by Richard Seymour
Verso Books
10/29/2024, hardcover
SKU: 9781804294253
Liberal civilisation is in crisis - now is a time of monsters.
The rise of the new far right has left the world grappling with a profound misunderstanding. While the spotlight often shines on the actions of charismatic leaders such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the true peril lies elsewhere. Defeating these people will not stem the tide driving them forward. They are merely the embodiment of profound forces that are rarely understood. Propelled through the vast networks of social media and fueled by far-right influencers, enthralled by images of disaster and fantasies of doom, they have emerged from a reservoir of societal despair, fear, and isolation. Within this seething cauldron, we witness not only the surge of far-right political movements but also the sparks of individual and collective violence against perceived enemies, from 'lone wolf' killers to terrifying pogroms. Should a new fascism emerge, it will coalesce from these very elements. This is disaster nationalism.
Richard Seymour delves deep into this alarming development in world politics, dissecting its roots, its influencers, and the threats it poses. With meticulous analysis and compelling storytelling, Seymour offers a stark warning. The battle against disaster nationalism is not just political; it is a struggle for our collective soul and the future of civilization itself. Unless we understand the deeper forces propelling the far-right resurgence, we have little chance of stopping it.
Reviews:
"With astonishing global reach, and attention to simultaneous, interrelated degradations of information and climate ecologies and liberal-capitalist governance, Disaster Nationalism is the most comprehensive and insightful examination of the ascendancy of far-right politics across the contemporary world to date. A civically 'thick', politically capable fascist project may as yet be on hold, Seymour tells us, but its dark tribunes increasingly thrive in the interstices of our fragmented mediascape and apocalyptic social and planetary horizons. 'Incipient, or inchoate fascism, ' Seymour writes, is here. Even when the center holds, the drab, unkept promise of the electoral cycle is unlikely to defuse its convulsive appeal." -- Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Race and America's Long War
"One of the UK's foremost thinkers on the politics of climate breakdown and nature loss ... [Seymour] effortlessly joins the dots between environmental collapse, the rise of the far right and the role our desires play in a crumbling world." -- Maya Goodfellow, Guardian
"Richly psychoanalytic and rigorous, Richard Seymour's Disaster Nationalism is a crucial intervention into discourse on contemporary forces of reaction. Seymour forces us to think beyond tired narratives accounting for the far right's appeal. Disaster Nationalism is dazzling, if devastating, further proof that Seymour is an intellectual force invaluable to leftist thought." -- Natasha Lennard, author Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life
About the Author:
Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and the author of numerous books about politics including Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics and The Twittering Machine. His writing appears in the The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, Prospect, Jacobin, and innumerable other places including his own Patreon. He is an editor at Salvagemagazine.