Anglospherics

We know the radical right when we see it. Across countries, idioms, and organizational forms, it returns to a familiar cluster of commitments: an organic and essentialized view of the nation, a deep suspicion of pluralism, a taste for hierarchy dressed up as common sense or natural order, and a determination to redraw the boundaries of belonging so that some citizens are always less secure, less legitimate, and less equal than others.

What links a polished electoral machine, a digital grievance ecosystem, and a violent extremist fringe? The fact that they do not share a handbook, but definitely share a political direction. The radical right does not simply propose a tougher immigration policy, a more punitive criminal code, or a more culturally conservative school curriculum. It is not merely offering a policy correction within democratic life. It is advancing a different moral order. Roger Griffin’s definition of palingenetic ultranationalism, first proposed in his 1991 book The Nature of Fascism, captures something essential: The dream of national rebirth is never only rhetorical. It is a project of reconstruction in which the political community is purified, enemies are named, and equal citizenship becomes conditional. Viktor Orbán’s embrace of the so-called illiberal state was not just a constitutional preference; it was an assertion that equality and pluralism should give way to a morally and ethnically homogeneous political community. And when Donald Trump speaks of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the nation, he isn’t simply escalating campaign rhetoric; he is recasting membership itself in quasi-organic terms, as though the polity were a body to be cleansed rather than a civic compact to be shared.

To be racist is to see peoples of color as eternal immigrants. In 2019, President Trump told four congresswomen of color—three of whom were born in the United States—to “go back” to the “corrupt” and “crime-infested” countries they “originally came from.” Trump’s own paternal grandfather, Friedrich, originally came from Germany in 1885. He traveled back home in 1901 and met his wife, Elisabeth. They moved to the United States together in 1902 and returned to Germany in 1904. They came back to the U.S. for good in 1905—Elisabeth pregnant with Trump’s father, Fred. Trump’s mother, Mary Anne, immigrated from Scotland in 1930. Trump, a son of immigrants. To be racist is to see White people as eternal natives.

What other population could Camus have seen as new to Hérault in 1996, speaking another language, belonging to another culture, another history? White European immigrants. However, Camus melted the differences of these White European immigrants into the pot of White identity. He did not lament their presence in very old houses, walking down very old streets, speaking Spanish or Portuguese or Dutch or English.

Apparently, White immigrants do not signify that the country is changing. Apparently, Camus saw, in White people, those who belong in France—who France is for. Apparently, Camus saw, in Black and Brown peoples, those who do not belong in France—who France is not for.

Concerns about Iran’s activities in Latin America stretch back to the early 1990s, when U.S., Israeli and Argentine authorities blamed the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah for a pair of bombings in Buenos Aires.

The first bombing, in 1992, targeted the Israeli embassy in Argentina’s capital, killing 29 people and injuring 250 others. The second bombing, in 1994, targeted the headquarters of a Jewish community organization known as AMIA, killing 85 people and injuring more than 200 others.

In both cases, the evidence of Iranian and Hezbollah involvement was largely circumstantial. The 1992 bombing allegedly came as retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah leader named Abbas Musawi, and the 1994 bombing purportedly responded to Israel’s bombing of a Hezbollah training camp.

Compelling alternative theories suggested that agents of the Syrian government or Argentine neo-Nazis may have carried out the attacks. But American and Israeli authorities helped their Argentine counterparts build up the Iran theory, even though some officials acknowledged in diplomatic cables that the evidence was thin and the Argentine investigation shoddy.

Painting Iran as a rogue nation sponsoring terrorist attacks in the U.S. backyard bolstered arguments in favor of aggressively constraining the country’s military ambitions and nuclear program to ensure the United States and Israel could maintain the advantage against one of their primary global adversaries.