The ‘New Right’ and its legacy for British conservatism

Through the case of the New Right movement in South Korea in the early 2000s, this article explores how history has become a battleground on which the Right tried to regain its political legitimacy in the postauthoritarian context. Analyzing disputes over historiography in recent decades, this article argues that conservative intellectuals—academics, journalists, and writers—play a pivotal role in constructing conservative historical narratives and building an identity for right-wing movements. By contesting what they viewed as “distorted” leftist views and promoting national pride, New Right intellectuals positioned themselves as the guardians of “liberal democracy” in the Republic of Korea. Existing studies of the Far Right pay little attention to intellectual circles and their engagement in civil society. By examining how right-wing intellectuals appropriated the past and shaped triumphalist national imagery, this study aims to better understand the dynamics of ideational contestation and knowledge production in Far Right activism.

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Losing the Discursive Battle but Winning the Ideological War: Who Holds Thatcherite Values Now?

Political Studies ◽

10.1177/0032321720986701 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 003232172098670

Author(s):

Stephen Farrall ◽

Emily Gray ◽

Phil Mike Jones ◽

Colin Hay

Keyword(s):

Survey Data ◽

Prime Minister ◽

Public Attitudes ◽

New Right ◽

The Political ◽

Political Leaders ◽

Margaret Thatcher ◽

The Uk

In what ways, if at all, do past ideologies shape the values of subsequent generations of citizens? Are public attitudes in one period shaped by the discourses and constructions of an earlier generation of political leaders? Using Thatcherism – one variant of the political New Right of the 1980s – as the object of our enquiries, this article explores the extent to which an attitudinal legacy is detectable among the citizens of the UK some 40 years after Margaret Thatcher first became Prime Minister. Our article, drawing on survey data collected in early 2019 (n = 5781), finds that younger generations express and seemingly embrace key tenets of her and her governments’ philosophies. Yet at the same time, they are keen to describe her government’s policies as having ‘gone too far’. Our contribution throws further light on the complex and often covert character of attitudinal legacies. One reading of the data suggests that younger generations do not attribute the broadly Thatcherite values that they hold to Thatcher or Thatcherism since they were socialised politically after such values had become normalised.

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Political philosophy and Australian far-right media: A critical discourse analysis of The Unshackled and XYZ

Thesis Eleven ◽

10.1177/07255136211008605 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 072551362110086

Author(s):

Imogen Richards ◽

Maria Rae ◽

Matteo Vergani ◽

Callum Jones

Keyword(s):

Critical Discourse Analysis ◽

Critical Discourse ◽

New Right ◽

Right Wing ◽

Global Media ◽

Far Right ◽

News Websites ◽

Conservative Revolution ◽

Social Conservatism ◽

European New Right

A 21st-century growth in prevalence of extreme right-wing nationalism and social conservatism in Australia, Europe, and America, in certain respects belies the positive impacts of online, new, and alternative forms of global media. Cross-national forms of ‘far-right activism’ are unconfined to their host nations; individuals and organisations campaign on the basis of ethno-cultural separatism, while capitalising on internet-based affordances for communication and ideological cross-fertilisation. Right-wing revolutionary ideas disseminated in this media, to this end, embody politico-cultural aims that can only be understood with attention to their philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on a dataset of articles from the pseudo-news websites, XYZ and The Unshackled, this paper investigates the representation of different rightist political philosophical traditions in contemporary Australia-based far-right media. A critical discourse and content analysis reveal XYZ and TU’s engagement with various traditions, from Nietzsche and the Conservative Revolution, to the European New Right and neo-Nazism.

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