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The 2021 book, 'The Ideology of Political Reactionaries', will interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends - particularly the disturbing rise in far-right rhetoric, activism, & terrorism in the UK, across Europe, & in America.
routledge.com/The-Ideology-o…
The 2021 book, 'The Ideology of Political Reactionaries', will interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends - particularly the disturbing rise in far-right rhetoric, activism, & terrorism in the UK, across Europe, & in America.
routledge.com/The-Ideology-o…
The book 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.
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
to conspiracy
and to indignation.
They also display some recurrent rhetorical styles.
to decadence
to conspiracy
and to indignation.
They also display some recurrent rhetorical styles.
At the heart of the book is the textual analysis of the writings of a range of figures who are chosen in deliberate diversity & who have interacted with political audiences in different eras & settings, including Edmund Burke, Trump, Hitler, Anders Breivik, & Nigel Farage.
Analysis of their writings helps the book to reckon with some particular puzzles of ideologies & rhetoric, including the proximity of reactionaries to conservatism, the ambiguity of their nostalgia, the myth of their essential charisma, & the apparent fetishisation of facts.
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