How the Early 1990s Shaped Modern American Neofascism: Reviewing John Ganz: "When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, & How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s"
Technological progress, economic disillusionment, and the rise of paleoconservatism and neofascism: how American conservatism went from embracing the promise of prosperity and—at least theoretically—equal opportunity to today’s darker political reality in which it seeks leaders who will deliver pain to its perceived enemies, foreign and especially domestic…
Since 1870 technological progress has doubled human wealth every generation, promising unparalleled prosperity and yet failing to deliver. From the Luddite protests of the stockingers of the English Midlands in 1812 to today’s neofascist movement, the reaction to this broken promise of general prosperity has been a constant of modenr political life. Now comes John Ganz with his new book, When the Clock Broke, on how the latest version of this story took its sinister shape in the early 1990s. From David Duke’s alarming gubernatorial run to Pat Buchanan’s inflammatory presidential campaign, accompanied the hierarchical ravings of Samuel Francis and Joseph Sobran,
Ganz traces the rise of a new conservative ideology that rejected racial equality, equality of opportunity, and, indeed, the entire American dream. Ganz offers a crucial lens for understanding how we got here—and where we need to fear we might be headed.
How did we get from Reagan’s “Morning in America” conservativism to the conservatism of the Mob and the Race, anyway?