The New Right
A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
-
- $17.99
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
The definitive firsthand account of the movement that permanently broke the American political consensus.
What do internet trolls, economic populists, white nationalists, techno-anarchists and Alex Jones have in common? Nothing, except for an unremitting hatred of evangelical progressivism and the so-called “Cathedral” from whence it pours forth.
Contrary to the dissembling explanations from the corporate press, this movement did not emerge overnight—nor are its varied subgroups in any sense interchangeable with one another. As united by their opposition as they are divided by their goals, the members of the New Right are willfully suspicious of those in the mainstream who would seek to tell their story. Fortunately, author Michael Malice was there from the very inception, and in The New Right recounts their tale from the beginning.
Malice provides an authoritative and unbiased portrait of the New Right as a movement of ideas—ideas that he traces to surprisingly diverse ideological roots. From the heterodox right wing of the 1940s to the Buchanan/Rothbard alliance of 1992 and all the way through to what he witnessed personally in Charlottesville, The New Right is a thorough firsthand accounting of the concepts, characters and chronology of this widely misunderstood sociopolitical phenomenon.
Today’s fringe is tomorrow’s orthodoxy. As entertaining as it is informative, The New Right is required reading for every American across the spectrum who would like to learn more about the past, present and future of our divided political culture.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Malice (Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il) attempts to lay out the logic behind the foundational beliefs of what he terms the "New Right" in a work that wavers between anthropological observation, screed, and memoir. He writes, "They're not crazy. They're not suicidal. They're as American as apple pie." Disgusted by the Left's totalizing views of Trump supporters, Malice first encountered the New Right, a loose coalition of people who oppose progressivism and egalitarianism, on Trollboard, an online gathering place for anarchists, and was eventually exposed to right-wing ideas including Curtis Yarvin's the Cathedral (a term used to describe universities and the press, or supposed leftist social control). Malice spends many pages on the New Right's internal discussions about how to counter progressivism, including the belief that liberals and leftists are irrational and can't be reasoned or argued with. Though his observations are insightful, he employs almost every rhetorical tactic he denounces; criticizing the Left's tendency to paint with broad strokes, for example, he argues that the Left uses the word racist simply to describe people with whom they disagree. He doesn't achieve his goal of providing "logical, rational explanations." This partisan text will appeal to members of the New Right and ruffle plenty of feathers on the Left.
