Abstract
The international system started to move from Kantian security governance to Hobbesian hyper-competitiveness after 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, followed by the Iraqi intervention of 2003 and challenges to the status quo of the international system from revisionist powers. The world we entered after is more securitized and dominated by cultures of fear and uncertainty. Besides, the present international political and security environment has been strongly influenced by various anti-establishment movements, and the increasingly powerful New Right movement became more visible in the 2010s with the anti-migration movement in Europe, the Brexit process (UK), and Trumpism (U.S.). These populist waves often feed each other and ally with revisionist powers in their common strategic goal to contend general principles of the existing system. Conspiracy theories perfectly fit with the strategic ambitions of revisionist powers that are interested in changing the status quo and the Russian interference in US elections on behalf of the Trumpist movement has been widely discussed. This study focuses on strategic narratives and political discourse analysis of US pro-Trump organizations and the Russian Federation.
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Notes
- 1.
Culture wars refer to conflicts that rely on values, beliefs, morality and lifestyle, which has become a central issue for the New Right movement. They identify themselves as defenders of traditional values, by rejecting multiculturalism, gender rights, homosexuality, abortions, climate change and supporting capital punishment, racial and national prejudgments, the right to bear arms that they identify as natural rights to mankind. Culture wars between conservative and liberals have polarized the Western societies in the twenty-first century (ECPS, 2023).
- 2.
Even though the term “base” is common in American political vernacular, the “Base” for the Trumpist movement has a symbolic value to identify the “true believers “of his cult of personality, which has given close to divine status to their leader. During his presidential election campaign in Iowa, Trump stated: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?” (Dwyer, 2016).
- 3.
Pat Buchanan is a conservative author who opposes multiculturalism and abortion and supports isolationism in foreign policy. He set his candidacy for the US presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 from the Republican Party. In 2000, he represented the Reform Party.
- 4.
QAnon conspiracy engages US Democratic Party politicians, Hollywood actors, liberal business tycoons, and medical experts as members of the cabal. The conspiracy emerged in 2017 in US alternative right circles and motivated its followers to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
- 5.
The Kalergi plan (after Austrian pan-European philosopher Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi) claims a plot to mix white Europeans with other races. The Great Replacement emerged under the influence of French novelist Renaud Camus and claims that white Europeans will be replaced through mass migration, demographic growth, and a drop in the birth rate.
- 6.
According to the Oxford Dictionaries (2021), post-truth describes the situation “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”.
- 7.
Even though in his Munich speech, Putin (2007) said: “I am convinced that the only mechanism that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the Charter of the United Nations.”
- 8.
Sceptical perceptions towards international agreements and institutions characterize both conservative camps - neoconservatives and the New Right. Trump has threatened to dissolve NATO and withdraw the U.S. from Paris Climate Agreement, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear deal, UNESCO, UN Human Rights Council among multiple other agreements, but already the Bush administration decided to leave the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and International Criminal Court.
- 9.
Max Shachtman once associated with Trotskyism was an American Marxist theorist who criticized Stalinism as an imperialistic ideology and opposed US withdrawal from the Vietnam War. From major figures in the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol was related to Trotskyism, but several others, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Midge Decter had also leftist views in their student days (King, 2004, 251).
- 10.
Russell Kirk and his book of 1953 “The Conservative Mind” has influenced the US New Right Movement, where the most influential figure has been Steve Bannon, former executive chairman of alternative media network Breitbart News Network who became a Chief Strategist for the Trump administration in 2017. Bannon quickly started to lose his influence, he was moved from the National Security Council in early April 2017, and he left the White House in August 2017 shortly after the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally. However, despite some critical notes on the administration, he continued to support Trump after his resignation.
- 11.
The fear of immigrant labor is typical to the New Right. In the same way, the fear of the cheap labor of Eastern Europe spread in certain sections of society led Great Britain to leave the European Union following the Brexit referendum.
- 12.
Jared Kushner, husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, became in 2017 an influential Senior Adviser to President Trump.
- 13.
In the Congressional midterm elections of 2022, many influential anti-Trump GOP representatives (e.g., Liz Cheney) who supported the impeachment of Trump after the January 6 riots, lost their seats in the Congress.
- 14.
The phrase “new Cold War” can be often found in the Western academic terminology. For example, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson claimed: “And we've now forgotten so much of that history that we don't realize that Cold War II began some time ago,” (Swatminanhan & Kelley, 2022).
- 15.
Historically, “Novorossiya” refers to a large swath of territory conquered by the Russian Empire from the Ottoman Empire after the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774.
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Acknowledgements
This chapter is supported by the Vabamu Research Fellowship grant at Stanford University, “Strategic Imagination in Psychological Warfare: New Techniques to Analyze the Impact of Strategic Narratives Produced by Russia, China, and the United States” (2023) and the PARROT program under the project “The effects of the war in Ukraine on the political decision-making and strategic narratives in Estonia, France and the European Union” (2023-2024). Any opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of the funding organizations. The author thanks Noel Foster, Larry Diamond, and Eric Shiraev for their contribution.
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Mölder, H. (2023). War of Narratives and Revisionist Challenge—The Evolving Strategic Partnership Between the New Right Movement in the United States and the Russian Federation. In: Mölder, H., Voinea, C.F., Sazonov, V. (eds) Producing Cultural Change in Political Communities. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43440-2_13
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