THE IDEOLOGY OF POLITICAL REACTIONARIES (Routledge Innovations in Political Theory)

SHORTEN Richard

ISBN 10: 1032122706 / ISBN 13: 9781032122700

Published by Routledge, 2022. 9781032122700, 2021

About this Item

1st edn. 8vo. Original pictorial boards (Fine), no dustwrapper issued. Pp. xiii + 270 (no inscriptions).

Seller Inventory # 161140

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE IDEOLOGY OF POLITICAL REACTIONARIES (Routledge Innovations in Political Theory)
• Publisher: Routledge, 2022. 9781032122700
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032122706
• ISBN 13: 9781032122700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern History

About this title

Synopsis

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries 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.

The book argues that the features that unite reactionaries lie in rhetoric. Reactionaries make three persuasive appeals: to decadence, conspiracy, and indignation. They also display some recurrent styles. The book’s rhetorical approach entails a critique of the alternative approaches to reactionary politics (dubbed as ‘dispositional’, ‘sociological’, and ‘conceptual’). At the heart of the book is the textual analysis of the writings of a range of figures who are chosen in deliberate diversity and who have interacted with political audiences in different eras and settings: Edmund Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Éric Zemmour, Joe McCarthy, Anders Breivik, and Nigel Farage. Analysis of their writings helps the book to reckon with some particular puzzles of ideologies and rhetoric. These puzzles include the proximity of reactionaries to conservatism, the ambiguity of their nostalgia, the myth of their essential charisma, and the apparent fetishisation of facts.

The Ideology of Political Reactionaries ought to interest anyone concerned about current ideological trends and, in particular, students and scholars of politics and history.

About the Author

Richard Shorten is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His research focuses on the history of modern political ideas, particularly in twentieth-century Europe. He is the author of Modernism and Totalitarianism (2012). He has written widely on topics relating to extremism and political violence.