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A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right
by Arthur Goldwag
From "Birthers" who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States to counter-jihadists who believe that the Constitution is in imminent danger of being replaced with Sharia law, conspiratorial beliefs have become an increasingly common feature of our public discourse. In this deeply researched, fascinating exploration of the ideas and rhetoric that have animated extreme, mostly right-wing movements throughout American history, Arthur Goldwag reveals the disturbing pattern of fear-mongering and demagoguery that runs through the American grain.
The New Hate takes readers on a surprising, often shocking, sometimes bizarrely amusing tour through the swamps of nativism, racism, and paranoid speculations about money that have long thrived on the American fringe. Goldwag shows us the parallels between the hysteria about the Illuminati that wracked the new American Republic in the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the 1950s, and he discusses the similarities between the anti–New Deal forces of the 1930s and the Tea Party movement today. He traces Henry Ford's anti-Semitism and the John Birch Society's "Insiders" back to the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he relates white supremacist nightmares about racial pollution to nineteenth-century fears of papal plots.
"The most salient feature of what I have come to call the New Hate," Goldwag writes, "is its sameness across time and space. The most depressing thing about the demagogues who tirelessly exploit it - in pamphlets and books and partisan newspapers two centuries ago, on Web sites, electronic social networks, and twenty-four-hour cable news today - is how much alike they all turn out to be."
"[W]hether he's analyzing the origins of Glenn Beck's ideology or demystifying the Illuminati, Goldwag excels at showing how the obsessions of the past connect with those of the present." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A provocative, intellectually rigorous book written clearly and with an admirable lack of hatred." - Kirkus Reviews
"One wishes that Goldwag were exaggerating, but if you spend a little time reading the vile comments sections on right-wing websites you will see that Goldwag has performed a valuable service in tracing the history of the new hate to the old." - Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III
"Goldwag provides a lucid and detailed account of the irrational and bigoted right-wing populists and their conspiracy theories of power in the United States. These conspiracists are like intellectual vampires sucking the blood out of the body politic and leaving behind a weakened democracy in a fading twilight for civil society. Goldwag illuminates the conspiracists to reverse their trajectory of increasing influence, which is a periodic problem for our nation." - Chip Berlet, co-author Right-Wing Populism in America
"Arthur Goldwag confronts conspiracist fantasies and paranoia with reason and humanity - not to mention the briskness and drama of great historical storytelling. His dissection of how the political fringe has edged into mainstream culture deserves the attention and admiration of everyone who is concerned about the coarsening of our politics." - Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
"This exhumation of the deep and gnarled roots of the American conspiratorial tradition could not be more timely. Combining a sweeping historical eye and sharp contemporary analysis, Arthur Goldwag explains not just why American politics in the Age of Obama is infected by a virulent strain of right-wing conspiracism - but why it has always been thus. From the Bavarian Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt, to the Tea Party Idiocracy of Michelle Malkin, The New Hate covers everything you need to know about the paranoid style in American politics." - Alex Zaitchik, author of Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
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