World of the Right
World of the Right (WoR) is a three year (2017-2020) research project on the radical, nationalist and often populist Right currently on the rise across Europe and the US.
Sponsored by the Danish Velux Foundation, the project provides basic research on the commonalities and variations of the new Western Right and on the narrative which seems to unite it: that of an imminent Western civilizational decline. What, we ask, are the intellectual trajectories that inform this narrative of crisis and decay? What social and technological mechanisms play a role in mobilizing support for it? And what alternative visions of a Western civilizational order – of power, norms, law – is implicitly or explicitly endorsed by it?
Where existing research on American and European populism deals mainly with the New Right as social and economic phenomenon, this project thus zooms in on ideas. That means exploring the New Right’s use of ideas, rhetoric and symbolics. It means unpacking where and how the New Right’s ideological commitments differ sharply from both the liberalism and the conservatism of the post-war period. And it means unfolding the NewRight’s political agenda as one concerned not only with immediate and domestic issues, but with broad civilizational questions that link up with questions and agendas of contemporary foreign policy too.
Empirically, the project will map New Right ideas and agendas in the US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland and Russia. Seeking to identify variations as much as commonalities, key themes explored across these geographical and cultural contexts are:
- loss, decline and humiliation
- religion and race
- soil and sacrifice
- nation and identity
- vitality and masculinity
Theoretically, the project will link conceptual and intellectual history with more sociological approaches to the role of affect, visuals and rhetoric in late modern discourse and identity making. The project will be conducted in cooperation with Professor Michal C Williams, University of Ottawa and senior lecturer, Jean Francios Drolet, University of Queen Mary, London.
The return of machismo geopolitics
New book on how a rising rightwing in Europe and the US is rewriting the ’lessons’ of the twentieth century
Highlighted publications
Experts
Research and activites
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Photo/illustration by Mahdieh Gaforian/Fars Media Corporation via Wikimedia Commons copyright licenseJournal Article2021How the European New Right imagines a post-liberal world orderManni Crone
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Journal Article2021Travels of a contested civilizational imaginaryVibeke Schou Tjalve
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Photo/illustration by Pexels. Jens Mahnke. copyright licenseAnthology2020The Rise of the Right and the Crisis of Liberal MemoryVibeke Schou Tjalve
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Report2020The Emerging US-Central and Eastern Europe ‘Special Relationship’Minda Holm & Vibeke Schou Tjalve
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Journal Article2019US paleoconservatism and ideological challenges to the liberal world orderJean-Francois Drolet & Michael C. Williams
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Journal Article2018international theory and the new rightJean-Francois Drolet & Michael C. Williams
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Report2018The National Right in Europe, Russia and the USVibeke Schou Tjalve & Minda Holm
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Journal Article2018Revisiting Hochschild, Trump and American Apocalyptic FeelingVibeke Schou Tjalve
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Book Chapter2017Philosophy, Politics and Foreign Policy in America's 'Second Modernity'Vibeke Schou Tjalve & Michael C. Williams
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Journal Article2015Liberal Realism and the Recovery of American Political ThoughtVibeke Schou Tjalve & Michael C. Williams
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Journal Article2013restraining foreign policy in an age of mass politicsVibeke Schou Tjalve
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DIIS Policy Brief2020Not just US soldiers – NATO’s soul is also moving eastVibeke Schou Tjalve
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Photo/illustration by Pexels. Jens Mahnke. copyright license
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Photo/illustration by Pexels. Jens Mahnke. copyright licenseDIIS Comment2018Between John McCain’s death and the American Right’s growing volatility, US foreign policy is at a pivotal crossroadsMatthew Fallon Hinds
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Photo/illustration by Pexels. Jens Mahnke. copyright license
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DIIS Policy Brief2016No simple nationalistVibeke Schou Tjalve