The introductory chapter argues that the near universal rise of the radical Right is more than a series of national coincidences and that despite differences in their ideas and policies, a globally connected Right is emerging. One indication of this is the emergence of global networks and events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon Conferences, and the Madrid Forum. However, the globality of today’s radical Right goes beyond mere transnational networks, and requires a wider rethinking of its relationship to the global in two ways. First, the radical Right is constituted by transnational interactions operating at multiple scales. Second, it defines itself and is co-constituted by its relation to the global, not just to the national. The chapter also discusses the vexed issue of defining the Right and the difficulties of studying the Right.

For several decades before the Civil War, many families, mostly white, were slave rich. In Mississippi, 47 percent of white families owned at least one slave, while, for example, 20 percent of Arkansas white families owned slaves. Slave holding planters, and even those, like John Marshall, who were not planters, resolved the contradiction between advocating for equality and their dependence on slave labor. In a telling biography, Without Precedence, Chief Justice Marshall and his Times, Joel Richard Paul wrote soberly, “Slavery made it possible to regard all white males as equal, regardless of their social status. Tradesmen saw themselves as the social equals of wealthy plantation owners because they were both white. Unlike Europe, where class identity divided rich and poor and posed a constant threat to the social order, in eighteenth–century Virginia, the underclass was all black and mostly enslaved"