Cas Mudde - The Far Right in America

This book collects Muddes old and new blog posts, interviews and op-eds on the topic of the US far right, ranging from right-wing populists to neo-Nazi terrorists. The main emphasis of the book is on the two most important far right developments of the 21st century, the Tea Party and Donald Trump. Primarily aimed at a non-academic audience, the book explains terminology, clarifies the key organizations and people and their relationship to (liberal) democracy.

Cas Mudde is Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, USA, and Researcher in the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy

Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath, and Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent.

Founding Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and Cas Mudde, University of Georgia.

For more information on this series visit: https://www.routledge.com/politics/series/ED

This new series encompasses academic studies within the broad fields of extremism and democracy. These topics have traditionally been considered largely in isolation by academics. A key focus of the series, therefore, is the (inter-)relation between extremism and democracy. Works will seek to answer questions such as to what extent extremist groups pose a major threat to democratic parties, or how democracy can respond to extremism without undermining its own democratic credentials.

The books encompass two strands:

Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy includes books with an introductory and broad focus which are aimed at students and teachers. These books will be available in hardback and paperback. Titles include:

The Populist Radical Reader

A Reader

Edited by Cas Mudde

The Far Right in America

Cas Mudde

Routledge Research in Extremism and Democracy offers a forum for innovative new research intended for a more specialist readership. These books will be in hardback only. Titles include:

38. The Darkest Sides of Politics, II

State Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Religious Extremism, and Organized Crime

Jeffrey M. Bale

The Far Right in America

Cas Mudde

First published 2018

by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2018 Cas Mudde

The right of Cas Mudde to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-06387-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-06389-1 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-16076-4 (ebk)

For Joseph Peter

is a revised version of the article Definitions: Right, Far-Right, Outside Right and Just Trying To Be Populist, originally published in HOPE not hate Magazine (JanuaryFebruary 2016).

was originally published in Open Democracy (23 September 2009).

was originally published in Open Democracy (13 December 2012).

was originally published in Open Democracy (3 September 2012).

was originally published in Open Democracy (9 November 2012).

was originally published in Open Democracy (28 October 2013).

was originally published in the Washington Post (26 August 2015).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (13 February 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (28 February 2016).

was originally published in HOPE not hate Magazine (MarchApril 2016).

A shorter, and very different, version of was published as As American as Trump, in the Boston Review (13 June 2016).

was originally published on the website POP Political Observer on Populism (30 May 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (22 July 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (9 August 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (25 August 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (29 August 2016).

was originally published in HOPE not hate Magazine (US Election Special, October 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (8 October 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (4 November 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (10 November 2016).

was originally published as Europes Far Right Has Been Boosted By Trumps Win For Now, in the Guardian (9 November 2016).

was originally published in Deutsche Welle (29 November 2016).

was originally published in Newsweek (15 December 2016).

was originally published in Newsweek (30 December 2016).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (20 March 2017).

was originally published in the Huffington Post (23 September 2016).

I moved to the United States in September 2008, after having worked on far right movements and parties in Europe for some 15 years. In many ways, it was more a professional than a personal shock. Since I had started my PhD research on the extreme right party family at Leiden University, in 1993, my topic had become more and more relevant, by and large dominating academic and political debates on European politics in the 21st century. In the US, in sharp contrast, terms like radical right and far right featured sparsely in the political debate and generated little interest from scholars or students. That was 2008. How things have changed in ten years.

This spring I taught my course Far Right Politics in Western Democracies at the University of Georgia, as I have been doing almost every year since I came to the US. However, whereas students normally struggle to come up with a US example of the far right, usually only mentioning the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), now the specter of Donald Trump was hovering over our course throughout the semester. Like the rest of the country, my students were looking to Europe to better understand the US a profoundly un-American attitude. To be fair, it was not easy to teach the course during such tumultuous times, in which people wanted to make sense of someone (Trump), and something (Trumpism), who in many ways wants to remain indefinable.

What the past year has shown us, at the very least, is that far right politics is not just a European phenomenon, or at best marginal within the US context. It is here, whether truly in power or just close to it. It also laid bare the lack of serious scholarship on the topic. There are more US-based political scientists who work on the far right in Europe than on the far right in the US! The situation in other disciplines is not much better. With the notable exception of some pioneers, like Kathleen Blee and Peter Simi, few sociologists study the US far right, and while historians have provided significant scholarship on US populism, most of it focuses exclusively on the original Populists of the Peoples Party, and their direct successors, more than 100 years ago. Indeed, much of the more significant work on the topic comes from activists and activist-scholars like Chip Berlet, Sara Diamond and Leonard Zeskind, or from non-Americans like Martin Durham.