Talk:Radical right (United States)

Hi @Darknipples about the trump populism paragraph can you help explain the conclusion? I find it hard to read, and its conclusions vague. Tonymetz 💬 19:15, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "explain the conclusion". Rick Perlstein argues that historians have underestimated the influence and power on the modern American political right by radical right movements, namely Trumpism, which "is an authoritarian political movement...incorporating ideologies such as right-wing populism, national conservatism, neo-nationalism, and neo-fascism." Poli-Sci Professor, Joseph Lowndes, also speaks to this relation in 2021 article in the Washington Post. DN (talk) 19:31, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

what is the paragraph trying to say? It mentions underestimating & overestimating and it is hard to read. What would you say it says? Tonymetz 💬 19:33, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It seems Perlstein's opinion is that the radical right was under-estimated in terms of influence over conservative politics, while the status quo of "traditional" conservatism, for lack of a better description, was over-estimated. Perhaps if I quote some of the article that might help? (italics mine)

• Year Zero was 1955, when William F. Buckley Jr. started National Review, the small-circulation magazine whose aim, Buckley explained, was to “articulate a position on world affairs which a conservative candidate can adhere to without fear of intellectual embarrassment or political surrealism.” Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society, anti-Semites and supporters of the hyperindividualist Ayn Rand, and his cohort fused the diverse schools of conservative thinking — traditionalist philosophers, militant anti-Communists, libertarian economists — into a coherent ideology, one that eventually came to dominate American politics.
• Why hasn’t the presence of organized mobs with backing in powerful places disturbed historians’ conclusion that the American right was dormant during this period? In fact, the “far right” was never that far from the American mainstream. The historian Richard Steigmann-Gall, writing in the journal Social History, points out that “scholars of American history are by and large in agreement that, in spite of a welter of fringe radical groups on the right in the United States between the wars, fascism never ‘took’ here.” And, unlike in Europe, fascists did not achieve governmental power. Nevertheless, Steigmann-Gall continues, “fascism had a very real presence in the U.S.A., comparable to that on continental Europe.” He cites no less mainstream an organization than the American Legion, whose “National Commander” Alvin Owsley proclaimed in 1922, “the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States.”
• The alien narrative continues today in the work of National Review writers like Andrew McCarthy (“How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda”) and Lisa Schiffren (who argued that Obama’s parents could be secret Communists because “for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or ’60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics”). And it found its most potent expression in Donald Trump’s stubborn insistence that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

DN (talk) 19:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

ok, so how would you summarize that so that it's more readable? historians have understimated is a WP:weasel word . we should be more discrete and concrete in our writing.

Just say "trump is radical right because he's populist" or "a majority of trump supporters are radical right" or whatever conclusions you think can be drawn from the citation. Tonymetz 💬 21:24, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It's Perlstein's opinion, so I'm not sure weasel applies in this instance. See where it says..."Likewise, views that are properly attributed to a reliable source may use similar expressions". We aren't saying it in Wikivoice, and there are multiple opinions of this nature already in that section. Your suggested version, "trump is radical right because he's populist" isn't what Perlstein is saying here, so that would likely be an WP:OR violation. DN (talk) 21:34, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm just trying to move the decision forward. How would you summarize it? some historians overestimate is vague and hard to comprehend because it's effectively a double negative. Tonymetz 💬 21:42, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

You haven't yet explained what sort of ambiguity you are claiming exists. From Perstein's article in NYT, he mentions some of the other historians that "overestimate" and or "underestimate"in his view...Listing them would seem to have the opposite effect of summarization. This is also the second shortest inclusion in that entire section of scholarly opinions. DN (talk) 22:11, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It’s unclear , vague and doesn’t contribute to the article. Why is it there? Tonymetz 💬 16:02, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

It's been there in one form or another for years, and from what I can tell has never been called into question for lack of WEIGHT. Perlstein is considered a reputable source on conservative politics and the citation goes on to mention other notable sources that share this view. Here's a different publication that also touches on this.

• Writing in the New York Times in 2017, historian and journalist Rick Perlstein called Dr. Ribuffo foremost among a handful of historians to counter long-prevailing views in academia about the far right and its appeal. “Irascible, brilliant and deeply learned,” Perlstein wrote, “Ribuffo argued that America’s anti-liberal traditions were far more deeply rooted in the past, and far angrier than most historians would acknowledge, citing a long list of examples from ‘regional suspicions of various metropolitan centers and the snobs who lived there’ to ‘white racism institutionalized in slavery and segregation.’ ” WaPo 2019

You are entitled to your opinion, but personal incredulity is not a clear case for removal. In your edit summary you wrote "So Trumpism that got about 50% of the popular vote in 2 elections is Radical Right? What good is the concept then?" which does not point to contrary evidence, and in a way, corroborates what Perlstein is saying, that the radical right is more mainstream than many historians may have stated, in a section that is little more than notable opinions much like this one. DN (talk) 19:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

If the paragraph is claiming that Trumpism is synonymous with Radical Right, a lot more weight is needed . Is that what you are implying? That's a bold claim.

If the paragraph is claiming that Radical Right support for Trump is greater than otherwise claimed, move it to Trumpism . Why does it belong here?

Again, what about this paragraph helps distinguish and define Radical Right ? Why is it in "Populist Right". Take a break from wikisms and put yourself in the reader's shoes. Tonymetz 💬 20:19, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

It is not saying it is synonymous, it is saying that some historians have argued that far right has more influence than what other historians have claimed. What reason do we have for relegating any citations about Trump to the Trumpism article? Here is a proposed version that may be closer the summary you are looking for.

• The political success of Donald Trump prompted Rick Perlstein to argue that historians have underestimated the far right's ability to influence modern American right-wing populist movements.^[1] and have overestimated the more libertarian influence of William F. Buckley's limited government, free trade, free market intellectual conservatism, and the neoconservative pro-immigration and optimistic outlook of Ronald Reagan. A handful of historians, including Leo P. Ribuffo, have shared similar views.^[2]

"Take a break from wikisms and put yourself in the reader's shoes"

Please try to avoid making personal comments like this. DN (talk) 21:07, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

"overestimated the more libertarian influence of William F. Buckley's limited government, free trade, free market intellectual conservatism, and the neoconservative pro-immigration and optimistic outlook of Ronald Reagan" You have got to be kidding me. I do not live in the United States, but I have been reading about the country's politics for the last quarter-century. Who the heck argued that right-wing libertarianism and neoconservatism had mass appeal on the voting public? In decades of culture wars, when have the American voters rallied in support of free trade and free market policies? Per the main article on Protectionism in the United States, the main reasons for its relative popularity among voters is this: "A large majority of observational studies have found that voters' economic hardships influence their support of protectionism. This is corroborated by 2016 United States presidential election, in which Donald Trump was broadly supported in the Rust Belt.". Dimadick (talk) 05:13, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Dimadick According to RS I've seen, culture wars in the US began under the auspices of Buchanan and Gingrich. The ones arguing that libertarianism and neoconservatism had mass appeal were a lot of historians. Reagan seems to be a "go-to" example, as one of the most popular presidents in the country's history, but this is all off the top of my noggin, so I ask that you don't quote me on this. DN (talk) 05:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

i'm sorry about that I didn't mean offense. thanks for helping to work to improve clarity with the sample.

Why would you think that they opinion of a journalist, writing an op-ed for the New York Times challenging academic consensus, has weight for inclusion in this article? TFD (talk) 22:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

They removed an entire section that had been in the article for over a year. I'm not the one who changed it. Perlstein is also a historian, for your information. DN (talk) 22:15, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

He doesn't have a degree in history (he has a BA in journalism) and has never published in academic journals AFAIK. Basically, he's a journalist who writes books about history, which doesn't make him an expert.

Including non-experts can create problems with weight because by definition their opinions have no weight. And often, as in this case, they are not shared with experts. TFD (talk) 00:43, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

To quote both of these articles MOS:FIRST:

Radical right (United States):

In the politics of the United States, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards ultraconservatism, white nationalism, white supremacy, or other far-right ideologies in a hierarchical structure which is paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations.(diff)

Radical right (Europe)

In political science, the terms radical right, reactionary right, populist right, and hard right have been used to refer to the range of nationalist, right-wing and far-right political parties that have grown in support in Europe since the late 1970s.(diff)

Portions of these articles are evidently WP:SAMETYPEFORK; radical right refers to either a political preference in the US, or a term in Europe to refer to political parties. There are varying interpretations depending on the continent, but we should be merging these into a single cohesive article about the preference/term. The only reason we have this situation is because this page was disambiguated in 2015 (courtesy ping RJFF) due to the creation of the Europe topic, whereas a merger at the time would have made more sense.

I've created Draft:Radical right combining "Terminology" from the US page can be taken along with "Terminology and definition" from the Europe page, to give an example of what a page would look like. It's only about 1,500 words (would be less once the lead is merged together), but would be much better than the dab landing page for such a topic. Following that, the titles could be naturally disambiguated (as there would be a primary topic so can be moved to be consistent which similar topics:

• Radical right (United States) → Radical right in the United States
• Radical right (Europe) → Radical right in Europe

Thanks for reading, CNC (talk) 15:01, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

The term radical right was coined in the 1950s to describe post-war phenonomena such as the John Birch Society and McCarthyism and was later applied to earlier American political movements. In Europe, the term extreme right (originally right-wing extremist) was adopted in the 1970s as one of the categories of political parties, the others being conservative, Christian democratic, liberal, green, social democratic and communist.

Various writers however have used these and other terms interchangeablely, often with shades of meaning. "Radical right (Europe)" is really a fork of Far-right politics, because it has the same meaning, and should be merged.

Incidentally, European usage is misleading, because European politics is not studied in isolation. TFD (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your insight, I'm aware from briefly reading the topic that the term originates from the US. From the academic literature regarding UK radical right that I just knocked up, it's very much considered as a subset of far-right politics granted (the main distinction being that far-right can be categorised into "right-wing extremism" and "radical right".) However the far-right article is too big at 13K words, hence there are subtopics like these, if anything it's in need or further spitting. CNC (talk) 18:43, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

The section on the UK starts, "In the academic journal Western European Politics published in 2024, Martin categorises UK radical right parties as including the British National Party, UK Independence Party, and Reform UK (formerly the Brexit Party), based on "traditional, authoritarian, and nationalist" characteristics." IOW, it merely means parties to the right of the Conservative Party, which has the same meaning as extreme right mentioned as I mentioned above. TFD (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Martin quite clearly defines the categorisation in the footnotes to avoid ambiguity. The labelling of extreme right is otherwise very much rejected by academics, at least the sources I've used so far on the topic. I've therefore added an opening sentence based on the weight of sourcing. Those sources were all present, I had just neglected to add that detail. CNC (talk) 11:55, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

The terminology is not consistent or constant. Extreme right and far right can both mean everything to the right of mainstream parties. Extreme right, far right and radical right can also mean the most right-wing groups.

There is even less agreement on terminology for groups that stand between the most right-wing parties and mainstream ones.

There is also a convergence on the right so that mainstream right-wing parties now work alongside neo-Fascists. TFD (talk) 13:17, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree the terminology is inconsistent, this is why I'm proposing creating a primary topic that covers the scope of this. CNC (talk) 13:37, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

The terminology is discussed at Far-right politics#Terminology.

The Hope and Hate article, which was among those you linked to says, "The historians David Renton and Neil Davidson essentially divide the right of the political spectrum into conservatives, the non-fascist far-right, and fascism. That seems like the most objective distinction.

BTW, all the groups in the non-fascist far right could be considered right-wing populist.

My concern is that we could have multiple articles that duplicate the same information.

Also, unlike the US, European politics is not considered distinct from the rest of the world. TFD (talk) 15:01, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd support this, as currently there is no article talking about the radical right that isn't location-specific, and some parts of each of the articles are definitely not entirely relevant to their respective locations. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 00:22, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I would instead support renaming both of these articles to "Far-right politics in the United States" and "Far-right politics in Europe" respectively. Radical right is really just a synonym of far-right. — EarthDude (Talk) 21:45, 1 March 2026 (UTC)