UC Riverside

This dissertation investigates far-right, authoritarian politics among white and Mexican American communities in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. Grounded in a historical materialist and Gramscian theoretical framework, I analyze such politics in relation to local histories of settler colonialism, capital accumulation, and racial authoritarianism, and the increasingly fragmented and volatile social and class relations emerging from the crisis of the neoliberalism. Drawing on a review of local history, 60 in-depth interviews, three years of qualitative fieldwork, and an original survey (N=216), I interrogate the political and social attitudes of study participants in relation to their experiences and perceptions of changing political-economic and sociocultural conditions in Southern California in the twenty-first century. Through comparative analysis of white and Mexican American participants, the study reveals distinct ways in which far-right politics is articulated and legitimated across race and class. Among middle-class white participants, reactionary and authoritarian politics are rooted in appeals to economic grievance, nostalgia for the previous eras of Fordism and Keynesianism, and a deep racial resentment and perceived cultural loss. Conversely, among Mexican Americans such politics was more commonly linked to despair over the recent growth of inequality and precarity and a meritocratic, individualist and racialized narrative of conservative Latino identity that obscures the structural nature of inequality. However, both groups maintain a variety of political positions, social critiques, and attitudes that are not inherently reactionary nor exclusive to far-right movements but are potentially amenable to a progressive egalitarian politics. More than ignorance or confusion, this dissertation frames such instances as unconscious, “good sense” criticisms and critiques of capitalism and modern society, that have been strategically manipulated, exploited, or nullified by far-right movements that reject the hegemonic status quo and promise radical forms of reactionary social change. Rather than dismiss these contradictions, the dissertation understands them as potential sites for politicization and transformation. By historicizing contemporary far-right politics within the longue durée of capital accumulation, racial authoritarianism, and capitalist crises, this study contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship that seeks not only to explain the modern far-right, but to build the theoretical and empirical groundwork for resisting it.