The rise of radical right-wing leaders, parties, movements, and ideas have transformed not only domestic political landscapes but also the direction and dynamics of international relations. Yet for all their emphasis on nationalist identity, on “America First” and “Taking Back Control,” there is an unmistakable international dimension to contemporary nationalist, populist movements. Yet these movements are also often transnationally linked. We argue that a constitutive part of this globality is the New Right's (NR) own distinctive international political sociology (IPS). Key thinkers of the contemporary NR have, over several decades, theorized and strategically mobilized globalized economic dislocation and cultural resentment, developing a coherent sociological critique of globalization. Drawing on the oft-neglected tradition of elite managerialism, NR ideologues have borrowed freely from Lenin and Schmitt on the power of enmity, as well as from Gramsci and the Frankfurt School on counterhegemonic strategies. Against the temptation to dismiss right-wing ideas as “merely” populist and by implication as lacking in ideological and theoretical foundations, we are faced with the much more challenging task of engaging a position that has already developed its own international political sociology and incorporated it into its political strategies.
The last decade of the Cold War and the early years of the post-Cold War international order saw the emergence of a radical conservatism in Japan which has since taken root as a key ideological force in the country’s conservative political culture. This article traces the neglected but important influence of José Ortega y Grasset’s theory of the masses on this contemporary movement. However, in this journey across time, space, and culture, the theory of mass society has mutated. The article examines the ways in which Japanese radical conservative thinkers Susumu Nishibe and Keishi Saeki interpreted and applied Ortega’s work to critique the development of Japan’s contemporary political landscape. Radical conservatives transformed Ortega’s theory of the modern masses and his argument for elite liberalism into a critique of the liberal international order which favours reactionary nationalism. To understand this shift, the article examines the conceptualisations of modernisation and national identity as a necessary background to such theoretical and political appropriation.
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