Right-Wing Populism

The Fight Ahead

How the Electoral Far Right Fared in the 2022 Midterm Elections

White man on stage with hand raised smiling, you can see the letters "ESANTIS" projected behind him.

In October 2022, PRA published a map tracking the Electoral Far Right in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. Of the 276 candidates tracked by PRA, 155 appeared on the general election ballot. 107 of these candidates won their races. In addition to…

Map

A Bid For Power

Mapping The Electoral Far Right in the 2022 Elections

Photo of gray pickup truck with RW flags in bed with a mock up of a map of the US with blue data points layered on top on the left side of the image

The purpose of this resource is to help understand and visualize how ideas, policies, and factions that have long been associated with the Far Right in the United States have become an ordinary part of U.S. politics. PRA has identified 274 far-right…

Map

A Conspiratorial Life

Author Q&A with Edward H. Miller

A drawing of the globe with a warped perspective to enlarge a red and sickle covered USSR.

A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism, by Northeastern University professor Edward H. Miller is an engaging and penetrating…

Q&A

Right-Wing Populism Outside the Global North

Brazil and the Philippines

Over the last several years, countries including the U.S., UK, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and Spain have witnessed the rise of authoritarian leaders and the return of politicians posing as defenders of the “will of the people.” Right-wing populism is…

Article

In Search of New Frames

Q&A with the authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots

Tea Party rally in Plano, TX, April 15, 2009

A new book, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, offers a framework for interpreting and dismantling racist capitalist oppression without getting bogged down in this treacherous narrative of “makers and…

Q&A

In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump obtained 63.5 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 32.5 percent in Westmoreland County.4 The county is now solidly red, but it hasn’t always been. I grew up in Westmoreland County in the 1960s and…

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The Future of the U.S. “Populist Radical Right” and White Nationalism

Looking at Cas Mudde’s The Far Right in America

Donald Trump did not invent nativism or right-wing populism, but he did provide those ideologies a more prominent platform than it has enjoyed in many decades. And, as scholar Cas Mudde warns, its claws in American society will ensure that it…

Article

Women’s March on Washington, January 21st, 2017. Photo: Molly Adams via Flickr.

On the anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, PRA Executive Director Tarso Luís Ramos talks about some of what’s changed in the past year, and what progressives should be alert to going forward.

Q&A

Will Corporations, The Christian Right, and the Tea Party Get to Rewrite the Constitution?

A return to an earlier constitutional order, in which the federal government’s ability to regulate corporations and protect the public interest is severely constrained, is the end toward which decades of right-wing investments have been …

Article

Book Review: The Populist Explosion

The Populist Explosion by John B. Judis is a tightly framed analysis of populism’s recent advances on both sides of the Atlantic. Judis relates this international upsurge to the Great Recession that began in 2008 but also to the neoliberal economic…

Book Review

Photo from 1926 of Klansmen on a ferris wheel in Cañon City, CO.

Trumpism is built on a split-screen image of life for the White middle and working classes: a contemporary view of economic suffering and “loss” to encroaching “others,” while in the background hovers a shimmering past of cultural and economic glory…

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#First100Days Crash Course: Week 4

Fascism, Authoritarianism, Right-Wing Populism

Right-wing populist movements target superficial or false symbols of elite power, reinforces systems of social privilege and oppression, and are built around a backlash against liberation movements, social reform, or revolution.

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Populism as Core Element of Fascism

Fascism is a complex political current that parasitizes other ideologies, includes many internal tensions and contradictions, and has chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of…

Article

What is the Third Position?

In the last few years of the 20th Century a new form of fascism emerged in a period of resurgent neofascism. Called the Third Position, it seeks to overthrow existing governments and replace them with monocultural nation states built around the idea…

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What is Fascism?

Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this…

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Statement from PRA on the 2016 Election

This is a difficult moment for justice-minded people and anyone who believes in democracy. A man who ran an insurgent campaign as a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, and anti-establishment demagogue is now president-elect of the United States.

Statement

Declaración de PRA sobre la Elección de 2016

Éste es un momento difícil para quienes creemos en la justicia y la democracia. Un hombre que llevó a cabo una campaña insurgente como un demagogo racista, xenófobo, misógino y anti-establecimiento es ahora el presidente electo de los Estados …

Statement

What time is it?

Why we can’t ignore the momentum of the Right

Broadly speaking, the consensus is that we’re in a time of great instability, revolt, and possibility. History teaches us that in times like these, we need to be both bold and vigilant. Authoritarian, chauvinistic, and bigoted movements assert…

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Trump and Right-Wing Populism

A Long Time Coming

Two men holding a flag that says Trump 2020 The Sequel and banners saying "crack lives matter"

Most Americans surveying the wreckage of the national political landscape amid the 2016 presidential election are startled, most of all, by the ugliness and violence that has suddenly returned to our electoral politics thanks to the prominence of…

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'Trumping' Democracy

Right-Wing Populism, Fascism, and the Case for Action

Debate over what we should call Trump’s vicious political movement should not stop us from organizing now to protect the people being demonized and scapegoated as targets of White rage. Our challenge is to expose the ideas and policies of Trump and…

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Not Fascism

Trump is a Right-Wing Nativist Populist

The demonization and scapegoating that accompanies right-wing populism in the United States is breeding a backlash movement that will take creative and bold approaches as we organize to defend democracy and diversity in the public square.

Article

A group of people in suits walking, holding signs saying "We demand decent housing now!"

Founded in 1958, the John Birch Society (JBS) fiercely opposed the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, the rise of the Tea Party and the ongoing “Ron Paul Revolution” have helped the JBS make a comeback as it attracts…

Article

Profile on the Right: Louie Gohmert

Though there are many politicians on the Right that rely on fear and paranoia to mobilize their base, perhaps none is more consistently provocative than U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Profile on the Right

The Tea Party, the John Birch Society, and the Fear of "Mob Rule"

An Interview with Claire Conner

A sign that says "America is too great for marxist socialism. Restore your limited. Constitutional Government. www.jbs.org"

Claire Conner’s parents were early members of the John Birch Society (JBS), an aggressively right-wing organization that was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch. Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America’s Radical Right (Boston: Beacon Press,…

Q&A

Profiles on the Right: John Birch Society

The Old Right Reemerges

A sign covered by plants. The sign reads "Get US out! of the United Nations (888) JBS USA1"

The JBS was a major force in the battle against the Civil Rights Movement, and has recently made a comeback, largely via the Tea Party movement and as part of the Ron Paul Revolution.

Profile on the Right

A man in a suit talking into a mic and pointing to his left. A sign on the podium says "Ron Paul, 2012, Restore America Now"

Behind the recent surge of nullification bills in state legislatures there is an ongoing battle for the soul of the GOP—and the future of the union itself. The nullification movement’s ideology is rooted in reverence for states’ rights and a…

Article

It's Their Party

How the Tea Party Sustains the Anti-LGBT Right

Two transmasculine people embracing while sitting on stairs.

2011 was a frustrating year for the anti-LGBT Right. Despite millions of voters and many millions of dollars generated by a loose coalition of conservative forces to oppose LGBT rights, the LGBT rights movement has made tremendous progress. While…

Article

Protesters with signs that say "Obama why are you dividing America? And inciting violence!" and "Obama Why are you collapsing our economy?"

On Feb. 19, 2009, two days after President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law1 and one day after the White House announced $75 billion in direct aid to help homeowners refinance troubled mortgages,2 CNBC commentator…

Article

Talking to the Tea Partiers

I met Barry Silverman at a gathering of the Rockland County Tea Party/Coffee Party at the New City Public Library, about twenty miles north of New York City, in January 2011.

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The North American Union Right-Wing Populist Conspiracism Rebounds

The same right-wing populist fears of a collectivist one-world government and new world order that fueled Cold War anticommunism, mobilized opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, and spawned the armed citizens militia movement in the 1990s, have…

Article

A Black person in a yellow T-shirt holding a sign that says "voter suppression is violence"

In the spring of 2005, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law requiring all voters to appear at their proper polling place carrying either a Georgia driver’s license or an official photo ID issued by the Georgia Department of Motor…

Article

Rights for Some

The Erosion of U.S. Democracy

A black sign that says "Abuse of power comes as no surprise."

Introduction Right-wing leaders often appropriate progressive themes by calling for rule by “the people,” equal opportunity, and “equality” feminism. Their rhetoric has convinced many voters that the Right offers a more fair and direct form of…

Article

The Producerist Narrative in Repressive Right-Wing Populism

Calls to rally the virtuous “producing classes” against evil “parasites” at both the top and bottom of society is a tendency called producerism. It is a conspiracist narrative used by repressive …

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Rethinking Populism

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I grew up in a right-wing, white, lower middle-class Southern Baptist world, where Mother tried desperately to raise her daughters to become “ladies.” Both great-grandfathers had been poor foot soldiers for the slaveholding Confederacy. My…

Article

Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, & the Reform Party

The Repressive Side of Right Wing Populism What can possibly explain the Reform Party and the discussions about recruiting Pat Buchanan, that include possible support from H. Ross Perot, and Lenora Fulani? We think the rhetoric of right…

Article

The Fight Ahead

A Bid For Power

A Conspiratorial Life

Right-Wing Populism Outside the Global North

In Search of New Frames

Trump, the Republican Party, and Westmoreland County

The Future of the U.S. “Populist Radical Right” and White Nationalism

One Year In: A Q&A with Tarso Luís Ramos

Will Corporations, The Christian Right, and the Tea Party Get to Rewrite the Constitution?

Book Review: The Populist Explosion

Trumpism and the Unstable Ground of Whiteness

#First100Days Crash Course: Week 4

Populism as Core Element of Fascism

What is the Third Position?

What is Fascism?

Statement from PRA on the 2016 Election

Declaración de PRA sobre la Elección de 2016

What time is it?

Trump and Right-Wing Populism

'Trumping' Democracy

Not Fascism

The John Birch Society's Anti-Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s, and Its Relevance Today

Profile on the Right: Louie Gohmert

The Tea Party, the John Birch Society, and the Fear of "Mob Rule"

Profiles on the Right: John Birch Society

Nullification, Neo-Confederates, and the Revenge of the Old Right

It's Their Party

The Tea Party: The New Populism

Talking to the Tea Partiers

The North American Union Right-Wing Populist Conspiracism Rebounds

George Wallace and the Rightward Turn in Today's Politics

Rights for Some

The Producerist Narrative in Repressive Right-Wing Populism

Rethinking Populism

What’s Wrong With the Right?

Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, & the Reform Party

Research