How does America’s Radical Right Define the Political Context in Which it Acts?

Abstract

There are many academic publications on what Cass Mudde defined as the “populist radical right”. Based on those, but unlike them, this article tries to understand the radical right in the Western Hemisphere in the same way that it understands itself and the political context in which it acts. Based on their own texts, we conclude that such an understanding is based on four main arguments. First, that, after the Cold War, Marxism based on class conflicts was replaced by what they call “cultural Marxism”, which emphasizes instead conflicts among groups defined by their identity. Second, cultural Marxism has achieved political victories that were unthinkable under classical Marxism. Third, cultural Marxism is an “ideology” which, under their understanding of that term, constitutes a worldview that, due to its lack of basis on reality, pretends to prevail through political means. Finally, all the groups that they define as part of cultural Marxism are unified under that ideology, ready to contend against the radical right in what they call a “cultural battle".