Left Theory and the Alt-Right

Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Professor of English and Philosophy at the University of Houston-Victoria. He is founder and editor of symplokē and Executive Director of the Society for Critical Exchange and its Winter Theory Institute. His books include Dead Theory: Death, Derrida, and the Afterlife of Theory (2016), Higher Education under Late Capitalism: Identity, Conduct, and the Neoliberal Condition (2017), American Literature as World Literature (2017), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory (2019), The End of American Literature: Essays from the Late Age of Print (2019), Biotheory: Life and Death under Capitalism (2020, with Peter Hitchcock), Philosophy as World Literature (2020), What’s Wrong with Antitheory? (2020), Vinyl Theory (2020), Catastrophe and Education: Neoliberalism, Theory, and the Future of the Humanities (2020), and Happiness (2022). Sophia A. McClennen is Professor of International Affairs and Comparative Literature at Penn State University and founding director of the Center for Global Studies. She has published 13 books, including Trump Was a Joke: How Satire Made Sense of a President Who Didn’t (2023), Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism with Srdja Popovic (2020), and Globalization and Latin American Cinema (2018).

Table of Contents

Introduction

Jeffrey R. Di Leo and Sophia A. McClennen

1 Steal this Theory: How the Alt-Right Accomplished the Intellectual Crime of the Century by Stealing Theory from the Left

Jeffrey R. Di Leo

2 The Three Stooges: How David Horowitz, Stanley Fish and Cary Nelson Turned Academic Freedom into Right-Wing Slapstick

Sophia A. McClennen

3 The Zionist’s Gambit: Israel Politics, the "Antisemitism" Ruse, and the Rightist Weaponization of Identity

Benjamin Schreier

4 The Public Use of Ressentiment

Zahi Zalloua

5 Glitch Politics: Specters of Alt-Right Anarchism

Emily Apter

6 Inertia Creeps: Critical Theory on/as Stasis

Peter Hitchcock

7 Rocket Theory

Rita Raley and Russell Samolsky

8 Ugly Freedom and the January 6 Insurrection

Elisabeth Anker

9 The Online House of Mirrors: Left Theory, Alt-Right Tactics, and Anticoalitional Digital "Communities"

Gina Stinnett

10 The 3-D Printed Gun, the Logic of Simulation, and the Postmodern Right

Geoff Schullenberger

11 What’s in a Face? Theory of the Mask

Robin Goodman

12 The Global Alt-Right as Prefigured in Roberto Bolaño

Héctor Hoyos

13 Bad Laws: Torture John Yoo

Jacques Lezra