Discovering the Radical Right
Abstract
<p>Most of the research on radical politics in the United States from the 1950s to 1980s has concerned the political left. Generally neglected, the right wing frequently has been viewed as episodic, marginal, and reactive, with investigators using a hodgepodge of empirical questions and methodological approaches. Proposing to provide "a synthesis of major explanations of the American right wing" (p. xiii), the historian who wrote this fine, scholarly book summarizes and evaluates the principal discussions and social science studies of the far right in the United States over the last four decades. After examining McCarthyism in the 1950s and the disparate research on 1960s radical right organizations, the Goldwater candidacy, and Wallace constituency, the analysis then shifts to the Moral Majority and the New Right of the 1970s and 1980s. Two final chapters appraise several alternative explanations and attempt to put the American right wing into perspective.</p> <p>Excluding violent right-wing extremists from the analysis, the focus is on the radical right—those individuals who uphold an ideology that celebrates a free market economy, a strong U.S. military, and traditional family values yet decries the welfare state, collectivism, and most of the social movements of the last 50 years. Who