How the Electoral Far Right Fared in the 2022 Midterm Elections

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…

Mapping The Electoral Far Right in the 2022 Elections

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…

Author Q&A with Edward H. Miller

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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…

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.

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 …

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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.

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 …

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…

A Long Time Coming

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…

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…

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.

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…

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.

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,…

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.

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…

How the Tea Party Sustains the Anti-LGBT Right

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…

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…

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.

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…

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…

The Erosion of U.S. Democracy

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…

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 …

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…

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…