You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book postulates that the rise of right-wing populism in the West and its references to religion are less driven by a resurgence of religious fervour, than by the emergence of a new secular identity politics. Based on exclusive interviews with 116 populist leaders, key policy makers and faith leaders in the USA, Germany, and France, it shows how right-wing populists use Christianity as a cultural identity marker of the 'pure people' against external 'others' while often remaining disconnected from Christian values, beliefs, and institutions. However, right-wing populists' willingness and ability to employ religion in this way critically depends on the actions of mainstream party politicians and faith leaders. They can either legitimise right-wing populists' identitarian use of religion or challenge it, thereby cultivating 'religious immunity' against populist appeals. As the populist wave breaks across the West, a new debate about the role of religion in society has begun.
What has led to the recent revival of the extreme right in Western democracies such as France and Australia, and what impact has their success had on mainstream politics? What shift has taken place in recent times as ideas and groups that once were considered marginal and undemocratic have come to play an important part in mainstream politics? This book addresses these key questions by examining the resurgence of the extreme right in France and Australia and explores the history of right-wing groups and their relationship with and impact on mainstream politics. This compelling study on the rise of right-wing parties in two countries with different histories but similar experiences of how mai...
The war on terror, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli conflict—again and again in the twenty-first century, crises coming out of the Middle East confront and puzzle Americans. Daniel Pipes has, to much acclaim, been explaining the region since the 1960s. The Wall Street Journal considers him “an authoritative commentator on the Middle East” and the Washington Post deems him “perhaps the most prominent U.S. scholar on radical Islam.” The New York Times calls him “smart and well-informed.” In this volume, Daniel Pipes tackles many questions: Are Muslims truly fatalistic, as their reputation holds? Is radical Islam still on the rise or is it declining? Why are substant...
The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism. Flying in the face of history, violence is dismissed as rare, immoral, and counterproductive. Arguing against this pervasive wishful thinking, the distinguished historian Arno J. Mayer revisits the two most tumultuous and influential revolutions of modern times: the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although these two upheavals arose in different environments, they followed similar courses. The thought and language of Enlightenment France were the glories of western civilization...
Why do parties that belong to the same party family address the EU question differently? This book addresses this question through a systematic analysis of the EU positions of far right parties in Europe. Starting from the assumption that far right parties are rational actors, the book argues that the way in which they may interpret structural incentives depends on their relationship with democracy, their attitude towards the polity, their target electorate/social basis, and their behaviour towards competitors. Classification on these indicators leads to the identification of three far right party models: anti-system, anti-liberal, and normalised. Given that the EU is a core issue in far rig...
What drives Marine Le Pen and France's Front National? Has her party really changed its ways, or is she merely rebranding its old ideas and policies for a new era? In the age of Brexit and Trump, France too has seen a growing audience for identity-based politics. Under 'Marine', the FN is enjoying unprecedented success. But what's her secret? This is a probing investigation into the philosophy of Marine Le Pen's FN. It seeks answers in her speeches, in the history of French nationalism and in revealing interviews with those on the far right-including Jean-Marie Le Pen himself. Michel Eltchaninoff exposes a vision of France tyrannized by liberalism and seduced by the offer of an uncompromising alternative: a Republic 'beyond Left and Right', defined by its enemies and aligned with Putin's Russia. Whatever Marine Le Pen is thinking, she has not forgotten the FN's roots. The French far right is now stronger than ever.
Throughout history, alliances have taken many different forms and they have been difficult to understand in their totality. As we now experience an unprecedented pandemic, which highlights the need for both external alliances between states and internal alliances between governments and populations, understanding alliances is more than ever critical to apprehend an open and interactive world that knows no borders and in which challenges imposed on humans are global. The book “Living Alliances, Leaving Alliances” is an interdisciplinary approach to investigating past, present and future alliances on an interpersonal, subnational, international and transnational level. It is the result of a two-year project by AreaS, a research group in area studies located at the Østfold University College in Norway.
At one time in Europe, there was a point to pain: physical suffering could be a path to redemption. This religious notion suggested that truth was lodged in the body and could be achieved through torture. In Tortured Subjects, Lisa Silverman tells the haunting story of how this idea became a fixed part of the French legal system during the early modern period. Looking closely at the theory and practice of judicial torture in France from 1600 to 1788, the year in which it was formally abolished, Silverman revisits dossiers compiled in criminal cases, including transcripts of interrogations conducted under torture, as well as the writings of physicians and surgeons concerned with the problem o...