Bring Back Your Dead

One of the strangest of many strange 21st-century phenomena is the adoption of the ideas of 20th-century left-wing thinkers by the New Right. From Marcuse and Baudrillard to Jameson and Camus, left thinkers have exerted significant influence on the contemporary postliberal and even anti-liberal right. One figure whom the New Right has appropriated is the French post-structuralist Michel Foucault. Foucault’s anarchist radicalism was very attractive to the 20th-century left, who viewed the Western nation-state as an oppressive and reactionary behemoth. In a paradoxically similar manner, Foucault’s anti-statism appeals to some members of the 21st-century right who view the contemporary state as a fundamentally oppressive and radical behemoth. That many left-wing thinkers of the previous century continue to provide nourishing intellectual fodder for their purported rivals demonstrates how rich and complex their thought was and is.