The great strength of World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order by Rita Abrahamsen, Jean-François Drolet, Michael C. Williams, Srdjan Vucetic, Karin Narita, and Alexandra Gheciu lies in its insistence that the contemporary right should be taken seriously rather than dismissed out of hand. As the authors note, the study of the Right in general is “complicated by mutual suspicion between the contemporary academy and conservative movements.” Even if most academics might not be predisposed to like right-wing parties and ideas, maintaining this mutual suspicion seems a poor strategy given the reality of a second Trump presidency and the necessity of understanding a Right that seems increasingly dominant across the globe.

The book focuses on what the authors identify as the radical right, distinguishing it from the “extreme right” and fascism. The extreme right, they contend, generally refers to “revolutionary movements that reject liberal democratic institutions and tend to embrace violence,” while the radical right “accepts democracy but is anti-liberal or illiberal in its worldview and transformative ambitions.” This distinction is important, as it implies that the radical right tends to accept the importance of institutional means to attain and maintain power. In contrast, contemporary neofascist organizations and movements such as the Proud Boys, CasaPound, and Golden Dawn fall under the extreme right. Meanwhile, Lega Nord, Fidesz, the Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) — and perhaps most significant, Trumpism — are all part of a much larger and more influential radical right.

As Abrahamsen and her coauthors are at pains to clarify, the radical right cannot be reduced to a reappearance of historical fascism. In their view, the first wave of fascist movements that appeared in Europe from the 1920s were committed to militarism, imperial conquest, and violent extraparliamentary action in ways that the radical right is not.