America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators
Why do Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and much of the far Right so explicitly admire the murderous and incompetent Russian dictator Vladimir Putin? Why is Ron DeSantis drawing from Victor Orbán's illiberal politics for his own policies as governor of Florida--a single American state that has more than twice the population of Orbán's entire nation, Hungary?
In America Last, Jacob Heilbrunn, a highly respected observer of the American Right, demonstrates that the infatuation of American conservatives with foreign dictators--though a striking and seemingly inexplicable fact of our current moment--is not a new phenomenon. It dates to the First World War, when some conservatives, enthralled with Kaiser Wilhelm II, openly rooted for him to defeat the forces of democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s, this affinity became even more pronounced as Hitler and Mussolini attracted a variety of American admirers. Throughout the Cold War, the Right evinced a fondness for autocrats such as Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, while some conservatives wrote apologias for the Third Reich and for apartheid South Africa. The habit of mind is not really about foreign policy, however. As Heilbrunn argues, the Right is drawn to what it perceives as the impressive strength of foreign dictators, precisely because it sees them as models of how to fight against liberalism and progressivism domestically.
America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion--or what one might call the "illiberal imagination"--that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is an unignorable tradition within modern American conservatism--and what it means for us today.
In America Last, Jacob Heilbrunn, a highly respected observer of the American Right, demonstrates that the infatuation of American conservatives with foreign dictators--though a striking and seemingly inexplicable fact of our current moment--is not a new phenomenon. It dates to the First World War, when some conservatives, enthralled with Kaiser Wilhelm II, openly rooted for him to defeat the forces of democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s, this affinity became even more pronounced as Hitler and Mussolini attracted a variety of American admirers. Throughout the Cold War, the Right evinced a fondness for autocrats such as Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, while some conservatives wrote apologias for the Third Reich and for apartheid South Africa. The habit of mind is not really about foreign policy, however. As Heilbrunn argues, the Right is drawn to what it perceives as the impressive strength of foreign dictators, precisely because it sees them as models of how to fight against liberalism and progressivism domestically.
America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion--or what one might call the "illiberal imagination"--that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is an unignorable tradition within modern American conservatism--and what it means for us today.
Book Details
- Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
- Publish Date: Feb 20th, 2024
- Pages: 264
- Language: English
- Dimensions: 9.06in - 6.06in - 1.02in - 0.97lb
- EAN: 9781324094661
- Categories: • American Government - Executive Branch• Modern - 20th Century - General• Political Ideologies - Conservatism & Liberalism
About the Author
Heilbrunn, Jacob: - Jacob Heilbrunn is the editor of the National Interest and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons and lives in Washington, DC.
Praise for this book
In America Last, Jacob Heilbrunn examines the convoluted line of thinking that draws so many on the right to the illiberalism of Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin. Heilbrunn brings to this task a talent for illuminating the dark side--and a deep understanding--of his subject acquired over decades of editing such publications as the New Republic, the National Interest, and the Los Angeles Times. In one respect, America Last is an extension of Heilbrunn's celebrated 2008 book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, but, more importantly, America Last reveals how a key wing of the conservative movement has become, in effect, anti-American.--Thomas Edsall, author of The Point of No Return
Jacob Heilbrunn's new book, America Last, is quite simply a must read. Heilbrunn shows that the dangerous love affairs between Donald Trump and the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are not just bizarre quirks of one man's personality but very much in keeping with a long and sorry tradition going back a century or more of mutual admiration between the American right and an array of foreign tyrants. This is history as revelation, and unfortunately it is all too relevant to understanding America's present-day politics.--Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker and co-author, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021
As we focus on the perilous state of American democracy, Jacob Heilbrunn provides a lucid and original examination of just how the right wing descended to its current antidemocratic depths. Combining a historian's mastery of the past with vivid storytelling, Heilbrunn traces how a small but ruthlessly determined group silenced the rational center of the Republican Party. Read Heilbrunn's sobering but urgently important book.--Kati Marton, author of Enemies of the People and The Chancellor
Though they love to wrap themselves in the flag and boast of their patriotism, the ugly truth is that American conservatives have long valorized, and even sought to emulate, dictators and autocrats abroad, from Mussolini to Pinochet down to Viktor Orban today. In this elegantly written history of the right's infatuation with the forces of illiberalism and foes of democracy, Jacob Heilbrunn helps us grasp the full dimensions of the threat today's conservatives, and the political party that represents them, pose to achieving a more decent, humane, and democratic United States.--Matthew Sitman, co-host of the podcast Know Your Enemy
Trumpism is much bigger, we now know, than Donald Trump himself. But how did the movement come into being? Who are its true founders? And where may it be headed next? Jacob Heilbrunn, our foremost chronicler of the New Right, has the answers--and they are as chilling as they are surprising. America Last is a tour de force of historical investigation written with the verve of a first-rate political thriller.--Sam Tanenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism
Jacob Heilbrunn is Washington's shrewdest and most perceptive neocon-trarian. He now trains his sight on the American Right's historical bromancing of foreign dictators, a deplorable pageant currently featuring their pin-up, Hungary's leader Viktor Orban, and his number one fanboy, Tucker Carlson. This is an important book, and a warning for what could lie ahead beginning on January 20, 2025.--Christopher Buckley, "No relation to the William F. Buckley, Jr mentioned on pages 218 and 220."