Right-wing militias and other antigovernment organizations have received heightened public attention since the Oklahoma City bombing. While such groups are often portrayed as marginal extremists, the values they espouse have influenced mainstream politics and culture far more than most Americans realize. This important volume offers an in-depth look at the historical roots and current landscape of right-wing populism in the United States. Illuminated is the potent combination of anti-elitist rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and ethnic scapegoating that has fueled many political movements from the colonial period to the present day. The book examines the Jacksonians, the Ku Klux Klan, and a host of Cold War nationalist cliques, and relates them to the evolution of contemporary electoral campaigns of Patrick Buchanan, the militancy of the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity movement, and an array of millennial sects. Combining vivid description and incisive analysis, Berlet and Lyons show how large numbers of disaffected Americans have embraced right-wing populism in a misguided attempt to challenge power relationships in U.S. society. Highlighted are the dangers these groups pose for the future of our political system and the hope of progressive social change. Winner--Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America

Studies the new West European parties of the radical populist right, arguing that, in distancing themselves from the reactionary politics of the traditional extremist right, these parties have become a significant challenge to the established structure and politics of West European democracy today.

While research in right-wing populism has recently been blossoming, a systematic study of the intersection of right-wing populism and gender is still missing, even though gender issues are ubiquitous in discourses of the radical right ranging from »ethnosexism« against immigrants, to »anti-genderism.« This volume shows that the intersectionality of gender, race and class is constitutional for radical right discourse. From different European perspectives, the contributions investigate the ways in which gender is used as a meta-language, strategic tool and »affective bridge« for ordering and hierarchizing political objectives in the discourse of the diverse actors of the »right-wing complex.«

This book uses affect theory to analyze the rise of right-wing populism in recent years and discusses the pedagogical implications for democratic education. It provides examples of how affect and emotion play a crucial role in the rise and reproduction of current right-wing populism. The author suggests ideas about affective pedagogies for educators to use (along with recognizing the risks involved) to renew democratic education. The chapters lay out the importance of harnessing the power of affective experiences and adopting strategic pedagogical approaches to provide affirmative practices that move beyond simply criticizing right-wing populism. The book consequently undermines the power of fascist and right-wing tendencies in public life and educational settings without stooping to methods of indoctrination. This volume is a valuable resource for researchers and policy-makers in education, political science and other related fields, who can utilize the affective complexities involved in combatting right-wing populism to their advantage.

This book, written by a prominent German political scientist and specialist for political theory and comparative government, analyses right-wing populism as a topical theme of postmodern party systems in Europe and the United States.

During the last 15-20 years a new party family of radical right-wing populism (RRP) has emerged in Western Europe, consisting of parties such as the French Front National and the Austrian Freedom's Party, among many others. Contrary to the situation in the other Scandinavian countries, such parties have been largely unsuccessful in Sweden. Although Sweden saw the emergence of the populist party New Democracy - which partly can be classified as a RRP party - in the early 1990s, it collapsed in 1994, and no party has so far been successful enough to take its place. Most of the literature on populism and right-wing extremism deals with successful cases; this book takes the opposite direction and asks how one can explain the failure of Swedish radical right-wing populism.

This book provides the first systematic and comparative analysis of the German right-wing populist protest movement “PEGIDA”. It offers an in-depth reconstruction of the movement’s historical development, its organisational structure and its programmatic orientation. It depicts the protestors and their motivations, reactions in politics, media and society, and PEGIDA’s European network. The volume presents and compares the results of scientific surveys among PEGIDA-participants and brings them into the context of long-time studies on political culture in Germany, representing a comprehensive study of the emergence of contemporary right-wing populist movements. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and students focusing on comparative politics, (right-wing) populism, protest movements in western democracies, and political culture in Germany, as well as journalists, political educators and policy makers.

From a leading scholar on conservatism, the extraordinary chronicle of how the transformation of the American far right made the Trump presidency possible—and what it portends for the future Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrence Rosenthal argues, what is happening globally is not the emergence but the transformation of right-wing populism. Rosenthal, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, suggests right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived cultural elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory and it has been at work across the globe. In Italy, for example, the Northern League reinvented itself in 2018 as an all-Italy party, switching its fury from southerners to immigrants, and came to power. Rosenthal paints a vivid sociological, political, and psychological picture of the transnational quality of this movement, which is now in power in at least a dozen countries, creating a de facto Nationalist International. In America and abroad, the current mobilization of right-wing populism has given life to long marginalized threats like white supremacy. The future of democratic politics in the United States and abroad depends on whether the liberal and left parties have the political capacity to mobilize with a progressive agenda of their own.

This volume offers a comparative survey of Far Right parties across Europe, examining in particular their changing political rhetoric. The contributors look at the development of two distinct forms of party development and discourse: The Haiderization and The Berlusconization model.

Elections are the means by which democratic nations determine their leaders, and communication in the context of elections has the potential to shape people's beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Thus, electoral persuasion is one of the most important political processes in any nation that regularly holds elections. Moreover, electoral persuasion encompasses not only what happens in an election but also what happens before and after, involving candidates, parties, interest groups, the media, and the voters themselves. This volume surveys the vast political science literature on this subject, emphasizing contemporary research and topics and encouraging cross-fertilization among research strands. A global roster of authors provides a broad examination of electoral persuasion, with international perspectives complementing deep coverage of U.S. politics. Major areas of coverage include: general models of political persuasion; persuasion by parties, candidates, and outside groups; media influence; interpersonal influence; electoral persuasion across contexts; and empirical methodologies for understanding electoral persuasion.