Roads to Dominion

The book opens with the immediate aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, when the anticommunist policies of the United States government encouraged the growth of right-wing movements. Continuing through the 1960s and beyond, chapters examine the influence of right-wing groups within the Republican Party and the rise of white supremacist groups in response to the gains of the civil rights movement. We see the transformation of the neoconservatives, from a small band of Cold War liberal intellectuals into a bastion of support for Reagan era foreign policy. The book traces the development of the Christian Right, from its early activity during the Cold War period straight through to its heyday as a powerful grassroots movement during the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the book, Diamondexplains the Right's fifty-year quest for power. She shows how we can understand and even predict the Right's influence on day-to-day policymaking in the United States by observing some consistent patterns in the Right's relationships with political elites and government agencies. In some predictable ways, the Right engages in both conflict and collaboration with state institutions.

How did the American right wing, which began as a small clique of post-World War II conservative intellectuals, transform into well-heeled, grassroots movements representing millions of ordinary citizens? Providing insight into today's headlines, Roads to Dominion answers this question with a compelling and thorough look at the broad range of right-wing movements in this country. Based on research that draws extensively from primary source literature, Sara Diamond traces the development of four types of right-wing movements over the past 50 years—the anticommunist conservative movement, the racist Right, the Christian Right, and the neoconservatives—and provides an astute historical analysis of each. Maintaining a nonjudgmental tone throughout the book, she explores these movements' roles within the political process and examines their relationships with administrations in power.

The book opens with the immediate aftermath of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, when the anticommunist policies of the United States government encouraged the growth of right-wing movements. Continuing through the 1960s and beyond, chapters examine the influence of right-wing groups within the Republican Party and the rise of white supremacist groups in response to the gains of the civil rights movement. We see the transformation of the neoconservatives, from a small band of Cold War liberal intellectuals into a bastion of support for Reagan era foreign policy. The book traces the development of the Christian Right, from its early activity during the Cold War period straight through to its heyday as a powerful grassroots movement during the 1980s and 1990s. Throughout the book, Diamond explains the Right's fifty-year quest for power. She shows how we can understand and even predict the Right's influence on day-to-day policymaking in the United States by observing some consistent patterns in the Right's relationships with political elites and government agencies. In some predictable ways, the Right engages in both conflict and collaboration with state institutions.

Publishers Weekly

While there have been plenty of books written about the left, scholars have haven't paid anywhere near the same attention to the American right. This book, one of the most sweeping studies of its kind goes a long way toward rectifying the imbalance by delineating the currents of conservative thought from early in the century to today and identifying the groupsfrom the Ku Klux Klan to contemporary paleo-and neo-conservatives, libertarians, and the Christian right (though, perhaps strangely, not the NRA)that espouse them. Rather than emphasize such groups' extremism, as the media often does, Diamond makes clear their links to mainstream thought and to the political and business interests that sustain them. She makes dozens of crucial connections, showing how members of the Christian right carried out covert activities for the Reagan administration and how figures such as direct-mail wizard Richard Viguerywhose computerized voting lists have helped Republicans win many Congressional seatsmaintain ties to organizations further to the right. In passing, Diamond shows how social theory has failed to account for right-wing movements, but her analysis remains geared to general readers. While her approach may make such groups as the John Birch Society appear more anodyne than liberals would wish, it is both balanced and scholarly: it's the aggregate that is the most alarming. This book should prove a touchstone of future discussion about the right, which is more powerful today than at any time since the 1920s. (Nov.)

Sara Diamond, PhD, a leading authority on right-wing movements in the United States, holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of California. She is the author of Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States; Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right; and Facing the Wrath: Confronting the Right in Dangerous Times. She lives in Berkeley, California.