Right-Wing Literature in the United States since the 1960s

Abstract

Examining fiction and nonfiction written explicitly by and for members of right-wing movements provides a deeper understanding of points of affinity as well as contention in the midst of increased polarization in United States political culture. Primary materials include fiction penned by conservative politicians and pundits, fiction written by right-wing agitators, and nonfiction movement literature such as periodicals, advice books, and tactical instruction guides. Since the middle of the 20th century, right-wing literature has sustained and motivated an increasingly formidable political force that undermines democratic ideals and encourages reformatory or revolutionary action. Comparing and contrasting fiction with movement nonfiction written by conservatives of the Cold War era illuminates how right-wing politics shifted away from pessimistic accounts of the supposed decline of Western civilization. In the 1960s, conservative book clubs advertised fiction in which heroes typically were ordinary white businessmen whose love of country led them to fight “un-American” foes, often depicted as sexual deviants, racialized immigrants, or a combination of the two. The fiction, then, presented a means of transcending abstract, erudite discussions of the presumed “suicide of the West” that preoccupied conservative intellectuals. Likewise, more radical nonfiction offered a hopeful, less fatalistic sense of right-wing plight. While an urgent tone characterized both fiction and nonfiction in the Cold War era, the fiction and some smaller political publications illuminated a difference between using doomsday rhetoric and deploying an apocalyptic narrative in which readers could see themselves taking action in social dramas and political conflicts. This rejection of fatalistic passivity corresponded with the postwar persistence of American anti-Semitism that coded communism as Jewish, with anti-integration efforts that framed racial concerns as parental ones, and with the rise of the New Right, which de-emphasized economic imperatives to thwart the supposed anticommunist evil that plagued America. Instead of economic concerns, the New Right began politicizing social issues to inaugurate a cultural conservatism, which went beyond conserving and defending a right-wing version of the American way of life and went on the offensive in the 1970s and 1980s. Right-wing fiction of the Culture Wars not only reflected this shift but also ushered it in. In the midst of and after the Reagan Revolution, male protagonists in right-wing fiction were more socially outcast and persecuted than their Cold War counterparts and therefore more action-oriented from the start. Macho serial fiction and novels penned by right-wing provocateurs in the anti-abortion and white supremacist movements fomented militant insurgency and revolution. Meanwhile, mainstream publishers created imprints specifically designed to cater to conservative readership, especially women. An industry boom in conservative Christian fiction emerged with orchestrated efforts to challenge educational curricula and with increased popularity in homeschooling. The trajectory of influential conservative women’s writing went from atheistic free-market novels and prim advice books on how to negotiate assertiveness and subservience in holy matrimony to political conspiracy books and increasingly vicious attacks on particular liberals presumed to be agents (not dupes) of the antichrist. In recent years, women and right-wing pundits have published commercially successful young adult and children’s literature expressly with conservative themes. In the post-9/11 era, narrating state power involved capitalizing on a sense of trauma by integrating feelings of imminent conflict with the daily rhythms of society. Right-wing literature in the United States reflected and promoted this disjointed temporality.