Contesting the Far Right

Contesting the Far Right:
A Psychoanalytic and Feminist Critical Theory Approach
(Columbia University Press, New Directions in Critical Theory, 2024)

Content: Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift. Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques.

Books symposia:
1. Pacific American Philosophical Association (APA) division meeting (online), April, 2026 2. Radical Philosophy Association Conference (RPA), Salt Lake City, UT, October 2024 3. American Political Science Association (APSA), Philadelphia, PA, September 2024

Review Symposia (journal publication): New Political Science (forthcoming in 2026) Reviewed in (journals): 1. Critical Horizons (forthcoming) 2. The Review of Politics (July 2025) 3. Contemporary Political Theory (April 2025) 4. Perspectives on Politics (vol. 23, March 2025), 368-369 5. Emancipations (vol. 4, Iss. 1, March 2025) 6. Neue Politische Literatur (New Political Literature) (February 5, 2025) 7. Choice (October 24, 2024)
Media interview at Yeah Nah Pasaran! Fascism & the Far-right radio station, Australia, Melbourne, in March 2024. Click here to listen to podcast
Blog Post “Claudia Leeb on Contesting the Far Right,” Columbia University Press (October 2024).
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