Preface well as the newer, more youth-focused online personalities mentioned prior, bring with them scads of loyal readers, listeners, and viewers who themselves go on to influence the minds and hearts of their friends, families, and co-workers in the conversations they have related to the angst felt in their own lives. Of these who choose to become passionately politically active, most are doing so for noble reasons and in good faith. But they are acting on incomplete information that can lead to nationalism and fascism, as this book will demonstrate. They are numerous.
Certainly, it is the case that every political group has embarrassing elements that do not represent the whole. But in the case of right-libertarians and populist conservatives at large, something unique stands out about them. They claim at the outset to be in favor of revolutionary, antiestablishment ideas, but what they ultimately seem to fight for more often than not is the preservation of an economic system that oppresses them. This in effect aligns them fiscally with every other mainstream political group, despite their claims to the contrary. It is somewhere within this contradiction that I began to believe the answer to my question of how a revolutionary movement could behave like an oppressive one resided. "False consciousness, " in the Marxist vernacular, had enveloped these movements.
There also needs to be a clarification here regarding what I intend to do by using the term "false consciousness" throughout this work. Historically, the term has been used in different ways for different intents, and not every case of its use has been particularly provable or mindful of ideological bias. I have no interest in resurrecting a frivolously applied, unempirical understanding of the concept, nor do I wish to retread the prior, arguably pretentious, ground of Marx himself when he used false consciousness to claim validity in his (in this author's view) broad-brush concept of the lumpenproletariat-essentially his way of saying that those who did not want to follow his brand of revolution were simply too uninformed to see the objective truth that he and his fellows already knew. Such imprecise and ideologically driven applications of this idea of false consciousness are ultimately unhelpful and stand to only confound the conversation further. Therefore, my aim with using the term in the context of this book is to tether it to provable, empirical realities of misguided populism that manifest first as deliberate insurgencies into working-class populist spaces and then ultimately induce an organic process of self-delusion couched in neoliberal hegemonic perspectives. The entire middle section of the book is at least adjacently dedicated to this endeavor.
So, in short, yes, there is a direct connection, and not just happenstantial infiltration, between these revolutionary conservative movements and their more nationalistic and fascistic forms. But it is important to note that the main thesis of the book is about how limited perspectives, due to intersectional privilege in certain working-class demographics, can unwittingly lend themselves to exploitation for the purposes of perpetuating class divides and wealth inequality. The fact that Alt-Right screeds have become normalized in conservative circles as a result of this process is important, but while it initially got me interested in this project, it is no longer the main focus. Trump, the Alt-Right, and other extremist right-wing manifestations finding footing in the present political climate is an externality of a much deeper and troubling problem. That problem is systemic, transcends this one snapshot of time, and stands to haunt xv Preface us indefinitely if we do not face the economic and ideological realities that brought us here.
If there is any silver lining to be found at all in this complicated quagmire, it is the knowledge that through inquiries like this one, we might just determine how to truly jettison our extremist proclivities, see through the fog, and embrace working-class solidarity. That prospect, that hope, is ultimately why this book exists.

nexusstc/Privileged Populists: Populism in the Conservative and Libertarian Working Class/db67004e1751909b3512e265a40dd318.epub

lgli/Privileged Populists_ Populism in the Conservative and Libertarian Working Class - Micah J. Fleck.epub

lgrsnf/Privileged Populists_ Populism in the Conservative and Libertarian Working Class - Micah J. Fleck.epub

zlib/Society, Politics & Philosophy/Government & Politics/Micah J. Fleck/Privileged Populists. Populism in the Conservative and Libertarian Working Class_22345645.epub

Fleck, Micah J.

I.B. Tauris; Bloomsbury

I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.

Taylor & Francis Ltd

Bloomsbury UK

I B TAURIS

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

First edition, London [England, 2021

1, 20220210

PS, 2022

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Counter-revolution has long been a tool of propagandists to redirect populist movements from achieving actual liberation for themselves. But what happens when counter-revolutionaries begin to believe their own claims of genuine revolution? What leads to such a phenomenon? And how big a role does mainstream political ideology and policy play in the mass ignorance and revisionism that has now allowed nationalism to influence national elections?
Privileged Populists sets out to answer these questions while aiming to understand the organic emergence of anti-political populism within the context of late-stage capitalism in the West. This book analyses how these elements inform and validate each other as means of appealing to the growing sense of cultural angst and economic unrest within the conservative working class-and unwittingly giving undue credence to some of the most extreme right-wing ideological claims in the process. What results is a journey through the history of revolutionary thought (and how that history has been distorted over time), as well as an anthropological investigation of populism itself as a naturally occurring logic within groups-and how it can be exploited in the absence of substantive mainstream solutions to present-day economic crises.
Political Economy,Political Ideologies,Political Science,Conservatism & Liberalism,Libertarianism,General

"Counter-revolution has long been a tool of propagandists to redirect populist movements from achieving actual liberation for themselves. But what happens when counter-revolutionaries begin to believe their own claims of genuine revolution? What leads to such a phenomenon? And how big a role does mainstream political ideology and policy play in the mass ignorance and revisionism that has now allowed nationalism to influence national elections? Privileged Populists sets out to answer these questions while aiming to understand the organic emergence of anti-political populism within the context of late-stage capitalism in the West. This book analyses how these elements inform and validate each other as means of appealing to the growing sense of cultural angst and economic unrest within the conservative working class-and unwittingly giving undue credence to some of the most extreme right-wing ideological claims in the process. What results is a journey through the history of revolutionary thought (and how that history has been distorted over time), as well as an anthropological investigation of populism itself as a naturally occurring logic within groups-and how it can be exploited in the absence of substantive mainstream solutions to present-day economic crises"-- Provided by publisher

Counter-revolution has long been a tool of propagandists to redirect populist movements from achieving actual liberation for themselves. But what happens when counter-revolutionaries begin to believe their own claims of genuine revolution? What leads to such a phenomenon? And how big a role does mainstream political ideology and policy play in the mass ignorance and revisionism that has now allowed nationalism to influence national elections? The Privileged Revolutionaries sets out to answer these questions while aiming to understand the organic emergence of anti-political populism within the context of late-stage capitalism in the West. This book analyses how these elements inform and validate each other as means of appealing to the growing sense of cultural angst and economic unrest within the conservative working class-and unwittingly giving undue credence to some of the most extreme right-wing ideological claims in the process. What results is a journey through the history of revolutionary thought (and how that history has been distorted over time), as well as an anthropological investigation of populism itself as a naturally occurring logic within groups-and how it can be exploited in the absence of substantive mainstream solutions to present-day economic crises

2022-08-16