The Party of Fear

David Bennett presents a ground-breaking historical analysis of the forces shaping nativist and counter-subversive activity in America from colonial times to the present. He demonstrates that in this nation of immigrants the American Right did not emerge from postfeudal parties of privilege or from the social chaos that bred a Hitler or Mussolini in Europe. It arose instead in antialien movements, repeatedly fueled by the burning desire to answer the question, "Who are the real Americans?"

Beginning with the Know-Nothings and the American Protective Association of the nineteenth century, through the Red Scare of 1919 and the Ku Klux Klan of the twenties, to the Coughlin movement of the thirties, McCarthyism and the Birch Society in postwar America and, finally, the neofascists and New Right of the eighties, Bennett impartially views the concerns of right-wing movements from the perspective of their own fears and anxieties. He shows in a panoramic way how right-wing movements in this country evolved from movements against "un-American" peoples to movements against ideas that are considered by some to be alien and un-American.

Bennett examines today's religious Right and political "hard right" -- the worlds of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, and their colleagues. This new political force, which arose out of the upheavals of the sixties and the disappointments of the seventies, differs from earlier ones in that the target is no longer foreign influences but perceived evils within our own society. Bennett concludes this important book by suggesting that the political extremism of the Right will remain a powerful force in American life.