Right-Wing Social Movements

When the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the Brazilian presidential election in October 2018, observers were quick to note his strong support among evangelical voters. To some, the implications seemed clear enough-where US-style evangelicalism goes, conservative populism follows. In Moral Majorities across the Americas: Brazil, the United States, and the Creation of the Religious Right, Benjamin A. Cowan challenges this narrative, convincingly arguing that Brazilian Christian activists and institutions were integral to creating the contemporary religious right. Focusing on Brazil from the military dictatorship (1964-85) through redemocratization (1988), Cowan shows how traditionalist Catholics and evangelical Protestants articulated a "common agenda that we can now recognize as the platform of a [transnational] religious Right," organized on the basis of reactionary opposition to communism, ecumenism, secularization, egalitarianism, and the perceived loss of moral order (235; see also 10, 13, 26, 45, 59, 137, 174-75, 187, 235).

Based on our observations and scholarship about how democratic norms are currently being undermined, we propose a model of fascist authoritarianism that includes authoritarianism, the production and exaggeration of threats, conspiracy-oriented propaganda adoption, and distrust of reality-based professions. We refer to this as the Fascist Authoritarian Model of Illiberal Democracy (FAMID) and argue that all components are essential for understanding contemporary antidemocratic movements. We demonstrate that all components of FAMID correlate with illiberal antidemocratic attitudes, that Republicans generally score higher than Democrats on the model components, and that all components significantly contribute to predicting illiberal antidemocratic attitudes. We find approximately equal support for both left-wing and right-wing illiberal antidemocratic attitudes. The fascist authoritarian model of illiberal democracy helps explain the basic mechanisms by which an authoritarian leader works to erode liberal democratic norms-and does a better job at doing so than simpler authoritarianism theories.

On September 13, 2001, Jerry Falwell made a guest appearance on Pat Robertson's 700 Club by remote satellite and commented on the bombings two days before of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Together, the two ministers forcefully expressed a "politics of desert" that links American tolerance of lesbians and gay men, feminists, atheists, and others with God's punishment on the polity. Although Falwell and Robertson were widely denounced for their comments, little analysis followed in the media of the theological and political content of the Christian Right's politics of desert or of the multiple modes of address that Christian Right leaders use to deliver political messages to followers and to the general American public. This essay explores the theological and political commitments that ground a politics of desert and, more specifically, links the Falwell-Robertson comments to recent Christian Right political activism against lesbians and gay men. Setting the Straight Story When the World Trade Center and the Pentagon became terrorist targets on September 11, 2001, one form of public response was a conservative Christian "politics of desert" that sought to contextualize the attacks in terms of God's will and plan for America. A politics of desert is grounded in what one anthropologist labels a "theology of blame," the belief that: God may allow bad things to happen without necessarily causing them, and when he allows bad things to happen, it is for reasons that are transcendent and often punitive, though ultimately redemptive (however unfathomable that seems to those who suffer immediate consequences). 1 * I would like to thank Jyl Josephson for commenting on an earlier draft of this essay and Ara Wilson for suggesting helpful sources. Versions of this paper were presented at an Interdisciplinary Research Seminar on Democracy, Citizenship, and Identity at the Ohio

From the beginning of the 1990s, after the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the imperial forces of the USA, previously controlled only by the counter-world power, quickly built up their imperial power machine encompassing the whole West, and from there controlling the rest of the world. Although this other part was largely disconnected from this by China's increasingly marked role as a world power after the turn of the millennium, Europe remained under the power control of this empire. The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 with his program to dismantle this imperial structure has shown the outside world the internal cracks that remain visible despite Trump's defeat in 2020, and his eventual re-election in 2024 represents a chance for the whole of Europe to escape from the grip of empire. The question that arises in connection with this internal struggle is which of the political parties of the USA are the forces of empire-building and which are the rejectors of it?
      The answer must begin with the fact that until the 1930s, with the exception of President Wilson's views of the 1910s, the United States basically professed "splendid isolation", staying away from world politics. This changed for a time due to support for American public opinion, outraged by the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor during World War II, but after the end of the war, withdrawal from world politics seemed to be restored. But this dilemma was tilted by the 1952 presidential election between Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower in favor of the interventionist Eisenhower, leaving the military/military/intelligence and finance groups and their foundations built up during the war years to remain in power until the early 1990s, regardless of the alternation of Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. At that time, the only change was that the restriction of counter-world power had now disappeared, and the organizations, foundations and NGO networks of world political expansionism built up within the USA began to expand dynamically, and mainly in the eastern half of Europe they built the sanctioning machine of an imperial subjugation over the states that broke away from the Soviet empire. In Western Europe, the status of an inferior ally was approached towards imperial subjugation, and the fact that the forces of imperial America, such as the NGO army of the Soros Open Society Foundation, gained decisive influence over the EU apparatus in Brussels by the 1990s played a major role in this.
      However, the isolationist forces that became possible again with the appearance of Trump in 2016 did not disappear despite decades of marginalization, and from the 1960s onwards, like the old right, traditionalists organized on the right wing of the Republicans. For example, in 1964, he rallied behind Barry Goldwater's presidential run in an attempt to win back the leadership. He wants to regain the leadership from the interventionist Republican majority, but the massacre mainstream media, which by then had become pollster-dominating, almost killed Goldwater politically and the entire Republican right behind him. But under the influence of liberal minority advocates and left-leaning groups that were taking center stage with Democrats at the time, opponents began to oppose it as neoconservatives, with a sizeable voting bloc behind them, and when they nevertheless lost to Democrats, they began to cross Republicans.
    President Reagan had already become president of the neocons-enriched Republicans, and the original Republican right wing within the party, the New Right, was in irreconcilable contrast behind Reagan with the neocons pouring into their ranks. Reagan maneuvered skillfully, and the Republican General Staff, the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), was truly dominated by neocons until Trump's arrival in 2016. However, this arrival was already anticipated by the emergence of the "Tea Party movement", born of outrage over hundreds of billions in presidential bankers' subsidies in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Let's look at this in more detail with an excerpt.

From the beginning of the 1990s, after the disintegration of the Soviet empire, the imperial forces of the USA, previously controlled only by the counter-world power, quickly built up their imperial power machine encompassing the whole West, and from there controlling the rest of the world. Although this other part was largely disconnected from this by China's increasingly marked role as a world power after the turn of the millennium, Europe remained under the power control of this empire. The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 with his program to dismantle this imperial structure has shown the outside world the internal cracks that remain visible despite Trump's defeat in 2020, and his eventual re-election in 2024 represents a chance for the whole of Europe to escape from the grip of empire. The question that arises in connection with this internal struggle is which of the political parties of the USA are the forces of empire-building and which are the rejectors of it?
      The answer must begin with the fact that until the 1930s, with the exception of President Wilson's views of the 1910s, the United States basically professed "splendid isolation", staying away from world politics. This changed for a time due to support for American public opinion, outraged by the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor during World War II, but after the end of the war, withdrawal from world politics seemed to be restored. But this dilemma was tilted by the 1952 presidential election between Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower in favor of the interventionist Eisenhower, leaving the military/military/intelligence and finance groups and their foundations built up during the war years to remain in power until the early 1990s, regardless of the alternation of Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. At that time, the only change was that the restriction of counter-world power had now disappeared, and the organizations, foundations and NGO networks of world political expansionism built up within the USA began to expand dynamically, and mainly in the eastern half of Europe they built the sanctioning machine of an imperial subjugation over the states that broke away from the Soviet empire. In Western Europe, the status of an inferior ally was approached towards imperial subjugation, and the fact that the forces of imperial America, such as the NGO army of the Soros Open Society Foundation, gained decisive influence over the EU apparatus in Brussels by the 1990s played a major role in this.
      However, the isolationist forces that became possible again with the appearance of Trump in 2016 did not disappear despite decades of marginalization, and from the 1960s onwards, like the old right, traditionalists organized on the right wing of the Republicans. For example, in 1964, he rallied behind Barry Goldwater's presidential run in an attempt to win back the leadership. He wants to regain the leadership from the interventionist Republican majority, but the massacre mainstream media, which by then had become pollster-dominating, almost killed Goldwater politically and the entire Republican right behind him. But under the influence of liberal minority advocates and left-leaning groups that were taking center stage with Democrats at the time, opponents began to oppose it as neoconservatives, with a sizeable voting bloc behind them, and when they nevertheless lost to Democrats, they began to cross Republicans.
    President Reagan had already become president of the neocons-enriched Republicans, and the original Republican right wing within the party, the New Right, was in irreconcilable contrast behind Reagan with the neocons pouring into their ranks. Reagan maneuvered skillfully, and the Republican General Staff, the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), was truly dominated by neocons until Trump's arrival in 2016. However, this arrival was already anticipated by the emergence of the "Tea Party movement", born of outrage over hundreds of billions in presidential bankers' subsidies in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Let's look at this in more detail with an excerpt.

After the 1980 presidential election, the New Christian Right (NCR) became a political force that could no longer be ignored. Since the early 1980s the political agenda of the NCR has expanded beyond culture war issues. Currently the NCR addresses several international issues such as, human trafficking, the spread of HIV, and religious persecution. Since the NCR is one of many political forces that presently influences policy makers, it's become crucial for the public to possess a good understanding of what the NCR is, and grasp what lies behind its intersecting religious dynamics. Unfortunately, much of the American public as well as the mainstream media are unaware of, or glaze over the intellectual and religious complexity of the NCR. Most media coverage highlights its evangelical leadership, while it fails to emphasize the role non-evangelical political activists, and intellectuals played in the development of this alliance. This type of media coverage not only mischaracterizes the NCR, but leads the public to believe that all evangelicals are a part of this interfaith alliance. This thesis attempts to expand beyond the evangelical aspect of the NCR. Like evangelical leaders, a group of Catholic conservative elites played a pivotal role in establishing the intellectual as well as political foundation of the NCR. Although evangelical leaders provided the NCR with much of its public leadership, Catholic conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, iii Brent Bozell, Paul Weyrich, and Richard Viguerie provided political guidance, and created a religious conservatism which became the intellectual foundation of the NCR. These claims are argued by historically reconstructing the formation of the NCR. This reconstruction illustrates how historical events in conjunction with the actions of few Catholic conservatives, resulted in the formation of religious conservatism, and led to political activism in the defense of traditional family values. Another important reason I choose to reconstruct the formation of the NCR is to dispel common misconceptions regarding this interfaith alliance. One misconception I hope to correct is that evangelical leaders primarily became politically involved to fight a moral quest against abortion. Although abortion became one of the prime culture wars issues, the Roe v. Wade decision was not the event that led to the political unification of these historically hostile faiths. I want the reader to understand that the formation of the NCR was a complex and lengthy process that did not occur overnight, or due to the efforts of leaders from one religious faith. Conclusion: After researching this topic, I concluded that the NCR is a fragile and loosely knit political alliance. Historical inter-faith tension still lingers amongst some leaders of the NCR, which leads me to believe that political pragmatism is the main adhesive keeping this interfaith alliance together. As author Randall 1 Randall Balmer, interview by author, Columbus, GA, April 24, 2007. 2 The word orthodox is not used in the traditional sense that describes specific doctrinal creeds or practices. But is used to describe a group of people whose world view and belief system is committed to an "external definable authority," which defines "at least in abstract, a consistent, unchangeable measure of value, purpose, goodness, bother personal and collective." James Davison Hunter. Culture Wars the Struggle to Define America: Making sense of the battles over the family, art, education, laws, and politics [New York: Basic Books, 1991], 44. v Schlafly, Randall Balmer, and George Weigel were chosen because I felt that they would provide my work with a variety of opinions and historical information regarding the NCR. Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum and prominent political activist, provided my work with invaluable insight on the development of the pro-family movement. Author and Columbia University professor, Randall Balmer also provided my thesis with insight on the role evangelical leaders played in the formation of the NCR.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, David Duke and Patrick Buchanan drew on long-running discourses about White replacement and displacement in their political campaigns. Duke, former leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, used White displacement fears to earn elected office in the Louisiana state legislature. He then ran for governor, senator, and president, but was thwarted in these campaigns partly thanks to Black voters. Duke’s presidential ambitions were also undercut by the journalist and television personality Patrick Buchanan, who coopted Duke’s message to seize his base. Despite trying several times, however, Buchanan was also unable to win the presidency. His main achievement was to push the Republican Party rightward, paving the way for the racialized populism of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump.

With the electoral victories of authoritarian populists in a range of parliamentary democracies in recent years, there has been a growing unease with the ability of existing democratic institutions to keep such authoritarian threats under control. The election of authoritarian leaning figures in countries such as Hungary, Poland, Philippines, Brazil, Russia, and the United States has led many to doubt the capacity of the institutions of parliamentary democracy to protect themselves against democratic backsliding. This perceived inability for democratic self-defense has led to a resurgence of academic interest in the idea of militant democracy in recent years (

A quarter century and more has passed since the 1970s made its debut. History, always problematic as an objective undertaking, encourages present-mindedness when proximity to events in question governs our perspectives. This article does not pretend to have avoided this pitfall. Today the animus against government dominates political discourse. “Outsiders” who aspire to office boast of that status; “insiders” obscure theirs. All politicians design to show their commonness, their oneness with the people, the beleaguered people, victims of the socially privileged, of haughty bureaucrats, and the sundry occult forces that sustain their misery. Ours, it has been observed, has become a dominantly “populist” culture, its anti-elitism resounding from local Serb Halls in Milwaukee and elsewhere to the very chambers of the Capitol itself.

Based on our observations and scholarship about how democratic norms are currently being undermined, we propose a model of fascist authoritarianism that includes authoritarianism, the production and exaggeration of threats, conspiracy-oriented propaganda adoption, and distrust of reality-based professions. We refer to this as the Fascist Authoritarian Model of Illiberal Democracy (FAMID) and argue that all components are essential for understanding contemporary antidemocratic movements. We demonstrate that all components of FAMID correlate with illiberal antidemocratic attitudes, that Republicans generally score higher than Democrats on the model components, and that all components significantly contribute to predicting illiberal antidemocratic attitudes. We find approximately equal support for both left-wing and right-wing illiberal antidemocratic attitudes. The fascist authoritarian model of illiberal democracy helps explain the basic mechanisms by which an authoritarian leader works to erode liberal democratic norms-and does a better job at doing so than simpler authoritarianism theories.

Jerry Falwell, the leader of a movement called the Moral Majority that arose in the late 1970s, was mad and he was going to let everyone know it: “We’re fighting a holy war,” he said at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1980. “What’s happened to America is that the wicked are bearing rule. We have to lead the nation back to the moral stance that made America great...we need to wield influence on those who govern us.” 1 Falwell was spearheading a coalition of conservative, evangelical voters angered about a variety of social issues and other ills that plagued America.

After the 1980 presidential election, the New Christian Right (NCR) became a political force that could no longer be ignored. Since the early 1980s the political agenda of the NCR has expanded beyond culture war issues. Currently the NCR addresses several international issues such as, human trafficking, the spread of HIV, and religious persecution. Since the NCR is one of many political forces that presently influences policy makers, it's become crucial for the public to possess a good understanding of what the NCR is, and grasp what lies behind its intersecting religious dynamics. Unfortunately, much of the American public as well as the mainstream media are unaware of, or glaze over the intellectual and religious complexity of the NCR. Most media coverage highlights its evangelical leadership, while it fails to emphasize the role non-evangelical political activists, and intellectuals played in the development of this alliance. This type of media coverage not only mischaracterizes the NCR, but leads the public to believe that all evangelicals are a part of this interfaith alliance. This thesis attempts to expand beyond the evangelical aspect of the NCR. Like evangelical leaders, a group of Catholic conservative elites played a pivotal role in establishing the intellectual as well as political foundation of the NCR. Although evangelical leaders provided the NCR with much of its public leadership, Catholic conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, iii Brent Bozell, Paul Weyrich, and Richard Viguerie provided political guidance, and created a religious conservatism which became the intellectual foundation of the NCR. These claims are argued by historically reconstructing the formation of the NCR. This reconstruction illustrates how historical events in conjunction with the actions of few Catholic conservatives, resulted in the formation of religious conservatism, and led to political activism in the defense of traditional family values. Another important reason I choose to reconstruct the formation of the NCR is to dispel common misconceptions regarding this interfaith alliance. One misconception I hope to correct is that evangelical leaders primarily became politically involved to fight a moral quest against abortion. Although abortion became one of the prime culture wars issues, the Roe v. Wade decision was not the event that led to the political unification of these historically hostile faiths. I want the reader to understand that the formation of the NCR was a complex and lengthy process that did not occur overnight, or due to the efforts of leaders from one religious faith. Conclusion: After researching this topic, I concluded that the NCR is a fragile and loosely knit political alliance. Historical inter-faith tension still lingers amongst some leaders of the NCR, which leads me to believe that political pragmatism is the main adhesive keeping this interfaith alliance together. As author Randall 1 Randall Balmer, interview by author, Columbus, GA, April 24, 2007. 2 The word orthodox is not used in the traditional sense that describes specific doctrinal creeds or practices. But is used to describe a group of people whose world view and belief system is committed to an "external definable authority," which defines "at least in abstract, a consistent, unchangeable measure of value, purpose, goodness, bother personal and collective." James Davison Hunter. Culture Wars the Struggle to Define America: Making sense of the battles over the family, art, education, laws, and politics [New York: Basic Books, 1991], 44. v Schlafly, Randall Balmer, and George Weigel were chosen because I felt that they would provide my work with a variety of opinions and historical information regarding the NCR. Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum and prominent political activist, provided my work with invaluable insight on the development of the pro-family movement. Author and Columbia University professor, Randall Balmer also provided my thesis with insight on the role evangelical leaders played in the formation of the NCR.

This paper considers how 'preaching prejudice ' builds a constituency of like-minds by marginalizing others-on grounds of race and sexuality, for example-and then instructs this constituency regarding political behavior. This discussion is part of a larger project on the construction of social values for political gain but here I specifically draw attention to the historical racism marking much of Protestant messaging in the American South and to how this racism became the foundation for the Republican Southern Strategy from the 1970s onwards. In doing so, I take as a case study the well documented racism associated with the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC historical narrative exemplifies the racism which underpinned the Southern Strategy. This is interesting because the SBC continues to be a key political actor among social conservatives in the South. This historical narrative indicates how 'preaching prejudice' became a political tool fueling the racism of Nixon' s campaign and seasoning subsequent campaigns. The paper then suggests that the most recent innovation of this familiar, well honed political tool can be located in contemporary discourse on same-sex marriage.

Today, liberalism is in crisis. Neoconservatives believe that the crisis stems from excessive demands for egalitarianism which have created a no-win situation for a liberal democratic society, a society which is supposed to be organised around freedom rather than equality. According to most left liberals and leftists, liberalism is in crisis because capitalism is itself in crisis. Markets are not expanding as they once were; Third World countries are challenging the hegemony of American world power; structural changes in the economy have expanded the service sector at the expense of production. Few of these critics, however, define the crisis as reflecting a challenge to traditional patriarchal institutions that underpin the relations of capital. New Right groups come the closest to this analysis in their concern with reconstructing the patriarchal white nuclear heterosexual family and the traditional male role as head of household. But even the New Right, which brought family issues and questions of sexuality t o the mainstream of American politics in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, has not articulated in a systematic fashion why women's emplacement in the labour force challenges the system of liberal democracy and the discourse of liberalism so fundamentally, why the notion of equality is as subversive as it is when applied to women, or how feminism's rejection of the publiclprivate split and its recognition that the 'personal is political' is central t o the crisis of liberalism.

This encyclopedia entry on the U.S. Alt-Right, short for alternative right, describes a constellation of right-wing forces loosely united by a critique of traditional conservatism animated by political commitments to white nationalism or ultranationalism, authoritarianism and rejection of democracy, gender traditionalism, hatred of the left and liberalism, and antisemitism. It explores this amorphous term, one that encompasses a spectrum of far-right actors that includes white nationalists, “race realists,” neo-Nazis, far-right academics, esoteric antimodernists, and the misogynist “manosphere.” It addresses the political division between alt-right – who openly embrace white nationalism, fascism, or Nazism – and the “alt-lite,” who advocate civic rather than white nationalism and welcome participation by Jews, gays, and people of color. Yet defending both wings are united by a commitment to human inequality, understood as an inherent and inescapable fact of life that manifests between races, nations, culture, sexes, and sexualities. In almost all cases, straight white men are situated at the apex of this civilizational hierarchy. 

The entry describes the movement's origins, political and intellectual composition, key actors, specific racial discourse, relationship to president Trump, and impact on U.S. political culture more generally.

David Frum is a man of his word. Four months before the election of Donald J. Trump, the Atlantic columnist announced he was forming a one-man brain trust to save the GOP. "The party of reasonable conservatism I grew up with," he claimed, "died a long time ago." Seeking his own "exit from Trumpocracy," Frum hoped for the party's "reintegration into a politics again founded on decency." Frum was hardly alone in his quest. One of the most persistent features of three years of Trumpmania has been the search for a political species now considered a rare breed: the "reasonable conservative." Highly educated but not aristocratic, the reasonable conservative recognizes norms and values and refuses to calumniate opponents. Above all, they're firm believers in procedural democracy and the necessity of constitutional safeguards. There was a time when such a marriage between conservatism and democracy was far from evident. Edmund Burke derided the democratic system as "the despotism of the multitude," while Arthur de Gobineau thought democracy equal to "mobocracy." Others were less civil-democracy, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed, was nothing less than "the rule of the rabble."

Review article on the books:
Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. By Charles Clover. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016.
The Gumilev Mystique: Biopolitics, Eurasianism, and the Construction of Community in Modern Russia. By Mark Bassin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.
Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship. Edited by Marlene Laruelle. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015.
Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. By Anton Shekhovtsov. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017.

After reviewing the major tenets of three major democratic theories—classical democratic theory, elite theory, and pluralism—we posit their explicit or implicit adoption by presidential candidates and their campaign teams. Then, we discuss three exemplar democratic theory adoptions: the classical democratic theory by H. Ross Perot, elite theory by George Walker Bush, and pluralism by William Jefferson Clinton.

An examination of seedbeds of neofascism in the United States in 2008

Can a nation of civilized religions and civil religion produce political religions? Why should the United States be an exception? Beyond the marginal totalitarian groups that we easily identify as political religions, however, is a larger question of how an American sense of messianic destiny continuously pushes social and political movements toward political religion in ways that periodically gain mass support and influence public policy.

The tendency toward political religion in the United States is fed by the apocalyptic and messianic tradition brought to our shores by certain forms of Protestantism; and the legacy of a civil religion that incorporates a messianic vision of national historic destiny.

This article investigates the New Right by focusing on their political use of direct mail. The New Right was a loose network of conservative activists, such as Richard Viguerie, Paul M. Weyrich, Howard Phillips, and Terry Dolan, who emphasized social issues during the 1970s. Especially Viguerie played a critical role in raising funds and building a coalition through direct mail campaigns. The study of direct mail politics also highlights the role of "political entrepreneurs" who employed their expertise of public relations and media technologies for mobilizing social movement.

Patrick Buchanan's speech from the 1992 Republican National Convention is frequently cited as a definitive artifact of the culture wars of the late twentieth century. After challenging President George H.W. Bush in the Republican Primary, Buchanan agreed to endorse Bush in exchange for a primetime speaking slot at the RNC in Houston. Having attacked Bush over tax policy, Buchanan drew on social issues to stir passions and unite the GOP behind Bush's candidacy.

Patrick Buchanan's speech from the 1992 Republican National Convention is frequently cited as a definitive artifact of the culture wars of the late twentieth century. After challenging President George H.W. Bush in the Republican Primary, Buchanan agreed to endorse Bush in exchange for a primetime speaking slot at the RNC in Houston. Having attacked Bush over tax policy, Buchanan drew on social issues to stir passions and unite the GOP behind Bush's candidacy.

Populism: Progressive or Regressive?

Progressive Populism can challenge the status quo and out-organize elites with mass movements that accomplish real change by working outside of political parties to force fundamental changes in economic, political, and social structures.

Populist movements can be on the right, the left, or in the center. They can be egalitarian or authoritarian, and can rely on decentralized networks or a charismatic leader. They can advocate new social and political relations or romanticize the past.

Especially important for our purposes, populist movements can promote forms of antielitism that target either genuine structures of oppression or scapegoats alleged to be part of a secret conspiracy. And they can define “the people” in ways that are inclusive and challenge traditional hierarchies, or in ways that silence or demonize oppressed groups.

--Adapted from Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right–Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press.

Fundamentalism, secular or religious, is a belief, a claim and assertion that there is only one way of organizing reality-it demands that all conform to that idea or else be excommunicated from the global temple of true believer, and in some cases be hauled to hell. The economic panacea dished out to all who seek loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has the same identical demand-privatize or perish-and homily-leave everything, even your social fate, to the tender mercies of the market. This fundamentalism of finance capital and the elevation of the market to the status of a universal deity generate other fundamentalisms, religious and secular, either in alliance with them or in opposition. These forces are at the heart of globalization. -Ngugi Wa Thiong'O, "Europhone or African Memory: The Challenge of the Pan-Africanist Intellectual in the Era of Globalization" C o m p a r a t i v e S t u d i e s o f S o u t h A s i a , A f r i c a a n d t h e M i d d l e E a s t V o l . 2 6 , N o . 2 , 2 0 0 6 d o i 1 0 .1 2 1 5 / 1 0 8 9 2 0 1 x -2 0 0 5 -0 0 x © 2 0 0 6 b y D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s I would like to thank Susan Searls Giroux, Christopher Robbins, Grace Pollock, and Ken Saltman for their helpful insights, editing, and disagreements with this article.

Conservatism, the major rival of progressivism, has been one of the most important camps in U.S. politics. Instead of insisting on isolationism, the new generation of conservatism emphasized defending the free world against the communism, and was thus called as "neo-conservatism". After Mr. Ronald Reagan won the presidential campaign, "neo-conservatism" turned out to be the mainstream dominating political forum for almost three decades, even Bill Clinton need to negotiate with them and response to their opinions while he was the president.

""Debates about the relationship and boundary between mainstream and extremist (sometimes referred to as radical or violent) activism historically emerge in response to violent incidents, where defenders of a cause will attempt to differentiate between the two in order to maintain their legitimacy and critics will attempt to make links between them in order to delegitimize the movement. This is necessary in the case of the former and possible in the case of the latter because of both popular opposition and distaste for ‘extremism’ (however defined) and because of the overlap between the ideologies and objectives of mainstream movements and so-called extremist ones, even if they differ in terms of tactics. While a movement’s ideology does come into play in the definition of extremism, its application is usually reserved for those movements or activists that, while sharing an ideology or objectives with mainstream ones, reject legitimate democratic methods in favor of violence. While this analytical distinction and boundary is applied to many movements, perhaps the clearest application is the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which includes: elected officials, members of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, church groups and citizen activists, as well as more militant direct action organizations, terrorists and elements of the extreme right. The distinction and relationship between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ anti-abortion activism has become more significant in the first decade of the 21st century as America has not only waged a war against terrorism, but the stigma of terrorism that had become attached to the anti-abortion movement in the 1990s has been obscured as anti-abortion activism reached the White House and political power under President George W. Bush and the ascendant Christian Right. Yet, anti-abortion violence returned soon after Bush left office and Barack Obama entered it as the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors to perform so-called ‘late-term abortions,’ by activist Scott Roeder in Wichita, Kansas on May 31 2009 clearly illustrated.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on extremist or violence anti-abortion activism, and where it fits in to wider literature on the anti-abortion or pro-life movement, the Christian Right and other forms or sectors of the right, as well as terrorism. This is followed by an overview and examination of the different sectors of the anti-abortion movement, including the mainstream, militant direct action organizations such as Operation Rescue, the Pro-Life Action Network and Lambs of Christ, and extremist ones that advocate or perpetuate violence such as the American Coalition of Life Activists, Missionaries of the Preborn and the Army of God, websites such as the Nuremburg Files and so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists such as Rev. Mike Bray, Rev. Paul Hill, John Salvi, James Kopp, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder. This includes an overview and examination of the theological and textual sources and material used to advocate and justify violent activism, and the history of anti-abortion extremism and violence in the post-Roe v. Wade context from 1973 to the present. Through these sections, the chapter interrogates the relationships between extremist and violent anti-abortion violence, the mainstream anti-abortion movement, wider mainstream Christian Right and extreme right. It also examines responses to these activists and anti-abortion violence by the government and the mainstream anti-abortion movement. Significantly, the chapter looks at whether the mainstream anti-abortion movement provides support for more extreme elements activists or disassociates itself from these elements as it is frequently called upon to do, and whether it can or should be held responsible for perpetrators of violence who share a common cause. Finally, the chapter examines how anti-abortion extremism and violence are understood in relation in post-9/11 America.

On the book Extremism in America:

“A first-rate survey of the various strands of domestic extremism, from far left to far right, that are increasingly convulsing our country. A must-read for students, scholars, officials, and others entering this important field.”—Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center

“With contributions on areas ranging from anti-abortion extremism to modern anarchism and black nationalism, this is a fascinating study of an often neglected and vital area of American politics.”—Martin Durham, author of White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics

The American Republic was born in revolt against the British crown, and ever since, political extremism has had a long tradition in the United States. To some observers, the continued presence of extremist groups?and the escalation of their activities?portends the fragmentation of the country, while others believe such is the way American pluralism works. The word extremism often carries negative connotations, yet in 1964 Barry Goldwater famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
         
Extremism in America is a sweeping overview and assessment of the various brands of bigotry, prejudice, zealotry, dogmatism, and partisanship found in the United States, including the extreme right, the antiglobalization movement, Black Nationalism, Chicano separatism, militant Islam, Jewish extremism, eco-extremism, the radical antiabortion movement, and extremist terrorism. Many of these forms of single-minded intolerance are repressed by both the state and society at large, but others receive significant support from their constituencies and enjoy a level of respectability in some quarters of the mainstream. The essays in this volume, written by area specialists, examine the relationship between these movements and the larger society, dissect the arguments of contemporary American anarchist activists, look at recent trends in political extremism, and suggest how and why such arguments resonate with a considerable number of people.
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The idea of culture war, has occured in various analyses focused on transformation of modern societies and especially American society since 1980’s. This concept underlies „ideological schism“, which is participated on majority of the polarizing debates in American (and not only American) public sphere. These dabates involved wide spectrum of controversies like relationships between state and church, multiculturalism, abortion or gay marriages. The paper will focus on analysis of the concept of cultural war and its „using“ in „ideological struggle“ between  liberals and conservatives streams in contemporary American politics. It will also consider sustainability of this concept for the scientific reflection, especially for description and interpretation of the religious situation in American society.