Indignation, decadence and conspiracy: Richard Shorten's reactionary rhetoric

Abstract

This review seeks to analyze some of the central arguments of Richard Shorten's recently published The ideology of political reactionaries (2022). Continuing his work of mapping and redimensioning the modern ideological panorama, which began with Modernism and Totalitarianism (2012) and Reactionary rhetoric reconsidered (2015), Shorten establishes an anatomy of the argumentative structures mobilized by reactionary agents over the last two centuries. Based on the classic Aristotelian lessons on rhetoric, the author proposes that the pillars of indignation, decadence and conspiracy are mobilized by reactionaries in order to trigger, respectively, the dimensions of pathos, logos and ethos in an audience. The result of a careful analysis of reactionary texts, ranging from the writings of Joseph De Maistre and Edmund Burke, through Adolf Hitler and Joe McCarthy, to Éric Zemmour and Donald Trump, Shorten identifies some discursive models that recur in this ideological tradition. Recovering both the concept of reaction and the methodology of rhetorical analysis, the author establishes renewed bases for reflection and analysis on the modern political right and its contemporary manifestations.