Trumping The Mainstream

In 2016, the striking electoral success of the UK Vote Leave campaign and Donald Trump’s presidential bid defied conventional expectations and transformed the political landscape. Considered together, these two largely unpredicted events constitute a defining moment in the process of the incorporation of far-right populist discourse in mainstream politics. This timely book argues that there has been a change in the fundamental dynamic of the mainstreaming of far-right populist discourse. In recent elections, anti-establishment actors have rewritten the playbook, defeated the establishment and redefined political norms. They have effectively outplayed, overtaken and trumped mainstream parties and policies. As fringe discourse becomes mainstream, how we conceive of the political landscape and indeed the very distinction between a political centre and periphery has been challenged. This book provides new theoretical tools and empirical analyses to understand the ongoing mainstreaming of far-right populism. Offering case studies and comparative research, it analyses recent political events in the US, UK, France and Belgium. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of populism and far-right politics who seek to make sense of recent world-altering events.

Offers the first systematic comparative analysis of the conditions under which populism slides into illiberal rule and the prospects for US democracy.

The Ku Klux Klan has peaked three times in American history: after the Civil War, around the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and in the 1920s, when the Klan spread farthest and fastest. Recruiting millions of members even in non-Southern states, the Klan’s nationalist insurgency burst into mainstream politics. Almost one hundred years later, the pent-up anger of white Americans left behind by a changing economy has once again directed itself at immigrants and cultural outsiders and roiled a presidential election. In The Politics of Losing, Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today’s right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan’s earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan’s outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans’ experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.

“When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

The election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 seemed to catch the world napping. Like the vote for Brexit in the UK, there seemed to be a new de-synchronicity – a huge reality gap – between the unfolding of history and the mainstream news media’s interpretations of and reporting of contemporary events. Through a series of short, sharp interventions from academics and journalists, this book interrogates the emergent media war around Donald Trump. A series of interconnected themes are used to set an agenda for exploration of Trump as the lynch-pin in the fall of the liberal mainstream and the rise of the right media mainstream in the USA. By exploring topics such as Trump’s television celebrity, his presidential candidacy and data-driven election campaign, his use of social media, his press conferences and combative relationship with the mainstream media, and the question of ‘fake news’ and his administration’s defence of ‘alternative facts’, the contributors rally together to map the parallels of the seemingly momentous and continuing shifts in the wider relationship between media and politics.

What is the Alt-Right, and how will it affect America? Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 suddenly brought to prominence a political movement that few in political circles or the mainstream media had paid much attention to: the so-called Alt-Right. Steven Bannon, Trump's campaign manager, was a leading figure in the movement, and the election results seemed to give it a real opportunity to gain some political power. But what is the Alt-Right? Is it a movement, a theory, a trend, or just an unorganized group of people far outside of what used to be the political mainstream in America? Or, could it be all of these things? Why has it suddenly emerged into prominence? What impact is it having on American politics today, and what are the prospects for the Alt-Right in the future? Through careful research and analysis, The Rise of the Alt-Right addresses these and other questions, tracing the movement’s history from the founding of modern conservatism in postwar America to the current Trump era. Although the Alt-Right might seem to be just the latest extremist group to arise in the United States—one likely to take its place in the graveyard of its many predecessors—Thomas J. Main analyzes evidence that the Alt-Right is having a greater influence on the American political mainstream than did past extremist tendencies. The Rise of the Alt-Right is thus an important study for anyone interested in the future of American politics and public life.

"With a foreword by Robert W. McChesney"--Cover.