World of the Right

Where existing research on American and European populism deals mainly with the New Right as social and economic phenomenon, this project thus zooms in on ideas. That means exploring the New Right’s use of ideas, rhetoric and symbolics. It means unpacking where and how the New Right’s ideological commitments differ sharply from both the liberalism and the conservatism of the post-war period. And it means unfolding the NewRight’s political agenda as one concerned not only with immediate and domestic issues, but with broad civilizational questions that link up with questions and agendas of contemporary foreign policy too.

Empirically, the project will map New Right ideas and agendas in the US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia. Seeking to identify variations as much as commonalities, key themes explored across these geographical and cultural contexts are:

• loss, decline and humiliation
• religion and race
• soil and sacrifice
• nation and identity
• vitality and masculinity

Theoretically, the project will link conceptual and intellectual history with more sociological approaches to the role of affect, visuals and rhetoric in late modern discourse and identity making. The project will be conducted in cooperation with Professor Michal C Williams, University of Ottawa and senior lecturer, Jean Francios Drolet, University of Queen Mary, London.