The New Hate
A History Of Fear And Loathing On The Populist RightArthur Goldwag
‘From the anti-Catholic tomes of the 1800s, the enduring viciousness of anti-Semitism, to the longstanding belief in secret world governments pulling the strings, Goldwag puts the latest outpourings in perspective.’
Michael McGuire, Adelaide Advertiser
‘The most salient feature of what I have come to call the New Hate 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 websites, electronic social networks, and 24-hour cable news today — is how much alike they all turn out to be.’
From ‘Birthers’ who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States to counter-Jihadists who believe that the American constitution is in imminent danger of being replaced with sharia law, conspiratorial beliefs have become an increasingly common feature of US public discourse. In this deeply researched, fascinating history of the ideas and rhetoric that have animated extreme, mostly right-wing movements from colonial times to the present day, Arthur Goldwag reveals a disturbing pattern that runs through the American grain.
The New Hate reveals the parallels between the hysteria about the Illuminati that wracked the new Republic in the 1790s and the McCarthyism that roiled the 1950s — and between the anti–New Deal forces of the 1930s and the Tea Party today. He traces Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism and the John Birch Society’s ‘Insiders’ back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and he relates white-supremacist nightmares about racial pollution to 19th-century fears of Papal plots. Goldwag 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.
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
‘The New Hate is a timely examination of the deep roots of the conspiracy theories that have animated the American radical right for more than a century now. This important book gives readers the background they need to understand the astounding extremist rhetoric that now passes for mainstream political debate.’
Mark Potok, Director, The Southern Poverty Law Center
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