Enemies of the State
The Radical Right in America from FDR to Trump
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- $37.99
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- $37.99
Publisher Description
The rise of the alt-right alongside Donald Trump’s candidacy may be seem unprecedented events in the history of the United States, but D. J. Mulloy shows us that the radical right has been a long and active part of American politics during the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mulloy (The World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism and the Cold War) covers 80 years of far-right conservatism to argue that Trump's success is "a culmination of deeper historical trends and developments, many of them closely related to the history of the American radical right," in a popular history that sacrifices neither nuance nor complexity in its concision. Mulloy identifies the response to FDR's New Deal economic recovery programs during the Great Depression as the beginning of the modern radical right. The book provides brief sketches of key players and groups in a movement "driven by a deep suspicion of the federal government and its role in American society," including 1930s radio personality Father Coughlin, communist-hunting senator Joseph McCarthy, the John Birch Society, Equal Rights Amendment critic Phyllis Schlafly, evangelist Pat Robertson, and the militia movement of the 1990s. At times, "radical right" is amorphously defined, and Mulloy glosses somewhat too shallowly over the emergent "alt-right" movement, but he writes in a clear and accessible style and provides dispassionate scholarly analysis that convincingly supports his thesis. Readers seeking information about the far right will find this book enlightening.
