Book Review: ‘Key Thinkers of the Radical Right’ Shows Where Right & Far Right Diverge

At what point does “right” become “far right,” or “left” “far left”? And where is the “center” from which distance is measured in one direction or the other? These questions are becoming increasingly difficult to answer objectively. The number of political and cultural touchstones shared by all Americans is falling, the siloing of news and media consumption is growing, and Americans are now unable to agree even on the nature and extent of their disagreements. For our MSNBC-viewing, Jacobin-reading friends, anyone to the right of Elizabeth Warren may as well be Genghis Khan, while the president’s courtiers and acolytes denounce conservatives such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, and John Bolton as deep-state globalist sell-outs.

Key Thinkers of The Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy, edited by Mark Sedgwick, addresses these tricky questions about the political spectrum by identifying the points at which the far right departs from mainstream conservative thought altogether. The book is divided into three sections. Part I covers “Classic Thinkers,” those whose place in the far-right canon is already established. Among these writers are the Germans, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt, along with the Italian traditionalist Julius Evola. Part II moves on to “Modern Thinkers” such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye of the French Nouvelle Droite along with Americans such as Patrick Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and Jared Taylor. Part III concerns itself with “Emergent Thinkers” such as Richard Spencer and Jack Donovan of the alt-right. Each thinker covered in the book is treated in his or her own essay, written by an academic familiar with their output. As Sedgwick informs the reader in the introduction, this is not a polemical work, either promoting or refuting the arguments of its subjects. It aims rather to summarize and elucidate the key themes and ideas animating the work of each writer discussed. The book is really a brief academic introduction and overview of far-Right political thought. Still, it remains readable for the layman all the same.

About the Author

Cameron Hilditch

Cameron Hilditch was a 2020-2021 William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism at National Review Institute.

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At what point does “right” become “far right,” or “left” “far left”? And where is the “center” from which distance is measured in one direction or the other? These questions are becoming increasingly difficult to answer objectively. The number of political and cultural touchstones shared by all Americans is falling, the siloing of news and media consumption is growing, and Americans are now unable to agree even on the nature and extent of their disagreements. For our MSNBC-viewing, Jacobin-reading friends, anyone to the right of Elizabeth Warren may as well be Genghis Khan, while the president’s courtiers and acolytes denounce conservatives such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, and John Bolton as deep-state globalist sell-outs.

Key Thinkers of The Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy, edited by Mark Sedgwick, addresses these tricky questions about the political spectrum by identifying the points at which the far right departs from mainstream conservative thought altogether. The book is divided into three sections. Part I covers “Classic Thinkers,” those whose place in the far-right canon is already established. Among these writers are the Germans, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt, along with the Italian traditionalist Julius Evola. Part II moves on to “Modern Thinkers” such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye of the French Nouvelle Droite along with Americans such as Patrick Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, and Jared Taylor. Part III concerns itself with “Emergent Thinkers” such as Richard Spencer and Jack Donovan of the alt-right. Each thinker covered in the book is treated in his or her own essay, written by an academic familiar with their output. As Sedgwick informs the reader in the introduction, this is not a polemical work, either promoting or refuting the arguments of its subjects. It aims rather to summarize and elucidate the key themes and ideas animating the work of each writer discussed. The book is really a brief academic introduction and overview of far-Right political thought. Still, it remains readable for the layman all the same.