Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort

"I was a bit conflicted which book to choose. Since Trump there has been an explosion of new books on the far right in the US. Before that, there was virtually nothing, except some work in the 1960s, which was mostly about the John Birch Society and anti-communism. I’ve chosen Berlet and Lyons for a variety of reasons, but the most important is that it shows the long history of the far right in the United States. The far right didn’t start with Trump. They show this in a quasi-historical way. The authors are activist researchers rather than academics, but they use a very solid conceptual framework. They talk about conspiracism and the importance of conspiracy theories, which is very important, particularly in the US. They talk about demonization and scapegoating, something that Wodak also focuses on. Then they have a specific term, that is mostly used here in the US, which is producerism. I really like that concept. It’s a combination of nativism and populism. In producerism, you consider yourself part of the producing class, the people who create stuff. They’re squeezed from above by the bankers and the elites, who are mooching off their work, but they’re also squeezed from below by immigrants and non-whites who live off their work through the welfare state. What they show in the book is that while the far right never really had a successful party or politician at the federal level, they’ve always been around. As the subtitle suggests, they’ve always been “too close for comfort” to the mainstream right. There have always been these types of groups around the Republican Party and they have been very important at the state level in certain parts of the country: in the South, in Arizona, Mississippi and others. It’s one scene. Guns are so pervasive and so massively popular that there’s no distinguishing between the mainstream right and the radical right. What the US has had, which no other country has, is a separate tradition of an anti-government right which is heavily weaponized. Traditionally, the far right believes in the state. It wants a strong, central state to push things through. Here in the US, you have the anti-government militias and sovereign citizens who believe that the local level is the highest legitimate level. They distrust the federal government and this is one of the reasons why they have their guns: to protect themselves from the government. That comes out of the whole frontier mentality and the specific history of the US. “It’s just like old Marxism, with its false consciousness. Before people were misdirected through religion, now they’re misdirected through racism.” It’s relevant because the militia scene has always been alive. At the moment, we have a lot of different new militias—like the Three Percenters or The Oath Keepers. Right now, they’re kind of in an identity crisis, because traditionally they’re anti-government, particularly the federal government, but they love Trump. So now they’re with Trump but against the ‘deep state.’ They claim not to be racist and at times they even have one non-white person, but they tend to protect neo-Nazis and side only with radical right, nativist forces. But guns are a key aspect. Guns make a group of three people in the US potentially dangerous, which in Europe they’re not. Here you can get semi-automatics. I only have to drive five minutes to buy semi-automatic weapons in a shop, perfectly legally. Partly. It’s a very left wing statement, to which I’m sympathetic. But I don’t think all the supporters of the far right are necessarily the downtrodden. I believe there is a part of the far right which is white people who are in economic trouble and, rather than blaming neoliberalism, they blame immigrants. Those people are in line with what Berlet and Lyons argue. But there is a significant part of the far right that is very well off and well-educated. They’re not a victim of anything. They’re not misguided. They’re just racist or white supremacist. This is my problem with the ‘left behind’ rhetoric as well. It’s partly true, although even if you’re not that educated and you’re in financial trouble, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have no choice other than to become far right or racist. There are a lot of people who are less educated and in economically dire situations who feel solidarity with their non-white, fellow workers. So that’s what I don’t like. I think it comes out of the left’s tendency to see the far-right voter as an economic anxiety voter, a misguided worker. It’s just like old Marxism , with its false consciousness. Before people were misdirected through religion, now they’re misdirected through racism. It’s only a part of that electorate and I don’t necessarily even believe it’s the most important part. We haven’t talked about gender, which comes up in some of the books, most explicitly in Wodak. Yes, it’s probably the most original chapter in the book. To me gender is crucial, also because it shows the complexity of the contemporary far right. The contemporary far right is not just one type of movement—not in terms of ideology, not in types of organization nor in types of activity. We still have the classic, bullish, masculine leader like Trump or Bolsonaro, and we have, to a certain extent, the more classic female leader, like Sarah Palin or Pauline Hanson, who play to the ‘mother of the nation’ stereotype. But then you also have Marine Le Pen who is clearly a very successful, professional woman who is not playing that stereotype. She pushes boundaries, but not too many. We also have more modern men as leaders who are not particularly masculine or violent, like Jimmie Åkesson and others. What it shows to me is that, first and foremost, the far right is a product of the national context. Yes, there are some things that are happening more broadly, but if you want to understand why Bolsonara won, you first have to look at Brazilian politics before you look at the Dutch far right. Overall, in the national context, the far right always holds relatively conservative views on gender. However, what is conservative in the Netherlands is progressive in Brazil and so you can’t expect the same type of discourse and leader. Bolsonaro would never be successful in the Netherlands, but then Pim Fortuyn would never have been successful in Brazil or the US. Gender shows this diversity that you have in the far right, as well as the transition. The far right today is different. It allows for different kinds of people. It shows just how adaptable the far right is, which is one of the reasons why they have been around for about four decades now and why they will be around even when things change. This is not just stupid people who beat up other people. There are very smart people in it, there are zealots in it, and there are opportunists in it, men and women who make the most out of the opportunities. Men are still predominant, as they are in virtually every other political movement, but there are a growing group of women that are participating. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are feminists. Many of these women are in it for exactly the same reason as the men, they feel that Muslims are threatening their nation. Their activism tends to be more prominent in northern European countries, which overall are more emancipated than southern European countries. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It’s still largely a male and masculine world because masculinity plays an important role, but much less so in certain countries than in others. It’s not the 1930s. Women are not just babymakers for the nation. For every radical right group, they are still that, but there are also many on the radical right who are perfectly fine with women working outside of the household, with having careers, with being successful (as long as they take a few years off to provide babies for the nation). There’s a lot of media attention at the moment because there is so much going on. I hope my book will be around for at least 10 years, but that the far right will be less prominent by then, and that I can update it in time, because this is not about something that’s just happening now. It’s about a phenomenon that has been around for decades and will be around for decades. My book is just an introduction."