sovereignty, democracy, economics, technology, ecological catastrophe, messianism and the future of radical politics, engaging with thinkers ranging from Schmitt and Hobbes to Stirner, Foucault, and Agamben. This book will be a crucial text for all students, scholars and general readers interested in the meaning and significance of political theology for political theory.

End of History and the Last Man

End of History and the Last Man
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1416531785

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

Far-Right Newspeak and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Far-Right Newspeak and the Future of Liberal Democracy
Author: A. James McAdams
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040022227

This book is the first systematic, multicountry exploration of far-right Newspeak. The contributors analyze the ways in which contemporary far-right politicians, intellectuals, and pundits use and abuse traditional liberal concepts and ideas to justify positions that threaten democratic institutions and liberal principles. They explore cases of both far-right and right-wing thought in eastern and western Europe, the United States, and Canada. Subjects include well-known figures, such as Marine Le Pen, Tucker Carlson, Peter Thiel, Nick Griffin, Thierry Baudet, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and Viktor Orbán, and lesser-known names, such as the Czech politician Tomio Okamura and the Internet personality "Raw Egg Nationalist." The contributors examine these figures’ claims about hot-button issues, including immigration, Islam, race, Covid-19 policies, feminism, monetary policy, and free speech. The book demonstrates that mainstream politicians and intellectuals are at risk of losing control over the definitions of the very concepts, including equal rights, racial and ethnic diversity, and political tolerance, that undergird their vision of liberal democracy. It will be of interest to scholars, journalists, policymakers, political scientists, historians, political theorists, sociologists, and general audiences concerned about the sophisticated efforts of far-right and right-wing politicians and pundits to undermine the foundations of liberal democracy.