Contesting the Far Right
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-21307-3 (ISBN)
Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques.
Claudia Leeb is associate professor of political theory at Washington State University. Her recent books include The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (2018) and Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject (2017).
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Castration Anxiety and Capitalism
2. Psychoanalytic Concepts
3. Sleeping and Dreaming While Awake: Adorno Revisited
4. From Melancholia to Mania: The Rise of Trump
5. The Culture Industry of Jokes: The Recruitment Tactics of the Alt-Right
6. Austria’s Far Right: A Failed Working-Through of the Past
7. Gratifications of Terror: The Austrian Identitarian Movement
Concluding Remarks: Suggestions for Undermining the Far Right Today
Notes
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 29.02.2024 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | New Directions in Critical Theory ; 88 |
| Verlagsort | New York |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Psychoanalyse / Tiefenpsychologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-231-21307-7 / 0231213077 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-231-21307-3 / 9780231213073 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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