The Reactionary Spirit

“Zack Beauchamp draws on deep reporting, historical understanding, and personal conviction to reveal much about the crisis facing democracies today. The Reactionary Spirit takes the reader on a riveting tour beneath the surface of the authoritarian wave that has spread to so many parts of the world, while answering important questions about its source within the United States. An essential addition to understanding the true nature of the times we are in.”—Ben Rhodes, author of After the Fall

“Beauchamp’s always insightful exploration of the overlap between ideology and politics shines here as he unpacks how American democracy contains within it an impulse for self-destruction. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the different stages of democracy’s life-threatening illness in Hungary, Israel, India, and the United States, along with a prescription for nursing democracy back to health.”—Heather Cox Richardson , author of Democracy Awakening

“Beauchamp’s trenchant analysis of the reactionary spirit—a political mindset that sees democracy as a threat to be abolished—is a timely and vital contribution to our understanding of the myriad antidemocratic movements threatening our freedoms today.”—Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen

“The Reactionary Spirit is an insightful and absorbing read that traces the distinction between traditional conservatism and the antidemocratic ideology that threatens democracies across the world. Beauchamp wields both history and social science to illustrate the origins of this neoreactionary sentiment and how it camouflages itself using the democratic rhetoric of the liberal societies it aims to annihilate.”—Adam Serwer, staff writer, Atlantic

“A conscientious peeling away of the false democratic facade of contemporary authoritarianism.”—Kirkus