Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain. Sara B. Hobolt and James Tilley. Oxford University Press. 2026.

Issue-based identities

What are issue-based identities and when do they emerge? Drawing on social psychology, especially social identity theory Tribal Politics introduces a framework for understanding how people come to define themselves through shared opinions on divisive issues. Moving beyond traditional political identities tied to class or party, we explain how new identities emerge around specific issues under the right conditions.

Most issues do not lead to the emergence of new political identities, but three key conditions make such an outcome more likely: issue contestation, in which conflict is clear, salient and binary, intensifying group boundaries; issue expression, in which individuals engage in behaviours like voting that reinforce their identity and commitment to a group; and issue alignment, in which the issue cuts across traditional party lines, allowing new identities to emerge outside the existing partisan structure. These conditions create a context in which opinions become group-based identities, with emotional attachment to an ingroup and hostility towards an outgroup.

How the EU rose to relevance

For decades, the EU was a low-salience issue among voters, despite being highly divisive within the upper echelons of political parties. The 2016 membership referendum changed this profoundly, because it fulfilled all three conditions: a binary choice, forced expression via voting and cross-party division. It transformed lightly held issue opinions about EU integration into new, strongly held political identities: Leavers and Remainers.

The referendum transformed lightly held issue opinions about EU integration into new, strongly held political identities: Leavers and Remainers.

The process of withdrawal, marked by intense political conflict, legal battles and parliamentary gridlock, further entrenched these divisions. As The Economist noted in the summer of 2019: “Three years after the vote, Britain has been driven slightly crackers by Brexit …. The past three years are the story of how these attitudes towards Europe – agnostic, unemotional, and in many cases only recently formed – hardened into Britain’s principal social division”.

From 2017 to 2020, three-quarters of the public identified as either a Leaver or Remainer. Even by 2025, nearly 60 per cent still held one of these identities. Moreover, these identities were not just proxies for social background. While demographic characteristics, such as education and age, were weakly correlated with EU attitudes and referendum vote, it was the act of voting that created Brexit identities. Remainers and Leavers were both children of the referendum.

Entrenched Leavers and Remainers

Disagreement is at the heart of democratic politics, so we should be sanguine about divided opinions on an issue. That sanguinity is harder to maintain when opinions become tribal political identities, however. As Seymour Martin Lipset noted in Political Man: “Inherent in all democratic systems is the constant threat that the group conflicts which are democracy’s lifeblood may solidify to the point where they threaten to disintegrate society.” And we show in this book that while Brexit identities might not have led to the disintegration of society, they have had profound consequences for political behaviour and social cohesion. One such consequence is affective polarisation between the two Brexit camps – an emotional division between groups, marked by strong ingroup loyalty and outgroup hostility.

People interpreted events like changes to mortgage costs or household bills through the lens of their Brexit identity. Most troublingly, these identities shaped perceptions of democratic legitimacy.

We show how this has extended to behaviour: people stereotyped opponents, avoided social contact with the other side and even discriminated against members of their rival tribe. Conflict over Brexit became embedded in social life. Issue-based identities also distorted perceptions of reality. Leavers and Remainers disagreed not only on Brexit’s outcomes but also on who was to blame for economic and political developments. People interpreted events like changes to mortgage costs or household bills through the lens of their Brexit identity. Most troublingly, these identities shaped perceptions of democratic legitimacy. When asked years after the vote whether “the decision to leave was based on a fair democratic process’” a clear majority of Remainers have consistently said that the process was unfair.

Tribal Politics shows that issue-based identities are not merely expressions of opinion, but powerful social forces that reshape how people see the world, each other and democratic life. The Brexit case demonstrates how a single political event can generate lasting divisions within families, workplaces, neighbourhoods and the country at large. It also underscores the need to understand issue-based identities as not a by-product of political conflict, but as a central mechanism through which modern democracies are being reshaped, sometimes in ways that challenge cohesion, tolerance and democratic resilience.

This is an extract from the conclusion to Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain by Sara B. Hobolt and James Tilley. Copyright Oxford University Press 2026 © reprinted here by permission.

Note: This extract gives the views of the authors and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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How music brings us together

When you’re a successful musician, it isn’t the songs that typically pay the bills. It’s the touring. The art matters. But ticket sales and merchandise are the lifeblood of the industry. That’s why the music business is organised almost entirely around getting listeners to become fans and fans to become concertgoers.

As craven as that may sound, there’s an aspect to all this profit-seeking that’s actually healthy for society. Coming together around a shared interest or emotion has a unique way of binding people, even if only temporarily, to a shared identity. Give them a beat to dance to or a feeling to vibe with, and studies show their brainwaves literally start moving in sync.

Collective chemistry

This is instructive for movement organisers trying to turn citizens into supporters and supporters into genuine advocates. (In fact, there’s so much that movements can learn from the music industry about building fan bases that we wrote a whole book about it.) And it all goes back to a concept observed more than a century ago by French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who coined the term “collective effervescence” to describe the energy produced when people feel connected to something bigger than themselves.

Émile Durkheim coined the term ‘collective effervescence’ to describe the energy produced when people feel connected to something bigger than themselves.

Durkheim was writing about the atmosphere of religious rituals when he described the phenomenon. But it’s observable in all kinds of places: concerts, sporting events, political rallies, street protests. The results aren’t always positive for society; the sense of community can bring people peace or inspire them to take up pitchforks. Whatever the intention or outcome, emotions get heightened, the air turns electric, and both the crowd and its orchestrators can sense it. It’s precisely this feeling that keeps in-person gatherings vital even in our digital age.

While the goal included educating concertgoers on issues in their communities and encouraging on-site activism, the real promise of these efforts is in the opportunity to kickstart activism that continues long after the show is over.

Once the crowd disperses, however, it’s tricky to maintain momentum. In music, here’s where the merch plays a vital role. Yes, there are huge margins on band t-shirts and other concert memorabilia, and that’s the main reason why the music industry is focused on these product sales. But if ongoing support from the participants in a live event is what you’re after, any memento from the occasion, whether you sell it or give it away, holds special value.

Durkheim put it this way in 1912: “Without symbols, social sentiments could have only a precarious existence. … But if the movements by which these sentiments are expressed are connected with something that endures, the sentiments themselves become more durable.”

Turning energy into action

The team at Planet Reimagined, an organisation co-founded by Adam to unite climate research and action, has been testing this theory for the past two years. They have been inviting local advocacy organisations to set up tables at concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, including AJR and Tyler Childers shows in the US, Tame Impala shows in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Billie Eilish shows the UK. During select stops on Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour, we averaged more than 1,000 fan actions each night, including getting people to sign petitions, write letters to elected officials, and volunteer for upcoming events. Their efforts strengthened campaigns to support public-transit projects in Atlanta, protect the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and delay approvals for a new gas plant in Scotland, among other local initiatives. While the goal included educating concertgoers on issues in their communities and encouraging on-site activism, the real promise of these efforts is in the opportunity to kickstart activism that continues long after the show is over.

These test runs proved that the potential is certainly there. In fan surveys after the Billie Eilish and AJR shows, for example, 82 per cent of people who took part in the on-site efforts said they were interested in learning about more ways to make a difference in their communities. And, according to a Planet Reimagined report due to be published later this year, 80 per cent of organisations that partnered with us during shows by Renee Rap and Tyler Childers reported that fans had stayed engaged with them after the concert. This included through joining mailing lists, following on social media, or continuing to participate in campaigns.

Khali, a 21-year-old from Bristol, registered for a summer organising drive by Green New Deal Rising after encountering the group at The O2 arena during a Billie Eilish show. “I signed up on a whim,” she told Planet Reimagined. “I feel like I was so empowered.” A few months later, she was co-leading GNDR’s mobilising team and helping to coordinate more than 150 volunteers during a fall campaign. “I’ve joined a couple of new climate groups” since then, she said, “small ones in the community, to try and push more greenery out there.”

Driving sustained engagement

How can organisations help drive more of that type of sustained engagement? Here again we look to Durkheim, who wrote that when an emblem of an experience prompts memories of an event that generated collective effervescence, “it is as though the cause which excited them in the first place continued to act.”

Fan-building tactics from the music industry can be adapted by social movements to bring new supporters into the fold

But as we argue in our book, the emblem need not be anywhere near as pricey as a concert T-shirt. Planet Reimagined created postcards with a QR code linking people to voter registration instructions, talking points to use with friends and family on behalf of different causes, and information about local volunteer opportunities. And after each AJR show, fans who provided their email address at the arena received a thank-you note from Adam (the “A” in AJR) and from one of the local partners, who shared more ways for fans to get involved. These are just a few examples of low-cost, high-impact ways to keep people connected to a cause.

There are many other examples of how fan-building tactics from the music industry can be adapted by social movements to bring new supporters into the fold which we explore in Amplify. But perhaps the most valuable are the ones that produce sustained commitment to causes people care about.

Note: This essay gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Adam Met will speak at an LSE Festival event at 5.30pm on Thursday 18 June, The artist formerly known as climate change.

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Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction. Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar & Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven. Polity. 2025.

Is it possible to decolonise economics?

Universities in the UK and the EU embrace decolonisation, but simultaneously cooperate with a colonising regime that exterminates the people of Palestine. Cooperation takes inter alia place via the lucrative Horizon-projects of the EU. Protesting students are beaten up by the police – because someone in solidarity with Palestine is challenging the privilege to ignore genocide.

And that is partly why four authors – all self-proclaimed heterodox (or alternative compared to mainstream) economists, all “relatively early in our careers” (ix) – wrote a book, the aim of which is summed up by its title: Decolonizing Economics. While decolonisation has been discussed widely in the humanities and political science, in economics it hasn’t. The authors are therefore modest – being happy to “push the door a bit further to open a conversation” (ix), but not naive, being aware that they “are writing as a decolonization movement against occupation and apartheid in Palestine is being brutally repressed on the ground” (xi). The book is impressive: knowledgeable about the full history and content of economic science, while simultaneously applying political theory skilfully to vivisect economics-as-praxis. As such, the book is political economy at its best.

The history of the discipline would suggest that economists have no real interest in changing anything

Yet despite its bold criticisms, the book doesn’t explicitly draw the conclusion that seems blatant from each page: that economics, a discipline so fully integrated into racial capitalism, should be demolished. Such a call would then probably go unheard by the target, as “most economists will probably not read this book, or if they do, they will probably not make it this far, because the discipline is resistant to change” (214). But the history of the discipline would suggest that economists have no real interest in changing anything. In exchange for recruiting future capitalists and legitimising the status quo, business schools and economics departments are showered with money from multinationals, fossil fuel companies and banks. From the outset, one wonders how the authors are hopeful that changing the discipline in such a fundamental way is possible, or that economists would even be willing to entertain a conversation to that end.

Economics from Smith to Marx

The book consists of two parts. The first – titled Eurocentrism in economics – focuses on the genealogy of economics. The second focuses on possible routes towards betterment. Economics’ social role and function is best understood historically. From the end of the 18^th century, there was a functional need to understand the political-economic system that was clearly replacing feudalism: capitalism. Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772-1823) are the figureheads of this first phase of modern economics. In this period, economics was a genuine science, trying to address when, if and how markets functioned. After 1848, liberalism entered its conservative phase; now that the nobility was dethroned, workers needed to know their place. Economics followed suit, walling itself off from socialism. Marx (1818-1883), criticising and radicalising Smith and Ricardo, is anathema in economics departments; he simply isn’t mentioned. Economic science had its second coming in the so-called marginal revolution (around 1870), which mathematised economics, replaced (non-)producing classes with consuming individuals as the object of study, and represented “the economy” as an ahistorical constellation governed by laws not unlike those describing physics.

Whereas Marx and Engels insisted in the Communist Manifesto that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, economists saw neither history nor society. They only wanted to see individual choices and market-interactions. This could be maintained until it couldn’t; in the aftermath of the Great Crash of 1929. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) proposed that markets could not be studied in isolation; all markets were affected by aggregate demand, which was a function of wages, in turn determined by all markets jointly. This wage mechanism did not automatically equilibrate labour markets, or at least not without unemployment so massive, so chronic, and so devastating that it couldn’t be explained away as resulting from workers unwilling to accept the going wage.

From Keynesian to capitalist

Well into the 1960s Keynesian economics ran the show in economics departments. Economists certainly were not socialist, as Capital could keep their means of production and states should keep their colonies, but Keynesianism did theorise a systemic role for government that was to manage aggregate demand by public investment, wage coordination and social security. That is all in the past after a “discursive process in higher education, which involved purging Marxian, institutionalist and Keynesian economists from economics departments in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s” (19). The four authors add that “Today, economics is hierarchically structured to exclude alternative economic thought, often making the reproduction of Eurocentric thinking and colonial structures more covert”.

Today, economics is hierarchically structured to exclude alternative economic thought, often making the reproduction of Eurocentric thinking and colonial structures more covert.

In the 21st century, economics is more than ever “a ‘child of capitalism’, given that the economic interests of the capitalist class shaped the theories of political economy that developed in the elite universities” (25). There are some heterodox economists out there, but these fringe-figures are ignored by what is now called neoclassical economics, the defining feature of which is that one shall never question private ownership of the means of production.

Decolonisation or abolition?

Part two of Decolonizing Economics, proposes to change that by, among other things, strengthening heterodox economics, which “can help us better understand the structural relations of power that underpin all economic processes” (128). Decolonising is the main aim, and that differs from diversity and representation, as it challenges “the process that brought them [hierarchies] to existence” (131). The book ends with a list of concrete actions: only assigning open-source material, equitable student exchanges, using non-text and non-English sources, collaboration with students on an equal footing, committing to being an impetus for good. This is all commendable, but the list does not follow from the 200 pages preceding it. These are the kind of measures and pledges that universities, including economics departments, could implement. They do not contribute to “dismantling the power concentration in economics localized in the capitalist center” (25).

Ultimately, the authors’ proposal that meaningful change is possible from within the discipline, or from within the academy at all, rings hollow.

Ultimately, the authors’ proposal that meaningful change is possible from within the discipline, or from within the academy at all, rings hollow. They seem to have wanted to end their indictment on a constructive note, asking themselves “What can decolonization look like in such a context, beyond the option of abolition?” (208). The real answer – “nothing” – to that question is given on page 25, where the Boycott-Divestment-Sanction (BDS) Movement is called an important effort. Abandoning economics and pursuing a radical, action-driven politics like that of BDS seems the only way to achieve the decolonisation that the book espouses.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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The Technopolitics of Communication in Modern India: Paper Chains and Viral Phenomena. Pragya Dhital. Bloomsbury. 2025.

The Technopolitics of Communication in Modern India examines the intersections and dialogue between media, political communication, and identity formation in colonial and postcolonial India. Focusing on historically significant moments such as the Emergency, the 2014 general elections, and the Citizenship Amendment Act protests, Pragya Dhital argues that the media does not simply transmit political ideas. Instead, it actively shapes political identities and collectivities or “the people” and the “qaum” (an earlier articulation of the nation). The book develops the concept of “technopolitics”, drawing from Bruno Latour, Hannah Arendt, Karl Deutsch, Benedict Anderson, and Judith Butler, among others, but makes an original intervention both theoretically ambitious and densely academic.

The people and political communication

The book makes a strong argument against an essentialist understanding of political identities, wherein they are seen as fixed or natural. Dhital figures the “the people” and the “qaum” as collectivities continuously being formed and reformed through communicative practices. The media serve not merely as a neutral tool that transmits information, but rather as an “artefact” that articulates identity formation and collective action through political communication.

Dhital conceptualises the agency of media (including social media) as a relatively autonomous entity that can be understood through the Marxist scholar György Lukács’s work on fetishisation. It acquires a life of its own when placed in dialogue with broader political movements and communicative processes, showing how power operates through media to construct political identities. It should not be understood as an autonomous force that directly causes political change, Dhital contends. Rather, its political significance lies in how it mediates communicative processes and interacts with existing political movements. For example, social media-driven misinformation and disinformation reveal the capacity of these platforms to shape public perceptions and influence political outcomes.

Drawing on Bruno Latour, Dhital conceptualises power as a consequence rather than a cause of collective action (3). Political messages are transformed as they move across newspapers, journals, party manifestos, policy documents, laws, codes, speeches, and digital platforms, which Dhital treats as part of her archival research field. She also analyses the non-textual aspects of their production, like how they were disseminated and their interpretation in politically charged times like the Emergency, the 2014 elections, the anti-CAA protests, and COVID-19. Through this analysis, she showcases how “the people” respond to “speech acts” of voluble actors circulating across different media, and what manifests on the ground as a result.

Speech acts and their significance

Dhital examines the communication of two figures from distinct historical moments, Abul Kalam Azad (1888-1958) and Aziz Burney (1952- ). They are linked through their shared attempts to address the qaum (Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims) through print culture. Azad, editor of the original Al-Hilal (1912–1914), and Burney, former editor of Roznama Rashtriya Sahara and later founder of the self-published Azizul Hind, both sought to articulate a political Muslim public within multilingual South Asian contexts. But they produced markedly different effects.

Regarding Burney’s interventions, Dhital draws on Judith Butler’s notion of “impossible speech,” particularly forms of speech that fail to secure a coherent political subject or a stable audience. Dhital notes that Burney’s speech neither emanates “from a coherent subject nor [is] addressed to a particular audience” (73). This renders his apology to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (a right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation) and his appeals to the Muslim community in India to accept the Allahabad High Court’s verdict regarding the Ayodhya land title an “infelicitous speech act”, i.e. one that failed to produce its desired effect – in this case unified political response. Unlike Azad’s writings, which resonated across broader anti-colonial and national political imaginaries, Burney’s interventions expose the instability of the qaum as a unified political category.

Dhital demonstrates how political speech circulates across historical moments and acquires new meanings through repetition and reinterpretation

Language and the idea of the nation are intertwined, and when looking at Azad, Burney, Iqbal (1877-1938) and Mamadani (1879-1957), the competing articulations of the qaum reveals itself as an unstable, contested political identity. It is also telling how the author chooses editors who wrote in Urdu and attempted to speak to an Urdu-speaking qaum. Invoking Paul Brass in the first chapter, Dhital reminds us that there have been deliberate attempts to erase Urdu as a language in the censuses held from 1961 to 2011.

The qaum beyond the State

Dhital analyses multiple case studies of political speech: Abul Kalam Azad’s “fearless speech” (131) at Jama Masjid in 1947, Chandra Shekhar Azad Ravan (a Dalit activist)’s intervention at the same site in December 2019 during the anti-CAA protests, and the women-led sit-in (dharna) at Shaheen Bagh, New Delhi in 2019-2020. In so doing, she demonstrates how political speech circulates across historical moments and acquires new meanings through repetition and reinterpretation invoking a “post-sovereign articulation of the people” (19).

Such a phenomenon recalls Rancière’s concept of “literarity,” whereby words escape their assigned place, circulate among unexpected audiences, and include those who were previously excluded from the political discourse. Technopolitics here is not tied to a singular sovereign voice or a fixed political subject. Instead, the invocation of “the people” emerges through ongoing acts of mediation, citation, and collective remembrance in forming a sociopolitical community “beyond the agency of the state”. Dhital articulates political frames of communication as a process through which historical speech acts can be reinterpreted in new political contexts, disrupting fixed understandings of community, nation, and political belonging.

Dhital shifts attention away from the state and political spokesmen towards audiences and reader responses, demonstrating how the anti-Emergency public emerged through communicative interaction

Dhital’s analysis of the period of Emergency can be productively read alongside Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s conception of “the people” as a politically articulated rather than pre-existing social category. In the chapter on “Emergency Pedagogy,” Dhital examines the formation of a broad anti-Congress political movement during and around the Emergency, focusing on Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979) and L. K. Advani (1927- ), and the wider circulation and reception of their prison writings and political interventions. The chapter critiques essentialist and instrumentalist understandings of political identity. Simultaneously, it reveals the strategic deployment of a temporary collective political identity against authoritarian rule, with the backdrop of the Bangladeshi liberation war, recalling what may be understood as a form of “strategic essentialism”.

Importantly, Dhital shifts attention away from the state and political spokesmen towards audiences and reader responses, demonstrating how the anti-Emergency public emerged through communicative interaction rather than elite political representation alone. The eventual electoral defeat of the Congress in 1977, therefore, appears not simply as the result of elite opposition but as the outcome of a broader process that assembled “the people” through shared experiences of censorship, repression, and political dissent.

The qaum articulated by “the people”

Dhital’s conceptualisation of “the people” emerges not as a stable sociological referent but as a continuously re-authored political claim, oscillating between qaum as a moral-community signifier and “the people” as a democratic abstraction that often operates independently of the state’s agency. The examples Dhital explores make visible a recursive politics of articulation. Political figures do not merely represent “the people”; they actively produce their contours through speech acts that delimit inclusion and exclusion, belonging and excess, security and threat.

Political figures do not merely represent ‘the people’; they actively produce their contours through speech acts that delimit inclusion and exclusion, belonging and excess, security and threat.

The Emergency foregrounds the state’s monopolisation of the idiom of order; the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Amendment Act reorganise “the people” along documentary and theological lines of legibility. 2014 marked a shift towards stronger majoritarian politics fusing the idea of qaum with electoral sovereignty; and the protest conjunctures reopen “the people” as a contested category, fractured yet insistently re-assembled in public address. Dhital’s intervention, read through these episodic intensities, is to show that “the people” is never fixed. It is the unstable remainder of competing speech regimes wherein every invocation simultaneously consolidates and unsettles its meaning.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency. Terry M. Moe and William G. Howell. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Rise of the strongman, decline of democracy

The rise of populist and authoritarian leaders has prompted examination of how they navigate societal problems, in particular through centralising power within the executive office. Executive aggrandisement – when elected leaders legally dismantle or weaken checks and balances to concentrate more power within the executive branch – has increased globally, along with the crisis of democracy. Trajectory of Power examines these developments. It considers what has enabled a “strongman president” as Donald Trump builds on the cracks in the rattled administrative and political systems in the US.

As Bill Resh argued recently and Don Moynihan regularly discusses, rule of law and the administrative in the US have been under severe attack. Presidentialisation (ie, the increasing role of the executive in politics and policy processes) has reached a point where “it now threatens to substitute autocracy four our centuries-old system of self-government [in the US]” (12).

The origins of the administrative state

The book begins with an account of constitutionalism, the establishment and rise of the administrative state, and the norms and expectations about the president’s space for exercising executive power. This chapter discusses how the executive politics were set out both in legal terms and in normative ways. Chapter Two presents the “symmetric logic”: the executive needs the administrative state to implement policies and to provide order and welfare to society. At the same time, bureaucracy has been steadily expanding in size (eg, budget, personnel). Over time, the presidents downsized the ever-growing administrative state and centralised decision-making and policymaking authorities. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made the Executive Office of the President a central node in executive politics: the National Security Council created in 1947, the Domestic Council established in late 1970 by Nixon, Clinton’s National Economic Council in 1993, among others (57-59).

Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over regulatory agencies

At the same time, the autonomy of regulatory agencies has been undermined. Systematically employed by Nixon and other presidents, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs have institutionalised its authority over autonomous agencies (62-64). Most recently, Trump’s 2025 “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies” executive order demonstrated the rise of executive power over these agencies, which also has its origins in the backlash against the regulatory state.

When presidents reign supreme

In Chapter Three Howell and Moe trace the ideational and political origins of the asymmetric logic – “antagonism toward the administrative state and presidential power as the primary mean of retrenching the administrative state” (79), as the (Republican) presidents increasingly perceived the administrative state as the “domestic political enemy” (95-98). Building on this ideational account, Chapter Four reflects on the shape and nature of these attacks. It begins by pointing to the “long-standing opposition of free-market conservatives to regulation, spending, and taxes” and “the demand of social conservatives for the defense of their cultural beliefs and values on race, religion, gender, and the family” (113). Yet, how could the executive address its constituency’s concerns while wrestling with the administrative state? The unitary executive theory (UET) posits that “[P]residents reign supreme within the executive branch – and thus, in essence, over the entire administrative state – and they are endowed with exclusive, inherent authority to control everyone and everything within it” (122). The book shows that both Republican and Democrat presidents exploited the UET for unilateral acts: Clinton’s “bombing campaign in Kosovo” (126), the Bush administration’s “extralegal counterterrorism program” (127), and Obama’s “war actions” (130).

Chapter Five notifies us about the current UET extremists who are acting against the “bedrock values of democracy”, which small and gradual acts from both sides of the political spectrum have significantly eroded, given their commitment to deconstruct the “established system” on behalf of “the people”, which is unchecked by democracy and the rule of law (152). Echoing Anti-system Politics, the authors point to the socio-cultural, political, and economic origins of today’s extremism. Like many other jurisdictions, such extremism has risen and become more visible and “noisy”. This can be explained by extreme inequalities, lower economic growth and higher unemployment rates, the loss of ideational anchors that inform programmatic and normative agendas, and everyday failures of decapacitated administrative state.

Chapter Six concludes with an argument that “[T]he UET soon became conservative orthodoxy” (212-213), and such extremism has enabled Trump to ascend as a “strongman president” through incessant attacks on bureaucracy (e.g., cutting funding for research, pressure on bureaucrats, the DOGE experiment with Elon Musk), “weaponising” the judiciary against opponents and instrumentalising it for nepotism, overthrowing the 2020 election, among others.

Unfortunately, Trajectory of Power cautions us that the Congress, the judiciary, the administrative, and the “people” cannot alone be a veto player against the “strongman president”. For instance, the “people” are not knowledgeable about how the democratic system works (226); or Trump’s loyalist appointments can insulate bureaucracy from its natural and legal tendencies to pushback against presidents’ unilateral acts (238-241). The book ends with possible trajectories in a context where one cannot rely on any of these potential veto players: if the “strongman president” cannot deliver, the constituencies may develop alienation as their expectations are not satisfied; or short-term gains address anger and dissatisfaction but with diminishing returns in the future.

The accumulation regime

Trajectory of Power reveals the dark origins of executive power and how it has expanded in recent times. While it provides a detailed mix of a historical, actor-based, ideational, and institutional analyses, the book could have incorporated a broader outlook. Firstly, it spends too much ink on individuals that craft the ideational bases of the UET. The book refers to political, economic, and socio-cultural factors enabling the “strongman presidency”, but it misses a deeper debate about the elites, elite circulation, and elite coalitions.

The accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

Current populist and authoritarian leaders come with their own elites. The kleptocratic, or oligarchic, elite circulation has become so “dirty” that “corrupt elites” are being replaced by equally “corrupt elites” with self-enrichment and insider trading tendencies. While the “new elite” is trying to replace the “old elite” and without an anchored ideological map, the new elite tries to hijack the administrative state and dismantle the rule of law. Such elite circulation clearly has a politico-economic basis. Replacing the older version of neoliberalism, the accumulation regime is cracking down on the administrative state. It does so by “politicising to depoliticise”, i.e., eroding further the remaining institutional, agential, ideational, and structural bases of transparency, rule of law, and accountability, the core pillars of democratic governance.

This points us to a significant gap in the book’s scholarly framework: bringing together political economy and public policy and administration scholarships. The partial analyses miss a broader picture where the political economic context sets the stage, policy and institutional arrangements define the “decor”, and actors’ interactions on that stage. A broader understanding of the interactions between politico-economic contexts and politics-administration nexus based on cross-fertilisation could have enabled us to empower veto players against the “strongman presidents”.

A must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Finally, the book tends to treat Democrats as not having a broad impact on the trajectory of power. They do discuss Democrats’ mistakes, but if a system is flawed, and if Democrats are part of it, the book reads as a partisan cry against the allegedly powerful (Republican) president. Still, Howell and Moe guide us through the trajectory of power and notify us about the threats of the “strongman presidency”. The book is therefore a must-read for whoever wishes to develop a sense of why and how the core of the executive has become a severe threat to the administrative state and democracy.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Reconstruction as Violence in Assad’s Syria. Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp (editors). The American University in Cairo Press. 2025. 

Does reconstruction translate to liberation? 

Reconstruction as Violence in Assad’s Syria edited by Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp, offers a critical and thought-provoking examination of post-war reconstruction in Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The editors frame reconstruction (the rebuilding of urban landscapes, infrastructures, legal and bureaucratic frameworks relating to housing and land) not as a neutral process restoring function and stability, but as a continuation of violence through political, economic, and social mechanisms. The editors and authors demonstrate how the Syrian government used reconstruction policies to consolidate authoritarian power, reward loyalists, punish opposition communities, and reshape Syrian society after years of civil war.  

The destruction caused by war created opportunities for the regime to redesign cities, confiscate property, alter demographics, and strengthen networks of political and economic loyalty.

Previous studies of reconstruction policies, like the work of Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney have focused on the US. But Rabbat and Sharp, who both have backgrounds in Islamic architecture focus on Middle Eastern politics, urban transformation, and humanitarian governance, specifically in Syria. In this volume, they bring together architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians to mount a multidisciplinary challenge to the common assumption that reconstruction naturally leads to peace and recovery. Instead, the authors contend, it can be (and has been) deployed as a strategic tool of domination and exclusion.  

Their focus is the Syrian reconstruction process following the devastating civil war that began in 2011. The authors in this volume argue that the Assad regime transformed reconstruction into a political weapon. The destruction caused by war created opportunities for the regime to redesign cities, confiscate property, alter demographics, and strengthen networks of political and economic loyalty. Across ten multidisciplinary chapters, the book argues that efforts directed towards a just peace and liberation must entail real community building, and decolonisation. 

Urban planning and authoritarian control 

One of the central themes of the book is the relationship between urban planning and authoritarian control. Deen Sharp in Chapter Five discuss several laws and policies introduced by the Syrian government, particularly those related to land ownership and redevelopment. These laws enabled the state to seize property from displaced citizens, especially in areas associated with opposition movements. As millions of Syrians became refugees or internally displaced persons, many lost their legal rights to homes and land because they could not provide official ownership documents within the limited timeframes. 

The book highlights the role of crony capitalism in reconstruction. Wealthy businessmen connected to the regime received privileged access to reconstruction contracts and investment opportunities. Reconstruction therefore became not only a political project but also an economic system benefiting regime allies. Instead of addressing the needs of ordinary Syrians, reconstruction primarily served elite interests. It supports the shift toward a political economy that privileges clusters of business elites and regime interest-holders, most of whom are invulnerable to democratic oversight and largely immune to traditional sanctioning by the international community.  

Another important aspect discussed is demographic engineering. In the Chapter Three “Rethinking Reconstruction Through Informal Settlements”, Valérie Clerc argues that reconstruction policies intentionally reshape the social composition of Syrian cities. Areas previously considered centres of resistance were targeted for redevelopment, often preventing former residents from returning. In this sense, rebuilding becomes a method of permanently altering the political landscape. The book further critiques the international community’s involvement in Syria. It questions whether foreign governments and humanitarian organisations unintentionally legitimise authoritarian practices when participating in reconstruction efforts without demanding political reform or accountability. 

Reconstruction as violence 

A great strength of the volume is its innovative conceptual framework. The phrase “reconstruction as violence” captures the idea that violence does not end when armed conflict declines. Instead, violence may continue through bureaucratic systems, economic exclusion, forced displacement, and state-controlled urban planning. This perspective broadens traditional understandings of post-conflict recovery. Also impressive is the author’s interdisciplinary approach is also impressive. By combining political analysis, urban studies, legal examination, and social theory, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of the Syrian situation. The use of case studies and policy analysis strengthens the argument and demonstrates how reconstruction policies operate in practice. Another strength lies in the book’s moral and political critique. It challenges optimistic narratives promoted by governments and international actors regarding post-war rebuilding. Reconstruction is never politically neutral, we are reminded. Decisions about who rebuilds, who returns, who benefits, and who is excluded are deeply connected to power relations. 

Reconstruction is never politically neutral, we are reminded. Decisions about who rebuilds, who returns, who benefits, and who is excluded are deeply connected to power relations. 

However, the book may face criticism from readers seeking a more balanced presentation of the Syrian government’s perspective. While the authors convincingly document authoritarian practices, the book gives more limited attention to the practical challenges faced by a state attempting to rebuild after massive destruction and international sanctions. Because the editors and authors take strong political positions, some may disagree with their arguments. Additionally, the book is academically dense in some sections, especially when discussing legal frameworks and urban governance theories. Readers unfamiliar with Syrian politics or critical theory may find certain chapters difficult 

 Nevertheless, the overall argument remains clear and compelling. It demonstrates that rebuilding processes can reproduce inequality, deepen repression, and institutionalise wartime power structures. The Syrian case becomes an example of how states may weaponise reconstruction for political survival. The work is especially valuable for students and researchers in Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, Urban Studies, and International Relations. It also provides useful insights for policymakers, humanitarian organisations, and human rights advocates concerned with ethical reconstruction practices in conflict zones. More broadly, the book raises universal questions about justice, memory, displacement, and state power in post-war societies. Although focused on Syria, its arguments may apply to other countries where reconstruction becomes intertwined with political control. 

The book successfully challenges conventional understandings of reconstruction by showing that rebuilding efforts may reinforce political domination, economic inequality, and social exclusion. Through detailed analysis of Syrian policies, urban transformation, and regime strategies, the volume reveals how reconstruction serves as both a political and economic instrument of power. Illuminating the complexities and power dynamics of post-conflict governance. it is an essential resource in both the Syrian context and beyond. 

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Main image: Dr.MYM via Shutterstock. 

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The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom and Volume II: The Modern and Contemporary West. Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins. Encounter Books. 2025.

The role of history in culture wars

Is it possible to write a definitive history of Western Civilisation that is also a positive celebration of its achievements and value? The Golden Thread is a significant new two-volume book on the subject that is both massive (it spans over 2,000 pages and weighs six kilograms) and beautifully produced, containing hundreds of portraits, colour prints, maps and illustrations. Wisely, the authors Allen C. Guelzo and James Hankins do not claim that it is the only such history, but they nevertheless have a clear vision of what they wish to achieve in this impressive venture. While striving to be authoritative, it is also a profoundly political book on multiple levels, all of which make it of interest to academics and its intended student and popular audience.

The woke agenda is supposed to have captured elite higher education institutions (such as Harvard University), according to right-wing commentators and campaigners like Christopher Rufo and the late Charlie Kirk.

Hankins is a distinguished scholar and author of a prize-winning work on Renaissance political thought, formerly of Harvard and now a visiting Professor at the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. Guelzo is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute which is leading the rethinking of American Conservatism as a site of cultural politics. Its reputation goes back to Straussian scholars such as Harry V. Jaffa, and more recently it has been associated with the cultural and populist turn, championed by the Trump administration, against “woke” or progressive liberalism. Central to that project has been the defence of Western Civilisation against the progressive turn which challenges its values and achievements. The woke agenda is supposed to have captured elite higher education institutions (such as Harvard University), according to right-wing commentators and campaigners like Christopher Rufo and the late Charlie Kirk.

Defending the study of Western Civilisation

Hankins and Guelzo weigh into this debate to defend the concept and pedagogical value of studying Western Civilisation. For them, this tradition is composed of the interweaving of Ancient Greek culture, Hellenised Roman culture and the Christianised Greco-Roman culture of the high Middle Ages. The first volume sets out this tradition through an account of the art, philosophy, political ideas and literature of two millennia from the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE to the beginning of the Reformation in 1517. Of course, the story goes back further to include the Homeric tradition of Greek literature, which no such history could exclude.

This is not just a history of political ideas in the traditional Leo Strauss sense; but more so a list of great books from Greece to the present with a contextual narrative of development followed by one of decline and decadence which for conservatives are the characteristics of modernity. As such, it is a story of the philosophical and theological sources of our political world and the challenges they currently face. It is interesting that the point of departure in the Greek world is the defeat of Persia at Marathon: a civilisational contest that is supposed to have opened the peculiarly western alternative of liberty and political self-government, especially in the context of the US war in the Persian Gulf.

For Guelzo and Hankins, alternative histories have their place, but are a danger when they displace the study of Western Civilisation in the academy or perpetuate a critical climate that undermines the achievements of the West

The second volume begins with the birth of the modern nation state following the Reformation and concludes with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the final confrontation with another emerging civilisational confrontation with Islamism represented by Al-Qaeda and most especially the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The story of Western Civilisation is bookended by confrontation with Persia or Iran – and consciously opts for Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations (2002) model of contemporary Global politics as a renewed period of civilisation conflict over Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992) which was supposed to be the story of 1991 and the triumph of the US and liberal democracy over the USSR and communism.

Guelzo and Hankins celebrate and defend Western Civilisation against Peter Frankopan’s displacement of it in his influential The Silk Roads (2015), a global history which looks beyond the west. Frankopan argues that Western Civilisation is constituted by the engagement and impact of more ancient civilisational cultures such as Persia or China. For Guelzo and Hankins, these alternative histories have their place, but are a danger when they displace the study of Western Civilisation in the academy or perpetuate a critical climate that undermines the achievements of the West as an object of enquiry and especially as a political project.

Conservatism from Burke to Vance

The authors set out this conservative agenda in a manifesto style introduction and foreground it throughout the two volumes. They cite Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the first explicitly conservative political theorist, as an exemplar of the type of conservatism the books support. They call for a return to a Burkean ethos in face of the “woke” progressivism currently rupturing modernity with its ideal of modernism and the principle of permanent progress that seeks to undermine and relinquish the traditional values that underpin their view of the modern west.

Their civilisational story challeng[es] the increasingly dominant voice of inward-looking Christian Nationalism […] celebrating many of the features of classical liberal constitutional politics that the Christian Nationalists want to turn their backs on.

This overt political dimension to the narrative links the celebration of Western Civilisation to the attacks of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President J.D. Vance on what they see as a decadent Europe that is failing to defend itself from immigration and cultural dilution. Guelzo and Hankins’ history chimes with strands of new Conservatism, such as post-liberalism and some variants of Political-Catholicism. More subversively, their civilisational story contributes to the debate within new conservativism by challenging the increasingly dominant voice of inward-looking Christian Nationalism – which focuses on isolationism and patriarchal paternalist politics – and thus by celebrating many of the features of classical liberal constitutional politics that the Christian Nationalists want to turn their backs on. The book makes a partisan case in this struggle for a new conservatism.

The political purpose behind this otherwise traditional, even old-fashioned book is what gives it much of its interest to contemporary scholars of politics. The book is well written and researched, and in its own terms, no more controversial than any other such sweeping book although it downplays the dark side of the story such as slavery and colonialism. There are plenty of other narrative histories of the West as a geographic space, a cultural unit and philosophical and theological civilisation (like Josephine Quinn’s and Tom Holland’s, for instance), but The Golden Thread is worth reading if you have plenty of time (and very strong wrists!).

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Terracotta Classical Greek oinochoe (jug), Mid-4th century BCE. Open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Rogers Fund, 1925.

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Capitalism at the Limit: A Political Ecology of a World in Crisis. Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen. Polity. 2025.

ZÖ: To begin, I would like to ask about the motivation behind your recent book. It was first published in 2024 and recently translated into English. Why did you feel the need to write this book, Capitalism at the Limit, at this particular moment?

UB: Before Capitalism at the Limit, together with Markus Wissen, I published The Imperial Mode of Living, which came out in German in 2017 and was later translated into many languages, including English, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. Around 2020, in the context of COVID-19 and the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we felt the need to write a book that would diagnose the present conjuncture, building on our earlier work on the imperial mode of living, which focused on its conceptual foundations and ecological modernisation, largely in the Global North.

To reproduce our lives in the Global North and increasingly also in the Global South, people rely on cheap labour and cheap nature ‘elsewhere’

So, we start the new book with a description of the climate crisis and how it is deepening. What we see now is that the project of ecological modernisation, which was very much at the core of the first book, is increasingly under pressure from right-wing, anti-ecological projects.

ZÖ: Since your new book builds on the concept of the “imperial mode of living”, could you briefly explain what you mean by it?

UB: The main argument is that all political and economic dynamics at the global, national, and regional levels are inscribed in everyday life. To reproduce our lives in the Global North and increasingly also in the Global South, people rely – via the market and commodities like cell phones, clothes, industrialised food, or cars – on cheap labour and cheap nature “elsewhere”. And elsewhere can mean the Global South, but it can also mean places closer to home.

But the argument is more complex than that. The imperial mode of living also operates through discourses that justify why it is acceptable that people possess and use, for instance, a cell phone or why they “need” to have a car. These discourses tend to obscure the living and working conditions behind production, as well as the way nature is accessed and often destroyed, for example when lithium, copper, or fossil fuels are extracted.

It is a very Gramscian question: the question of hegemony. Hegemony means that there must be a material form of consent. People participate in and reproduce the imperial mode of living rooted in a specific mode of production and patterns of consumption, both of which depend on exploitative labour relations and ecological destruction.

ZÖ: How do you see your approach contributing to existing Gramscian understandings of hegemony?

UB: We argue that a Gramscian approach needs to take into account the biophysical basis. Gramsci already has an understanding of materiality in the sense of structures. Historical materialism (the Marxist theory that holds that ideas and social institutions develop only as the superstructure of a material economic base) offers a very strong understanding of the historical development of power-shaped and domination-shaped structures, which today shape the conditions of action. And these structures have to do with exploitation of humans and nature. Our contribution with the book, and with the concept of the imperial mode of living, is to really link political ecology to Gramscian thinking.

Additionally, there is a current of Gramscian thinking which is very cultural, which interprets hegemony mainly in terms of ideas, discourse, and contestations within civil society understood as a separate sphere, and in a way moves away from Gramsci as a Marxist. And this is why we insist that the imperial mode of living is not just a form of consciousness; it is rather a material and lived practice.

ZÖ: In the book you suggest that social crises can no longer be adequately managed within capitalism. Could you elaborate on that?

UB: We do not argue that capitalism will collapse in five, ten, or fifteen years. Historically, imperial capitalism had relatively easy access to global and often cheap resources. We call this externalisation, one of the mechanisms through which the imperial mode of living is reproduced. A limit is the ecological and particularly the climate crisis itself. For many years in the Global North, people assumed that the climate crisis mainly affected the Global South. But now it increasingly interferes with everyday life, the economy, and society in the Global North.

The rise of authoritarianism is closely connected to the failure of liberal and social-democratic politics to address social insecurity, migration, and economic restructuring

In the past, capitalism has repeatedly managed to overcome crises. Think of the crisis of liberal capitalism after 1929, or the crisis of Fordism in the 1970s, when neoliberalism emerged. The neoliberal project ultimately prevailed and re-stabilised capitalism with a new international division of labour and the rise of countries like China. We argue that since around 2010 this formation has also entered a deep crisis. We do not see the emergence of a new dynamic accumulation regime or a new stable mode of regulation.

ZÖ: In the book, you describe the current socio-ecological condition as a “monstrous normality”. How does this normalisation relate to the rise of authoritarian political responses?

UB: One often, rightly made argument is that the rise of authoritarianism is closely connected to the failure of liberal and social-democratic politics to address social insecurity, migration, and economic restructuring. The far right has been able to take advantage of this situation.

Many people feel excluded after decades of neoliberal restructuring, which was often supported by social-democratic parties themselves. There is a powerful image described by Arlie Hochschild: the metaphor of the waiting line. Workers feel that they have been waiting patiently in line to reach a better life. But suddenly they perceive that migrants or other groups move ahead of them in the queue, supported by the welfare state. The feeling then becomes: “they are overtaking me”. These perceptions are linked to broader experiences of inequality. For example, workers in relatively well-paid sectors, such as automobile workers at companies like Volkswagen may still be considered part of a labour aristocracy. Yet many of them fear that their production model is no longer sustainable. So, we also need to acknowledge that racism exists within society itself. It does not only come from above; it also exists at the level of everyday attitudes.

Additionally, and this is often overlooked in critical debates, we argue that the failure of a green capitalist project is also an aspect of the rise of the far right. The green capitalist project was often socially very unjust and triggered fear: What will happen to my car with a combustion engine? What will happen to my heating system? What will happen to my job in traditional industries? The far right exploits this situation by claiming that the established parties represent and stabilise “the system” which goes wrong, and do not challenge economic elites. In reality, far-right parties rarely confront economic power. But rhetorically they present themselves as the voice of “ordinary people.”

ZÖ: In the last chapter of the book, you propose socialisation as an alternative. How does this challenge dominant market- and growth-oriented approaches?

UB: One important point is that we want to avoid the common individualistic argument that “if people simply behaved properly, we would save the world”. From a political ecology perspective, the key question is how we organise provisioning systems. This also raises questions about norms, orientations, and capitalist accumulation imperatives and power relations. Our argument is that the investment function in the key sectors, including energy, housing, mobility, and infrastructure, needs to be socialised. In these sectors, the main problem is the private control over investment decisions and the concentration of economic power, which is closely linked to the imperative of growth and capitalist accumulation. What we propose implies something like an eco-socialist strategy, because it really questions the power of capital. This could involve taxation, forms of devaluation of capital, and different forms of socialisation.

Note: This interview gives the views of the participants and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West. A.J.A. Woods. Verso. 2026.

There are certain books that, apart from filling a very important gap in the literature, cover ground that should have been covered by others long ago. That applies to A.J.A. Woods’ new book, The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, which finally provides some much-needed answers to the wider circulation of some of the worst antisemitic and anti-communist sentiment seen in contemporary politics. Earlier work by Martin Jay, Jack Jacobs, Joan Braune, Jérôme Jamin and John E. Richardson had already identified parts of this history, but Woods’s book is distinctive in giving the conspiracy theory a full intellectual history of its own.

Cultural Marxism is a far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents Western Marxism as being deliberately responsible for modern progressive movements and political correctness.

Written through an intellectual-historical lens, and drawing on archival research and critical theory, Woods traces how the Frankfurt School was turned from a body of difficult social theory into a portable enemy-image for the far right.

The Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

For readers who are not familiar, the “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory is, at its core, a far-right, antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents Western Marxism as being deliberately responsible for modern progressive movements and political correctness. The conspiracy theory posits that a group of Jewish philosophers who fled Germany in the 1930s and established themselves at Columbia University devised an unorthodox form of Marxism that took aim at Western cultural and Christian values — working, so the theory goes, to corrode society from the inside out. Nowhere was this more starkly illustrated in Britain than in March 2019, when then-Conservative (now Reform UK) MP Suella Braverman delivered a speech at a meeting of the right-wing Bruges Group think tank and declared that “as Conservatives, we are engaged in a battle against Cultural Marxism.” Braverman subsequently refused to apologise or revise her language, an episode that captures precisely the kind of mainstreaming this book is concerned with.

The phenomenon is explained in depth by Woods, who dives deep into the origins, starting in the 1960s, before going on to analyse the LaRouche movement and its sustained attacks on the Marxists of the Frankfurt School. The historical background Woods constructs is one of the book’s strengths — it resists the temptation to treat “Cultural Marxism” as a purely modern, internet-born phenomenon and instead roots it in decades of deliberate ideological groundwork, showing that what might appear to be fringe rhetoric was in fact carefully cultivated long before it found its way into mainstream parliamentary speeches. As an opening chapter it does a lot of work to establish the historical architecture of the conspiracy.

The roots of Trumpism and the New Right

In Chapter Two the analysis shifts to the New Right as a political force. The New Right refers to a late 20th-century current of conservative and far-right thought that sought to remake politics around markets, national identity, and strong opposition to socialist projects. Woods manages to integrate the think tank territory effectively to explain the development of political thought and how conservatism came to be infected by corrosive elements. That said, while this is primarily a discussion of historical strands, the treatment of the New Right represents something of a missed opportunity. It does not fully engage with the very early debates around far-right mainstreaming in the US – debates that matter because they explain how far-right elements were able to infiltrate liberal conservatism and gradually normalise some of the most authoritarian ideas that have since entered the mainstream. The New Right’s ideological trajectory deserves more space than it receives here, because understanding that trajectory is inseparable from understanding everything that follows.

‘Woke’ has been stripped of its original political meaning and recoded as a far-right shorthand for moral and cultural decline […] used to delegitimise minorities and any social demand that falls outside the far right’s preferred image of order.

This point becomes even more relevant in Chapter Three, which follows the thread from the New Right to the Tea Party and traces how those ideas re-entered the Republican Party. The most striking observation in this chapter is the argument that the Tea Party’s disappearance as a formal movement has in no way diminished its influence — quite the opposite. Its ideological legacy continues to shape the direction of the Republican Party under Trump, with the most extreme anti-communist narratives now being adopted openly in the media. The Tea Party was absorbed and that absorption is what made it so effective. Woods handles this well, and the chapter serves as a convincing bridge between the historical sections and the more contemporary analysis that follows.

Chapter Four draws the connections between the techniques used to mainstream the conspiracy theory and similar linguistic manoeuvres by far-right ideological currents, most notably the anti-woke narrative and the vilification of Critical Race Theory. This chapter is the strongest in the book. Trumpism takes centre stage in Woods’ analysis, and the timing of publication gives it a particular urgency. It accurately captures the ways in which buzzwords are manufactured and historical concepts deliberately distorted during periods of far-right mainstreaming. For example, the term ‘woke’ has been stripped of its original political meaning and recoded as a far-right shorthand for moral and cultural decline. In this form, it operates as an elastic accusation, used to delegitimise minorities and any social demand that falls outside the far right’s preferred image of order. The chapter manages something that is genuinely difficult — it traces the mechanics of how language is weaponised in politics without becoming purely abstract, keeping the argument grounded in specific political developments. Woods is at their best here.

Attacks on DEI and human rights

The conclusion skilfully brings together the book’s key findings to link them directly to what the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk have done. Woods draws on those historical developments around the vilification of concepts like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (or DEI) to impose the most aggressive rollback of rights seen in US politics in recent decades. Worryingly, this rollback has openly targeted minorities and people of colour. The connection to the historical context established in earlier chapters is eye-opening. It makes clear just how grave are the threats democracy is currently facing, and how deep the foundations of this project run. Some have pointed to the partial closure of DOGE after January 2026 as evidence of failure, but Woods’ argument focuses on how this damage is a product of a decades-long project tied directly to the New Right and Republicanism. Both have sought to infiltrate and reshape conservatism, turning it into a vehicle for the kind of politics that treats entire categories of people as expendable.

An essential read for anyone interested in US conservatism, the politics of political language, and the authoritarian tendencies currently reshaping the West.

The book is excellent, and its only real weakness is the absence of a more direct and sustained engagement with far-right mainstreaming as it has unfolded across Europe. Beyond the British case of Braverman, the European dimension of this phenomenon, which has its own distinct dynamics, is largely left unaddressed. Though worth noting, this gap does not significantly diminish what is otherwise a sharp, well-researched, and timely piece of work. The book is an essential read for anyone interested in US conservatism, the politics of political language, and the authoritarian tendencies currently reshaping the West. It fills a genuine gap in the literature, and does so without flinching.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Reading Wars. Don Herzog. LSE Press. 2026.

Resurging censorship

Late in the 2025 autumn semester at Texas A&M University, administrators decided to clamp down on curricula outside of their defined established norms. After months of relentless attacks by President Trump against transgender identity during his 2024 presidential campaign and signing of an Executive Order in The White House on Inauguration Day (20 January 2025) to proclaim the existence of two and only two genders – male and female, the emboldened conservative leadership at Texas A&M forced Martin Peterson – a professor of philosophy and ethics – to remove The Symposium by Plato (387 BCE) from his syllabus.

Why? In The Symposium the ancient Greek philosopher (who founded The Academy, the first higher learning institute in world history for the purpose of seeking truth) not only characterised homosexuality as a constituent phenomenon of humanity. He also declared “in times past our nature was not the same as it is now, but otherwise…there were three kinds of human being and not two as nowadays, male and female. No, there was also a third kind, a combination of both genders.” Rather than allow students to consider Plato and his postulation, the university banned the text and forbade the faculty from introducing any literature unsupportive of gender binarism.

Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge.

In a new and engaging monograph Reading Wars (2026), Don Herzog examines how elites maintain hegemony by denying rival groups education and the power to read and publish words of dissenting opinion, and illuminates the varied dynamics behind the suppression of knowledge. Herzog, professor of law at The University of Michigan, succeeds in portraying how, despite centuries of egalitarian progress, the battle over books, articles and pamphlets remains relevant. The book complements the new, expanding scholarship on the politics of knowledge control including Dangerous Ideas by Eric Berkowitz (2021), Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden (2022) and Free Speech by Jacob Mchangama (2025).

Suppressed abolitionist literature

From the initial chapter (“Stop The Presses!”), Herzog examines the plight of institutional critics and their battle to issue written dissent. By the 1830s, African chattel slaves, whom had been stripped of their identities, culture and language, had languished on plantations in The South for more than two-hundred years (1619). After the American Revolution (1775-1783), opponents of slavery became more vocal with each passing decade. In 1832, Elijah Lovejoy launched the St. Louis Observer and published articles critical of slavery and slaveholders – a less than welcome development in the slave state of Missouri. After a mob destroyed his office and threatened his life, he relocated to Illinois (a free state) and continued his diatribes against slave power in the Alton Observer.

As the US had been founded on a compromise to permit slavery, many citizens both north and south demanded either restrictions or the complete stifling of anti-slavery publications to preserve the union. This was a case of censorship for the supposed “greater good.” The intrepid Lovejoy refused to relent, and another angry mob appeared, and he would lose his life in a murderous assault for his ideals. Thirty years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution (1791), which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” had begun to buckle under political division and intolerance (9-13).

Translating the Bible for the masses

In Chapter Two “Reading Bibles, and Burning Them,” Herzog compellingly highlights the contentious row between The Vatican and its dissenters in early 16th century England over whether the Bible ought to be translated for commoners to read and study. According to The Church, the masses, who remained largely illiterate, semi-literate and/or poorly educated, would likely misinterpret scripture and thus commit sins. William Tyndale disagreed. After completing a degree at Oxford, mastering seven languages and pursuing advanced studies at Cambridge, Tyndale translated The Bible from Hebrew and Greek in 1525, and copies of the banned translation pierced the borders of England and Europe from Antwerp – his selected city of exile. For his academic rebellion, the courts of The Holy Roman Empire under Charles V found Tyndale guilty of heresy for espousing views contrary to Catholic doctrine, and the Oxford scholar lived his final months in prison prior to being burned at the stake – a precursor to the fate of Elijah Lovejoy for the same devotion to free thought three hundred years later (33-40).

From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation.

After two subsequent, reinforcing chapters (“Censoring Protestants” and “Keeping Black People from Reading”) exploring how Protestants and Catholics in England and Europe and pro-slavery and anti-slavery coalitions in the US sparred to attain narrative supremacy, Chapter Five (“Spreading the Word(s): Britain”) and Chapter Six (“Spreading the Word(s): America”), detail the rise of the middle classes and their thrust to expand access to literature and democratise religious and political knowledge in the emerging public sphere.

No democracy without a free press

While the 1832 Reform Act enfranchised large segments of the English working class, a multitude of other formal and informal schools reduced illiteracy and ushered in an age of mass consumption of newspapers, magazines and books (108-111). In the US, both the proliferation of public schools and libraries and the noble effort by the Freedmen’s Bureau to empower former slaves through education (1865-1872) widened the concept of “We The People.” From the spike of printed words critical of the status quo on both sides of the Atlantic, however, financial and cultural elites fiercely opposed societal liberalisation (113-114, 129-135). In the final pages of the book, Herzog briefly surveys the religious right-wing agenda to ban books in counties across the US and offers insight into the threats to freedom of thought (138-141 and 153-162).

In his essay “Freedom and the Colleges” (May 1940), Cambridge philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote:

As soon as a censorship is imposed upon the opinions which teachers may avow, education ceases to serve this purpose and tends to produce, instead of a nation of men [and women], a herd of fanatical bigots.

From that standpoint, Professor Peterson resigned from Texas A&M and joined the faculty of another college due to imposed censorship and the elimination of Women’s and Gender Studies programs at the university. In academia, the dual filing of federal lawsuits (again on specious grounds) and withholding of critical funds from top American universities by the Trump administration successfully forced many colleges to alter their curriculums and settle out-of-court. For the institutions of higher learning that capitulated, it constituted a victory for intellectual tyranny and a cravenly permitted abridgement of the First Amendment. For anyone seeking to review the contested space of the written word and its political implications from the Renaissance to the present day, Reading Wars delivers a lively account on a subject at the core of fundamental human rights and free societies.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Don Herzog will launch the book at an LSE event on Tuesday 9 June. Book now.

Read an article by Don Herzog about the book published on LSE Impact.

Main image: Andrei Metelev on Shutterstock.

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The post The power of the printed word – a history of censorship first appeared on LSE Review of Books.