The Ideology of Political Reactionaries

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries offers a new perspective on the beliefs reactionaries share, presenting a theory of reactionary ideology in the process. Rather than taking self-contradictions in the reactionary imagination as a reason for diminishment, complexity is taken as a challenge.

Auteur

Richard Shorten is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Birmingham, UK. His research focuses on the history of modern political ideas, particularly in twentieth-century Europe. He is author of Modernism and Totalitarianism (2012). He has written widely on topics relating to extremism and political violence.

Texte du rabat

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries offers a new perspective on the beliefs reactionaries share, presenting a theory of reactionary ideology in the process. Rather than taking self-contradictions in the reactionary imagination as a reason for diminishment, complexity is taken as a challenge.

The book argues that the features that unite reactionaries lie in rhetoric. Reactionaries make three persuasive appeals: to decadence, conspiracy, and indignation. They also display some recurrent styles. The book's rhetorical approach entails a critique of the alternative approaches to reactionary politics (dubbed as 'dispositional', 'sociological', and 'conceptual'). At the heart of the book is the textual analysis of the writings of a range of figures who are chosen in deliberate diversity and who have interacted with political audiences in different eras and settings: Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Éric Zemmour, Joe McCarthy, Anders Breivik, and Nigel Farage. Analysis of their writings helps the book to reckon with some particular puzzles of ideologies and rhetoric. These puzzles include the proximity of reactionaries to conservatism, the ambiguity of their nostalgia, the myth of their essential charisma, and the apparent fetishization of facts.

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries ought to interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends and, in particular, students and scholars of politics and history.

Contenu

Introduction: reactionaries from dispositions to rhetoric

*Part 1: Indignation: The *pathos of reaction

**1. Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre

2. Sarah Palin and Donald Trump

Part 2: Decadence: The logos of reaction

3. Adolf Hitler and Nazism

4. Éric Zemmour and Les nouveaux réactionnaires

Part 3: Conspiracy: The ethos of reaction

5. Senator Joe McCarthy

6. Anders Breivik

7. Nigel Farage

Conclusion: reactionaries from appeals to styles