The surprise election of Donald Trump; the rise and fall of Trump’s adviser, the “nationalist” ideologue Steve Bannon; and the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, rally of “white nationalists,” “neo-confederates,” and Nazi sympathizers: all these have drawn attention to the historical lineage of the “far Right” in American society and politics. The highly debated question raised by some of Trump’s opponents—is he a “fascist,” or do his most hard-core followers make up a “fascist movement”?—suggests for the sake of clarity and nuance the need to recognize a far Right not as a foreign extremism outside the main currents of American life but rather as a long-running element of the American political tradition. This new course surveys the history of the American Right in these forms: the antebellum defense of slavery and fears of immigrant subversion; the entanglement of white supremacy with laissez-faire, nationalist, and imperialist ideologies in the late 19th century; successive “red scares” from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century; the rise of the (second) Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and pro-fascist movements of the 1930s; the resurgence of an anti-labor, anti-welfare-state business ideology of laissez faire absolutism (and some “libertarian” versions thereof); conspiracy-minded groups like the John Birch Society and “militias” from the 1950s through 1990s; and the association of a so-called “Alt-Right” with the Trump phenomenon. Although we distinguish this history of the Right from a discussion of “conservatism” (as a political philosophy), we will touch on the ways such political tendencies as those listed above have related to the rightward edge of the “mainstream” Republican Party since the late twentieth century.

Course Requirements:

One short essay and one term paper; midterm; take-home final

Intended Audience:

Sophomores and above

Class Format:

lecture/discussion