The Politics of Unreason: Right Wing Extremism in America 1790-1977

by Seymour Martin Lipset

Traces the phenomenon of right-wing radicalism in America from 1790 to the extremism and backlash sentiments of the 1970s

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Political Science, American History

581 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Seymour Martin Lipset was an American political sociologist, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Hazel Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective.

Reviews

[Clif · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gem of a book is a comprehensive and very readable look at extremism on the right in the history of America.

With a thorough grounding in data, often presented in chart form for extremist groups of the 20th century, Lipset gets into the philosophical basis and the characteristics of the membership of groups starting in the early 19th century and continuing to the political support of George Wallace in the 1960's, Wallace surprisingly a strong political liberal who, after defeat by a racist, decided bigotry was the key to electoral success.

With each iteration of backlash there is a common theme of anxiety provoked by social change that leaves a established cultural/economic group worrying its position is threatened. A conspiracy is claimed to exist. Early on it is immigration of Catholics alarming Protestants accompanied with the conspiracy of the Illuminati. Then Jews alarm Christians with the concocted Protocols of the Elders of Zion "proving" a conspiracy, southern European immigrants alarm Americans with a northern European background, blacks with newly won freedoms alarm whites (3 distinct period outbreaks of the KKK), then Communists alarm everyone with a core of extremists in the John Birch Society calling none other than Dwight Eisenhower a communist dupe.

Throughout, social anxiety picks out a group object upon which to direct anger. As Lipset points out, it isn't necessarily bigotry that starts a movement, but bigotry that naturally follows upon identifying a group as a threat. Today we see pushback against Black Lives Matter and liberalism combined with anger at elites in Trumpism. This combination of rage against some group asserting its place within society along with resentment of the elites (hatred for Hillary) and a nefarious conspiracy (Q-Anon) is a predictable combination. Consider the following quote from Rev. Billy Hargis, a man very popular on radio in the early 1960's and think of Rush Limbaugh more recently...

"A giant gangster conspiracy threatens to take away our freedoms and enslave us all...the greatest threat is not so much from the outside as the inside...a powerfully entrenched liberal establishment...that reaches into the fields of education, politics, religion, labor and management - dedicated men determined to abolish the free enterprise system and bring about a world government of socialist nations...with a hatred of the less educated masses". What could be closer to MAGA?

Leaving no movement unexamined, Lipset explains the origin, rise and fall of each movement. Father Coughlin (another wildly popular radio rantor), Jack Welsh of the John Birch Society and Joe McCarthy find a key to popularity, ride it for all its worth and then fade. Most interesting is a discussion of how the two party system manages to incorporate aspects of extremism to win victories in elections, as Richard Nixon did with his "Southern strategy" of dog-whistle bigotry that worked very well for the Republican party.

The Politics of Unreason is a masterpiece of American history that unfortunately is out of print. I'm very sorry it isn't available as an ebook for the ease of finding material within the text that allows. A follow-up that brings the subject up to the 2020's would be very welcome should anyone be able to fill the very big shoes of Seymour Martin Lipset who died in 2006.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forty years later, this look at the roots of right-wing extremism still seems depressingly timely. The authors argue that where left-wing extremism is fueled by a lack of property and status, the right is "preservatist," driven by people afraid of losing what they have. This in turn breeds anti-immigrant hostility (a running feature for 200-plus years) and political paranoia about vast conspiracies (the Illuminati crop up as a bogeyman over and over again). The focus on George Wallace's 1968 campaign now looks a little dated, but overall this is very effective, if dry at times.

[Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work from 1972 that is more relevant today than when it was published.
The authors present the clear role that backlash has played in its many incarnations in American history.
The statement that they make that extremist movements have never been able to take over a political party is now no longer correct. However, their analysis of who these extremists are is correct.
Well worth reading, even if you scroll through their sociological data, and even though it is sometimes repetitive.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

worth including in any survey of extremism in America and particularly its right wing. this book does seem flawed both stylistically and conceptually, however.

where it shines is when it does history, like its coverage of anti Catholic prejudice in America and its analysis of how views of the Illuminati have persisted over centuries. perhaps this is my own bias, but the book totally flattens when it starts trying to do political science and bombards you with pages of statistical data. those sections are unbearably dry to read, and I’m skeptical how conclusive one can be about the data. are the surveys representative, and are they at all affected by biases about how an issue is presented? these sections are so boring to me that I totally skipped a chapter on Wallace’s social base, since it was mostly this stuff.

the book also suffers from an overemphasis on the Wallace campaign, which inspired the book. it spends considerably more time on the decades after WW2 than all American history hitherto.

conceptually, I think the book suffers from what seems at times to be a kind of materialism. when discussing sociological data, the authors sound at times like they are ascribing political belief to being the product of one’s class or characteristic. and the authors explicitly try to argue that bigotry comes after backlash to some perceived change, but they seem to go too far in arguing that point. I don’t deny that backlash can inspire the trends they describe, but I imagine the relationship to be mutually reinforcing, which the authors don’t address much as a possibility. for many, I would argue, things like conspiratorial thinking precede other forms of extremist belief, and that many more are primed to be or already are antisemitic before any kind of status dislocation might make them blame Jews.

the ideas in the book are interesting regardless, and they include conceptual ammunition like a “Quondam Complex” or “preservationism” which may still be valuable. as something to read, this is sometimes a slog, but it’s still worth it anyway for the politically minded.

[RB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it remarkable that this book has overlooked the most successful right wing extremist movement between 1790-1970, namely the southern wing of the Democratic Party. This movement supported the institution of slavery before the Civil War. After the end of Republican Reconstruction (during which scores of blacks were elected to political offices in the South), southern Democrats enforced segregation, passed Jim Crow legislation, and did everything possible to keep blacks from voting. Blacks could register with the Republican Party where the latter was permitted to exist but at some peril to the former. Reading about the Colfax Massacre is instructive in this respect. Congress recently passed the first anti-lynching law. After the Civil War, Republicans introduced a number of anti-lynching bills, none of which passed owing to southern Democratic opposition and filibustering. Then in 1934 two brave northern Democratic senators drafted the first anti-lynching bill sponsored by Democrats. It too failed. FDR would not support it. The Democratic Party has never seen fit to apologize for its history of right-wing extremism.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

An underrated masterpiece. The most detailed history of right-wing politics in the U.S.