Reaction and Revolution

Reaction and Revolution situates the resurgence of far-right movements and thinkers within a longer intellectual history that emerged primarily in interwar Germany—a philosophical conversation centered on political theology. Arguing that the more radically democratic modes of political theology offer better ways to understand and to counter the far right’s rhetorical appeal, this book offers a rhetorical-intellectual critique of three key thinkers and their allied movements: Paul Gottfried and the American paleoconservatives, Guillaume Faye and the French Identitarians, and Nick Land and the Dark Enlightenment. Kevin Musgrave argues that a radical political theology of race offers meaningful ways of challenging the right’s efforts to build a global imperium of whiteness and of reclaiming the promise of human dignity.