Right Wing Populism

This thesis examines how the American extreme right transformed in the post-civil rights era, or what is termed the “fifth era”, between 1976 and 1995. I argue that the extreme right underwent a radical re-politicisation in the mid-1970s, in response to the perceived effects of the political developments of the civil rights era on its traditional white Christian constituency, and the failure of its predecessors to maintain white supremacy and defend the nation. What occurred was a rejection of traditional hegemonic extreme right organisations, ideologies and strategies and their replacement by newer, more radical, counter-hegemonic ones. These were based around opposition to the state and political mainstream, most notably the shift from traditional white supremacy and nationalism to racial separatism, and from electoral activism to armed insurgency. Furthermore, I argue that this historical paradigm shift requires a corresponding analytic paradigm shift. This is because the majority of existing analysis not only fails to address this transformation but is also based on paradigms established in previous eras and based on traditional characteristics that the fifth era extreme right themselves rejected because of their overlap with the mainstream right, failure or lack of relevance. This thesis focuses on the case of the Christian Patriot movement and its three most prominent representatives, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and The Order, which dominated the era and played a role in each major era-defining event and ideological and strategic initiative. I examine the movement’s history, ideology, identity and strategies both in comparison to those of their predecessors and through the development of the fifth era itself. In doing so, I illustrate both how the movement responded to political developments of the post-civil rights era and how this historical paradigm shift manifested, as well as propose a new analytic approach to the extreme right through my method of discourse analysis. 

This paper examines conspiracy theory as a mode of political interpretation within the discourses of the American extreme-right in the 1980s and 1990s, specifically that of the Christian Patriot movement. Because of its historical association with anti-democratic or extreme-right movements, academic work on conspiracy theory has tended to examine it as an illegitimate political discourse that is constitutionally racist, anti-Semitic and a threat to liberal democracy. More recently, there has been an attempt to recover conspiracy theory from this stigma of illegitimacy by examining it either in terms of its structural and discursive similarity to academic theory and literary narrative or as a public discourse found within mainstream TV and film. Yet, in an attempt to recover conspiracy theory, this approach not only negates its association to the extreme-right but the inherent political dimension which lies in this opposition between legitimacy and illegitimacy. In my paper, I return conspiracy theory to the domain of the extreme-right. I argue that conspiracy theory cannot simply be reduced to the narrative structure or content that it shares with the mainstream, but needs to be examined in terms of its role, function and operation within the specific discursive-political economy of the extreme-right. This does not mean that conspiracy theory should be returned to the opposite pole as an illegitimate discourse because of its opposition to mainstream politics and discourses, but because it serves as a means to represent and engage in a – mutual – discursive-political opposition between the extreme-right and the mainstream.