The fortunes of radicalization: How the party environment determined the fate of radical movements in the late 20th-century United States

Abstract

Radicalization during the 1960s and 1970s is often cited as a cause in the decline of American New Left movements, but right-wing movements also radicalized during this period and did not suffer the same consequences. This comparative-historical study traces the trajectories of four sectarian radicals who led conservative Christian and ultra-left movements that emerged in the United States in 1965. Bridging social movement literature with Gramscian theory, I argue that the variation in the fortunes of radicalization stems from the divergence between the formal party blocs. Radicalization on the left resulted in isolation and implosion because the Democratic Party bloc lacked resources and its interest-group configuration was inhospitable to radicalism. On the right, the Republican Party bloc was in an ascendant phase of organizational growth and fused the hitherto dispersed ideological currents of social conservatism and market fundamentalism. The availability of resources in tandem with the hegemonic configuration of the Republican Party bloc enabled Christian radicals to exert ideological influence. My findings demonstrate how parties shape the trajectories and outcomes of radicalization and underscore the importance of comparative analysis of left and right movements to explain their political legacies.

Introduction

With JD Vance’s ascent to the vice presidency, it appears that the Catholic New Right has eclipsed evangelicals and cemented its hold on American politics (Ward, 2024). The rise of the Catholic New Right was years in the making. Prior to Vance, the “evangelical Catholic” Mike Pence served as Trump’s vice president and currently all but one of the Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican presidents are conservative Catholics (Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Roberts) (Cooper, 2024: 363–364; Dias and Lerer, 2024; Graham and LaFraniere, 2020; VanSickle and Kaleta, 2024). Within the right-wing associational sphere, conservative Catholics have also shaped powerful institutions like the Heritage Foundation (Ebin, 2024; Leingang and Kirchgaessner, 2024). But as scholars and journalists begin to make these connections, a different conservative Christian movement has largely flown under the radar. This movement is Christian Reconstructionism, the pioneering Calvinist strand of dominion theology that seeks to turn the United States into a theocracy by slowly capturing and Christianizing civil society institutions (Ingersoll, 2015; McVicar, 2015; Worthen, 2008). The movement has had a vibrant afterlife, influencing the ideologies, discourse, and agendas of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, and the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and Project 2025 author Russell Vought (Clarkson, 2016; Ingersoll, 2016; Stewart, 2021; Tanenhaus, 2018; Vought, 2021).

Christian Reconstructionism’s ideological influence on contemporary Republican politics presents a puzzle, contradicting stylized accounts of radicalization which claim that sectarian movements with narrow social bases and transformative aims are fated to implode and fade away as they become more extreme (Gitlin, [1980] 2003, 1987). What explains the outsized ideological influence of Christian Reconstructionism compared to other movements that radicalized during the same period and were equally small and sectarian?

To answer this question, I present novel archival evidence and compare the radicalization of the leaders of Christian Reconstructionism with the leaders of American Situationism, a contemporaneous movement influenced by the ultra-left organization called the Situationist International (SI) (McDonough, 2002; Routhier, 2023; Stracey, 2014; Trier, 2019; Wark, 2011). Situationism was a pillar of the left-libertarian social movement family whose sectarian practices mirrored those of Christian Reconstructionism (Della Porta, 1995: 36). Through comparison, I show that shared processes of radicalization within the left-libertarian and right-libertarian families led to different outcomes. My analysis unfolds through two paired prosopographies that focus on the arena of interaction between movements leaders and the political environment (Alimi et al., 2012, 2015; Bosi et al., 2014; Klatch, 1999). On the right, I analyze the trajectories of Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) and Gary North (1942–2022), the leaders of Christian Reconstructionism’s academic and militant wings. On the left, I trace the trajectories of Ken Knabb (b.1945) and Ben Morea (b.1941), parallel figures who developed equivalent strands of Situationism (Grindon, 2015b; Knabb, 1997; Millner-Larsen, 2023; Morea and Hahne, 2011; Neumann, 2008).

This paper uses a party-centered approach that accounts for the distinctiveness of the American party system and the increasing divergence between the Republican and Democratic parties (De Leon, 2014; Grossmann and Hopkins, 2016; Hacker and Pierson, 2005; Mann and Ornstein, 2012; Schlozman, 2015; Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024; Tarrow, 2021). Combining Gramscian theory with the social movement literature, I argue that the Republican Party bloc offered radicals more intellectual and organizational resources than the Democratic Party bloc (Della Porta, 1995; McAdam, [1982] 1999; Mudge, 2018; Nichter, 2023). I also argue that these party blocs were configured differently, the hegemonic formation of the Republicans generating more political opportunities for radicals to exert influence compared to the interest-group formation of the Democrats (Anderson, 1965; De Leon et al., 2015; Gramsci, 1971).

This paper’s comparative strategy demonstrates how differences between the Republican and Democratic party blocs played a significant role determining whether movement radicals would have a lasting impact on American politics. Radicalization appears ineffective or leads to defeat if we limit our study of the 1960s and 1970s to the mobilization of left-wing radicals (Elbaum, 2002; Miller, 1987; Rorabaugh, 1989; Ross, 2002; Varon, 2004). A growing body of literature shows that this period was highly productive for less publicly visible right-wing radicals who transformed the Republican Party (Andrew, 1997; Belew, 2018; Cooper, 2024; MacLean, 2017; McGirr, 2001). Comparing Christian Reconstructionism and American Situationism helps explain these diverging fortunes by isolating the causal influence of parties. While the trajectories of Knabb and Morea confirm Gitlin’s account of the consequences of radicalization, the trajectories of Rushdoony and North do not, the case of Christian Reconstructionism revealing how the resources and configuration of the Republican Party bloc enabled sectarian radicals to achieve ideological influence. These findings put into question conventional assumptions about the destructiveness of radicalization and the neutralizing effects of parties.

Radicalization and Gitlin’s account of the new left

Radicalization is a debated concept that encompasses cognitive and behavioral processes whereby individuals, groups, and state actors adopt extreme ideas and/or actions such as terrorism (Malthaner, 2017; Neumann, 2013; Peels, 2024; Sedgwick, 2010). While new models disentangle the radicalization of ideology from that of action, they still tend to focus on the defense or practice of political violence (Borum, 2011; McCauley and Moskalenko, 2017). Rather than foregrounding violence, I treat radicalization as a process of organizational schisms that hardens political identities and leads to sectarianism and doctrinal purity (Della Porta, 1995: 85–104, 109, 136–137; Desan, 2019: 685; Elbaum, 2002: 177–178, 227–228; Klatch, 1999: 109, 133). The figures I examine are radical in the “utopian” sense that they sought to “burst the bonds of the existing order” (Mannheim, [1936] 1954: 173).

Like much of the literature on radicalization, Gitlin’s writing on the New Left pivots around the turn to violence and is emblematic of the “good sixties/bad sixties” narrative (Elbaum, 2002: 35–37). Gitlin specifically focuses on the downfall of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the rise of the Weathermen, describing radicalization as a positive feedback loop that isolates radicals, splinters organizations, and culminates in implosion (Gitlin, [1980] 2003: 189, 236, 238; 1987: 380–381). Besides highlighting the mismatch between the New Left’s transformative goals and its narrow social base, Gitlin develops a relational analysis of radicalization that considers several types of interactions (Gitlin [1980] 2003: 128, 186, 239, 285; 1987: 192). ¹ He highlights how the mass media turned New Left leaders into celebrities and incentivized flamboyance and spectacle (Gitlin [1980] 2003: 145–179, 182, 192–193; 1987: 233–235). He also addresses intergroup competition, which further pushed radicals to inflate their rhetoric and pursue reckless actions (Gitlin [1980] 2003: 135–136, 145; 1987: 248–252, 260–263, 345–351, 382–384, 398). Finally, he identifies state repression as another driving force of radicalization (Gitlin [1980] 2003: 186–187, 195; 1987: 251, 255, 287–288, 315–316, 326–336).

Although party-movement analysis is largely absent from his work, Gitlin does note that radicals are unprepared to navigate the coalitions that define pluralist politics. He claims that the American party system “militates against the ideological margins” and is “not poised on the edge of radical change” (Gitlin, 1987: 436–437). This political environment increased the New Left’s nihilism and despair, which added fuel to the destructive loop of radicalization (Gitlin [1980] 2003: 159, 186; 1987: 246, 254, 361, 403). Yet, while Gitlin’s pluralist account of the American party system may aptly describe the interest-group configuration of the Democrats after the collapse of the New Deal consensus, it does not capture the Republican Party’s increasing openness to radicalism. This divergence is key to understanding why Christian Reconstructionism avoided the predicted outcome of radicalization specified by Gitlin’s theory (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Case comparison using Gitlin’s theory of radicalization.

Outcome	Christian Reconstructionism	American Situationism
Implosion and isolation	No (unexpected absence)	Yes (expected presence)

Pluralism and party hollowness

The pluralist literature views parties as amalgams of cross-cutting interest groups that balance each other out, the party system neutralizing extremes (Dahl, [1961] 1989: 86, 94, 227–228; Key, [1942] 1964: 7–8, 11, 128–130, 149–150, 154–161; Kornhauser, [1959] 1960: 80–82, 230–231; Riesman, [1950] 2020: 181, 187, 195; Schattschneider, [1942] 1977: 19–34, 62, 85–93). This tendency towards compromise and equilibrium lays the basis for Gitlin’s claim that the American party system blocks radical change. Besides identifying the centrality of interest groups to politics, this literature also shows that the formal parties are highly decentralized and that class politics are blunted in the United States (Dahl, [1961] 1989: 54–56, 94; Key, [1942] 1964: 267–273, 279, 315; Schattschneider, [1942] 1977: 66, 107–109, 129–169).

Recent literature extends these findings, affirming that the American party system is distinct because: (1) the formal parties are fluid and weakly bounded, not bureaucratized mass organizations with memberships; (2) socialism has been a weak presence (Amenta, 2006: 21; Mudge, 2018: 28–29, 36, 170, 173; Rucht, 1996: 201; Tarrow, 2021: 130; see also Alesina and Glaeser, 2004; Epstein, 1986; Lipset and Marks, 2000; Prasad, 2012; Skocpol, 1992; Ware, 1995). Researchers also argue that party-interest group relations have changed since the 1970s. As the formal parties hollowed out, donors, PACs, think tanks, media figures, and consultants increased in number and gained more power, forming “party blobs” (Hacker and Pierson, 2010: 118, 146, 207; Karol, 2014: 483–487; Medvetz, 2012: 5–6, 90–98, 111–120; Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024: 3–9; Skocpol, 2003: 139–140; Tarrow, 2021: 21, 25, 152–171, 236). The party blobs, however, constitute starkly different institutional environments.

Party divergence in the United States from the 1960s to the present

The formal parties have diverged in two key ways since the 1960s. The first has to do with (dis)unity and ideological cohesion. The second has to do with the orientation and coordination of the paraparty groups that steer the hollow parties.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the right-wing party environment comprised of ideologically driven donors, indigenous institutions, and intellectual infrastructure became more tightly integrated, uniting libertarians, social conservatives, and evangelicals into a cohesive bloc (M. Cooper, 2017: 63; Diamond, 1995: 110–111, 127–139, 161–162, 165–166; Himmelstein, 1990: 83–90, 98–99, 115–118, 125–128; Klatch, 1987: 5, 54, 195–196; McGirr, 2001: 240–241, 260–261; Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024: 146, 161, 166; Schoenwald, 2001: 221–222, 255–258). Besides unifying market fundamentalists and social conservatives, the Republican Party established an institutional anchor in church-based networks and began drifting farther to the right (Hacker and Pierson, 2005: 9–12, 26–34; 2010: 147, 182, 202–203; Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 131; Liebman and Wuthnow, 1983: 13, 15–20; Schlozman, 2015: 3, 7, 10–11, 77–107; Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024: 164–165; Skocpol and Williamson, 2012: 88; Tarrow, 2021: 134–144, 147). The party became an “ideological petri dish” and achieved an unparalleled level of unity (De Leon et al., 2015: 28; Grossmann and Hopkins, 2016: 9, 255–256, 312; Tarrow, 2021: 135, 146).

The paraparty organizations that work in and around the Republican Party are also distinct because of their disciplined, hyper-partisan orientation. In addition to the mobilization of the Christian Right and the radicalization of the Republican base, “New Power Brokers” like Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist have accelerated the party’s far-right turn by disciplining and coordinating various interests (Hacker and Pierson, 2005: 9, 12, 27, 140, 150). The Koch-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) offers another such example. AFP’s centralized, federated structure “closely resembles a European-style political party” and enables the Koch network to rally an ideologically diverse array of donors around hardline free-market ideas (Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez, 2016: 689, 691; see also Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 133; Tarrow, 2021: 167–168, 186). Despite its hollowness, these disciplined and centralized paraparty organizations have converged on a shared set of goals and endowed the Republic Party with a unified direction (Hacker and Pierson, 2010: 118).

In contrast, the Democratic Party has not achieved this level of unity and its paraparty organizations are oriented differently. Internal divisions sharpened in the postwar years, straining labor and the organized left as they contended with Cold War anticommunism (Caute, 1978; Schrecker, 1998). McCarthyism specifically delinked labor and leftist movements while also accentuating the generational divide between the Old and New Left (Eidlin, 2018: 194–199; Gitlin, 1987: 26–27). Although its membership had declined, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) survived and sustained international ties and links to the Black community (Elbaum, 2002: 49, 124–125, 262; Gitlin, 1987: 72). The New Communist Movement competed with the CPUSA, but never achieved the same organizational clout as its forebear and remained largely estranged from organized labor (Eidlin, 2018: 209–210; Elbaum, 2002: 50–51, 115, 170, 306). Similarly, divisions between the “Old Guard” and the younger “prairie-power” cohort strained SDS (Gitlin, [1980] 2003: 30–31, 131; 1987: 186, 226–227, 229). Divisions within organized labor were equally if not more disastrous. Although the 1970s inaugurated a wave of worker militancy, private-sector and public-sector unions were split along racial and gender lines and diverged numerically, union density falling in the private sector as membership increased in the public sector (Brenner et al., 2010; Cooper, 2024: 108–109, 123–126, 132–137, 142–145, 157–160; Hardt, 2023). As these rifts deepened, party-movement coordination remained elusive because the New Left was skeptical of electoral politics and rejected the Democratic Party (Eidlin, 2018: 207–208; Elbaum, 2002: 126–128; Flacks and Lichtenstein, 2015: 29, 33, 46; Tarrow, 2021: 133, 145).

Paraparty organizations also flank the Democratic Party, but they are not as disciplined as their right-wing counterparts. For instance, the Democracy Alliance (DA) brings together an array of progressive donors, organizations, and labor unions at its conferences, yet “[u]nlike the Koch seminars, the DA does not proclaim any unified political strategy” (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 140). Instead, these gatherings are run like “progressive investment marketplace[s]” or “organizational bazaars” that present diverse social issues (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 142). Paraparty organizations have also not converged on a narrow set of economic issues like groups such as AFP (Hacker and Pierson, 2010: 145–146; Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 142, 153). The lack of coordination and unity has resulted in listlessness and incapacity: “the candidate-driven and consultant-shaped party repeatedly failed to subordinate particular interests for common purpose. . . Democrats’ commitment to inclusiveness proved its own sort of pathology, more often a thin claim to take all comers than a thick vision of universalism” (Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024: 183). Without a unifying, transformative party project, the Democrats develop policy for an atomized coalition of interest groups (De Leon et al., 2015: 28; Grossmann and Hopkins, 2016: 7–9, 255–256, 312; Tarrow, 2021: 134–135, 146).

The above analysis shows that the pluralist paradigm largely applies to the Democrats, but not to the Republicans. To understand how party divergence affected the fortunes of radicalization, we must return to the social movement literature and Gramscian theory.

Parties as (de)mobilizing structures: Interest-group versus hegemonic configurations

While parties are a key element of the arena of interaction between movements and the political environment, their effect on movements varies (Alimi et al., 2012: 10; 2015: 42–43). First, much depends on the responsiveness of institutional actors to challengers, namely whether movements encounter toleration, opposition, or encouragement (Amenta, 2006: 24–26, 229–232; Beck, 2015: 64–65; Goldstone, 2003: 20–22). Research also shows that parties can act as bureaucratizing structures that defang, coopt, and placate movements (Calhoun, 2012: 116–120; De Leon et al., 2015: 17; Piven and Cloward, [1977] 1979: 29–30, 32–33, 90–92, 155, 231–235, 255; Tarrow, 2021: 24, 65–68). Following the political process approach, this paper views parties as indigenous institutions that help movements amplify their demands and spread protest (Della Porta, 1995: 86, 104–105, 108; Green et al., 1998: 122–130; McAdam, [1982] 1999: 39, 43–44, 146–151, 230–231; Tarrow, 1989: 161, 166–167, 184–186, 219–221, 226, 242, 311–312, 341–343; Tilly, 1978: 81). Parties specifically offer skills, networks, and cultural infrastructures that radicals can reformat and leverage (Mudge, 2018: xvi, 23, 35, 100, 256–257; Nichter, 2023: 4, 35, 39–40). However, the availability of resources is not the only factor that determines whether parties can help movements grow. It is also important to consider how parties are configured.

Neo-Gramscian theory accounts for party responsiveness through the categorical variable of “integralness,” which denotes whether a party is (1) oriented towards transformational change, (2) articulates social cleavages, and (3) builds cohesive political blocs (De Leon et al., 2015: 2–6, 18, 24–25, 28–29). Bloc building is particularly consequential for movements and draws our attention to the significance of party configurations. For Gramsci, the revolutionary party is a “crucible” or “laboratory” that constructs a “collective will” out of a “multiplicity of dispersed wills” (Gramsci, 1971: 129, 335, 349; see also Buci-Glucksmann, 1980: 37–38, 229, 354–355; Thomas, 2010: 437–439). Unlike the pressure politics of pluralism, these dispersed wills do not cancel each other out. The “hegemonic party” elaborated by Gramsci involves the formation of a “historical bloc” that “rests on an ascending integration, which fuses together different hopes and demands on a higher level. . .The bloc is thus a synthesis of the aspirations and identities of different groups in a global project which exceeds them all” (Anderson, 1965: 242, author’s italics; see also Buci-Glucksmann, 1980: 275–276). Ascending integration implies a party configuration that is centripetal, both drawing in radicals from the margins and fusing them into the superseding unity. Viewed as a concentric structure, the hegemonic configuration integrates radicals into a cohesive paraparty ecosystem and enables their ideas to penetrate the party bloc (see Figure 1). Since the 1970s, the Republican Party bloc has evinced these integrative dynamics and can be categorized as a hegemonic party.

Figure 1.

Interest-group versus hegemonic party configurations.

Interest-group configurations like that of the Democrats do not operate through the same welding process. Rather, “a process of dilution occurs, in which the political program of the party – catering as it does for every different group in the coalition – reduces the aspirations and demands of each downwards to the lowest common denominator on which they all agree, in a kind of descending integration” (Anderson, 1965: 242, author’s italics). This type of integration neutralizes radicalism. Viewed as a “mechanical bloc of social groups” that orbits the Democratic Party, the interest-group configuration lacks centralized coordination nor achieves synthesis (Gramsci, 1971: 54n4, 131–132, 181–182, 272). This means that radical challengers are not meaningfully integrated, their ideas dissipating on the margins of the jumbled party bloc.

Specifying mechanisms and the unexpected outcome

Tying together these theoretical threads, I argue that party resources and configurations are two interconnected mechanisms that significantly alter the fortunes of radicalization. My analysis specifically considers whether the party blocs have intellectual and organizational resources such as academic mentors, grant-making organizations, and think tanks. These resources help radicals mature, refine their theories, and make informed decisions about tactics and strategy. If these resources are underdeveloped, radicals will be more likely to follow the radicalization trajectory laid out by Gitlin. I also consider the availability of brokers, particularly the paraparty operatives and partisan patrons that give radicals greater clout and play a mediating role connecting radicals to their target constituencies (Alimi et al., 2015: 103–104; Giugni et al., 1999: 97–98, 104; Schlozman, 2015: 5, 35–37; Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 31).

Hegemonic configurations further solidify these connections and continuously integrate radicals into party blocs. My analysis highlights how this integrative dynamic expands political opportunities for radical challengers and allows them greater access to the party system (McAdam, [1982] 1999; Meyer and Minkoff, 2004; Tarrow, 1996). Hegemonic configurations also multiply resources as schools, media, youth organizations, and other civil society domains become “the ordinary arena of political action” (Anderson, 1965: 245). These paraparty institutional sites not only offer intellectual and organizational support, but also generate opportunities for radicals to exert influence. Ultimately, hegemonic party blocs with robust resources work against the destructive dynamics that Gitlin attributes to radicalization and help radicals achieve ideological influence.

While Gitlin’s theory explains failure, determining the success of social movements is notoriously challenging (Amenta, 2006: 30–32; Giugni et al., 1999; Schlozman, 2015: 44–46; Tarrow, [1994] 2011: 215–233). We also know that movements encounter different obstacles and those which seek to challenge capitalism face steep barriers to collective action (Offe and Wiesenthal, 1980). Despite these differences, it is possible to consider success parsimoniously in terms of ideological influence. Influence varies and can involve durable alliances between movements and parties or the measured adoption of movement demands by party leaders (Goldstone, 2003: 22–23; Schlozman, 2015: 45; Tilly and Tarrow, 2015: 36–37, 103). Here, my focus is on cultural and ideological effects, namely how movements alter political discourse, set agendas, and thematize issues (Giugni et al., 1999: xxiii, 70, 92–93, 159, 184, 193, 195–196, 201–202, 206, 237–238, 246–247).

Still, analyzing social movement outcomes proves difficult when “[m]ultiple causal chains lead to a plethora of possible effects. . .” (Giugni et al., 1999: 268). As I elaborate in the following section, I do not argue that the party environment was the sole factor that caused the outcomes of implosion and isolation, on the one side, and ideological influence, on the other. My aim is to refine and reconstruct Gitlin’s theory of radicalization, using a comparative strategy that shows how hegemonic party blocs with robust resources can aid radicals and alter the fortunes of small, sectarian movements.

Research design, case selection, and methods

The method of difference structures my paired comparison of Christian Reconstructionism and American Situationism (Emigh, 1997; Gerring, 2007; Mill, 1971; Prasad, 2012; Riley, 2005; Skocpol, 1979; Skocpol and Somers, 1980). In selecting my cases, I considered similarities along several dimensions. First, the movements share a common temporal and geographical context, both emerging in 1965 during the postwar expansion of higher education and in the shadow of the Watts riots. California was the epicenter of both movements, in part because Northern and Southern California, respectively, were vibrant centers of New Left and New Right activity. These regional associational spheres point to another significant similarity: the movements developed in opposition to existing tendencies and organizations. The American Situationists critiqued groups such as SDS, the Weathermen, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while Christian Reconstructionists took aim at the premillennial “eschatology of defeat” that dominated American evangelicalism (Chasse, 1968; McVicar, 2015: 109–110, 134–139, 168, 181; North, 1984; Situationist International, 1969; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 4; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 14). These antagonisms patterned their acerbic, fast-paced written output (Ford, 1995: xiii; Jappe, 2018: 84, 96; McVicar, 2015: 101; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 134; Puchner, 2004; Worthen, 2008: 429). It would thus be appropriate to categorize Christian Reconstructionism as “ultra-right” given that movement exhibited the same features that made American Situationism ultra-left, for example, the skepticism of alliances, the attachment to doctrine, and the rejection of formal parties (Bordiga, 2020: 185–224; Gramsci, 1978: 340–375; Lenin, 1975: 550–618). Lastly, their theories were informed by Western European thinkers, incorporated strong critiques of educational institutions, and emphasized decentralization, which I detail in the following section.

Noting these similarities and employing the method of difference helps pinpoint how antecedent conditions shaped the outcomes of radicalization and allows me to isolate a crucial difference: the party blocs (Capoccia, 2015; Collier and Collier, 1991; Emigh, 1997; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Mahoney, 2001a, 2001b; Mahoney and Snyder, 1999; Moore, 1966). ² While my comparative strategy brings forward this substantive difference, I do not seek to make a monocausal claim. Rather, I seek to build theory using a dialectical realist approach to the method of difference that combines comparison and narrative to draw conclusions (Burawoy, 1989: 762–763, 771, 776–777; Emigh, 1997: 658, 664–665, 672; Emigh et al., 2024: 288–292, 295, 299, 314–317, 322; Riley, 2005: 290).

Negative case methodology inspires my application of theory and frames my analysis (Emigh, 1997; George and Bennett, 2005; Lijphart, 1971; Lipset et al., 1956; Mahoney, 2007; Riley, [2010] 2019; Skocpol, 1992; Smelser, 1976). This methodology is beneficial when there is a mismatch between theoretical explanations and observed outcomes. Building on the work of Elbaum (2002), I problematize Gitlin’s stylized account of radicalization. Gitlin’s research demonstrates the bias of positive cases and suggests that implosion and isolation are the inevitable outcomes of radicalization (Emigh, 1997: 658). To overcome this bias, I treat Christian Reconstructionism as an anomalous case vis-à-vis the standard story of radicalization (see Table 2). My aim is not to dismiss Gitlin’s work, but rather to refine his explanation of radicalization in accordance with the model of progressive research programs (Burawoy, 1990; Emigh, 1997; Lakatos, 1970).

Table 2.

Comparison of Christian Reconstructionism and American Situationism.

	Christian Reconstructionism	American Situationism
Party bloc configuration	Hegemonic	Interest-group
Party bloc resources	Robust	Underdeveloped
Outcome	Ideological influence (unexpected presence)	Implosion and isolation (expected presence)

These four radicals represent historical reservoirs of organizational memory and by employing prosopography, I specify how party-movement interactions affected their movements across time (Abbott, 2005; Eby, 2023; Riley et al., 2021; Stone, 1971). Klatch’s (1999) paired comparison of the radicalization of members of SDS and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) provides a model. However, instead of in-depth interviews, I use archival methods, consulting over 3400 pages of documents from the Bancroft Library and the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. I also consulted memoirs, secondary sources, and the central works written and/or edited by these four radicals and their organizational associates. As with “dual-process tracing,” prosopography “allows for and indeed demands a degree of intimacy and detail that inspires confidence that the connections drawn between antecedent conditions and outcome are real,” deepening the party-movement analysis I develop in the first empirical section of the paper (Tarrow, 2010: 239; see also Emigh et al., 2024: 293–294, 315, 321–322; Robinson, 2020).

Similarly, Della Porta (1995: 136–164) compares the life histories of two activists to better understand how environmental conditions shape radicalization while Pacewicz (2023) compares two Democratic and two Republican informants to show how party politics shape articulations of populism. Fine-grained, small-N analysis is not only generative for studying the political environment together with micro-level processes, but is also apposite for comparing movements with small memberships, particularly when leaders reflect their hard-core base. To mitigate the small-N problem and eliminate other causal factors, my case selection includes within-case variation (Collier, 1993: 112). Whereas Rushdoony and Knabb were more academic and committed to building the intellectual foundations of their respective movements, North and Morea were more militant and focused on direct action (Diamond, 1990: 136; Ingersoll, 2015: 31; Sanford, 2014: 95).

Comparing Christian Reconstructionism and American Situationism: Intellectual foundations, the critique of public education, and decentralization

This section contextualizes the two movements, highlighting their intellectual influences, critiques of educational institutions, and embrace of decentralization. The analysis details the similarities that justify my case selection and begins to identify important differences between the party blocs.

Intellectual origins, key figures, and groups

Intellectual traditions from Western Europe greatly influenced both movements and they formed two contrasting wings as they developed. The party blocs, however, did not provide comparable resources with which to guide the uptake and application of these intellectual traditions in the American context.

Two Dutch-born theologians were critical to the development of Christian Reconstructionist thought: Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) and Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). Van Til’s philosophy asserts that the Bible is the only source of truth and that other forms of knowledge claim neutrality while concealing their own presuppositions (McVicar, 2015: 37–40; Rushdoony, 1958; Sanford, 2014: 76–82, 158–159; Worthen, 2008: 405). Kuyper’s contribution was “sphere sovereignty,” the idea that society is comprised of distinct social units that govern themselves and are only accountable to God (Sanford, 2014: 68–75, 109–110, 223; Worthen, 2008: 414). This delineation of spheres had a practical import: to build God’s kingdom, Reconstructionists would need to capture each of these spheres.

Kuyper also identified the patriarchal family as the basic organizational unit of society, which shaped how Rushdoony articulated Christian Reconstructionism (McVicar, 2015: 137–138). Rushdoony argued, “Every family is a government; it is man’s first church and first school, and also his first state. The government of the family by God’s appointed head, the man, is basic to society” (Rushdoony, 1984: 59). North placed more importance on the church, viewing it as a superior tool for Christianizing society (Ingersoll, 2015: 253n42; McVicar, 2015: 182–184, 192–193; 2017: 224; North, 1984: 130; Sanford, 2014: 95). These differing interpretations would eventually aggravate tensions between Rushdoony and North and influenced how they ran their organizations. Rushdoony founded the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965 and later established its headquarters in Vallecito, California. North promoted Christian Reconstructionism in the 1970s and 1980s through his own think tank, the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE) located in Tyler, Texas. The Chalcedon Foundation and ICE became the twin, sometimes conflicting hubs of the movement.

Along with anti-statism, Christian Reconstructionists excoriate public schooling and believe that humanism and other anti-Christian ideologies permeate modern institutions. Rushdoony and North also pioneered a conservative Christian interpretation of Austrian economics that introduced libertarianism to religious audiences (Sanford, 2014: 112–113; Terrell and Moots, 2006: 95; Worthen, 2008: 406). Through bridging different conservative traditions, they carried forward the legacy of midcentury fusionism and gave the Christian Right an intellectual footing (Cooper, 2024: 251; Ingersoll, 2015: 38). Still, the movement diverged from many on the Christian Right in one key respect: postmillennialism.

Postmillennialist eschatology holds that Christ will return once “God’s kingdom” has been rebuilt and society has been fully Christianized (Cooper, 2024: 350; Diamond, 1990: 138–139; McVicar, 2015: 134–139; Sanford, 2014: 86). Rooted in early American Protestant traditions, postmillennialism reflects the movement’s active, constructive stance whereas the premillennial dispensationalism of evangelicals like Jerry Falwell claims that Christ will return during the end times. For Christian Reconstructionists, premillennialism was pessimistic and defeatist, discouraging Christians from taking action to build a Christian world. Although premillennialism was the dominant eschatological tendency in the United States when Christian Reconstructionism emerged, there remained traditions and institutional resources that supported postmillennialism, including Princeton Theological Seminary, where Van Til obtained his Master of Theology, and Philadelphia’s Westminster Theological Seminary, where he would later teach (McVicar, 2015: 136).

The opposite was true for American Situationism, which also represented a kind of counter-tendency. As two members of the movement recalled, “The Situationist critique arrived in the U.S. relatively intact, but in isolation from the intellectual context of its analytical development. . . the absence in America of a Marxist cultural tradition equivalent to that of Europe meant that there essentially were no critical standards. . .by which to evaluate the Situationist perspective” (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 58). Despite the lack of traditions and intellectual resources, Guy Debord, the de facto leader of the SI, was sanguine that this underdevelopment signaled opportunity.

In December 1965, he published a pamphlet in English that exalted the Watts riots and helped spur the growth of the American Situationist movement (Beni Memorial Library, 1975: 106; S. Cooper, 2017: 80; Cornell, 2016: 250; Stracey, 2014: 56–75). ³ Debord argued that the riots were a major breakthrough, demonstrating the revolutionary potential of the Black proletariat (Knabb, [1981] 1995: 153–160). ⁴ In a letter to another SI member, Debord speculated that his text would make an impact in the United States, where the struggle, though “confused,” was “moving forward” and “starting to act” unlike in Europe where “there [was] still no real movement” and the intelligentsia was “exhausted and integrated” (Debord, 2003: 102–103). ⁵ From this angle, the underdevelopment of the Democratic Party bloc’s intellectual and organizational resources was seen as a boon, making it easier for Situationism to mold the American left.

The Watts pamphlet arrived at an opportune moment as other key SI texts were being translated from French into English for the first time (S. Cooper, 2017: 88; Cornell, 2016: 266–267; Ford, 1995: 22; Robertson, 1996: 121). After sending an emissary to circulate Situationist texts in the United States and survey the New Left scene, the SI founded its American section in December 1968 (Beni Memorial Library, 1975: 98, 105–106; Chasse and Elwell, 1970: 8, 19–20; Debord, 2010: 249–250; De San Mateo, 2011: 7, 13; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 108; PE.036 Box 89 Folder SI II; Trier, 2019: 338–342, 345–347). Although the section soon dissolved, “pro-Situ” groups flourished in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, where Ken Knabb and Ben Morea, respectively, became leading figures (Beni Memorial Library, 1975: 2; Ford, 1995: 64–86; Trier, 2019: 359–361, 369). ⁶ Knabb was more deferential to the legacy of the SI and translated the original Situationist texts from French to English. Morea’s group, Black Mask, was more syncretic and confrontational, mixing Situationist theory with Black radicalism, Dadaism, and anarchism, and engaging in direct action.

Founded in 1957, the SI drew from a similar mix of traditions, merging ideas from Dadaism and surrealism, the Marxist theorists György Lukács and Henri Lefebvre, and the French ultra-left group Socialisme ou Barbarie (McDonough, 1997: 10; Routhier, 2023: 9, 53–58, 159–164, 229; Stracey, 2014: 2–3, 10–12, 45; Wark, 2008: 8–11; Wollen, 1993: 124). Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle remains the most influential Situationist text. Through an examination of postwar consumerism, advertising, and mass media, it delimits a new form of impersonal domination that is mediated by images and specific to a period of relative abundance (Benanav and Clegg, 2018: 1630; Debord, [1967] 1994; Stracey, 2014: 5–6; Wollen, 1993: 126). ⁷ The SI was also responding to the emergence of state capitalism and articulated an anti-authoritarian, anti-bureaucratic critique aimed at organized labor, left parties, and the Soviet Union (Arrighi et al., 1989: 37–38; Renaud, 2021: 8–9, 234–275). Situationists viewed the organized left as a demobilizing and bureaucratizing force, overlooking how its institutions provided crucial intellectual and organizational resources. American radicals assimilated the autonomist currents of Situationist theory without reckoning with this fact.

The underdevelopment of party bloc resources helped Situationism quickly make inroads into the New Left in the short term, but the prosopographies will make clear that this hurt the development of Situationism in the long term. While Christian Reconstructionism and Situationism represented minoritarian tendencies in the postwar United States, the former movement had access to more intellectual and organizational resources. These resources were critical for progressively readapting the intellectual traditions of Dutch Calvinism to the American context.

Critiquing educational institutions

The two movements viewed educational institutions as sites of indoctrination and highlighted their ideological function. Universities were particularly compromised, the movements advocating for the exit from institutions.

Applying Van Til’s thought, Rushdoony argues that public education pretends to be neutral and non-religious while proselytizing humanism and liberalism. By promoting these ideologies and hiding the truth of divine revelation, public schools psychologically harmed students (Rushdoony, 1961: 30). Secular education was woefully contradictory and destructive, the advent of the atom bomb symbolizing the moral bankruptcy of universities (Rushdoony, 1961: 7). North later argued that humanist conspirators had “captured the robes,” taking over “Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Berkeley, Michigan and other prestigious universities” in order “to mold public opinion” (North, [1986] 1996: 14–16; see also North, 1984: 59–60). Indoctrination, however, began at the primary level and it was there that public schools infringed on sphere sovereignty: “Statist education increasingly assumes that (1) the child is the child of the state or the property of the state. . . (2) The state ‘priesthood’ of educators are [sic] best able to rear the child and prepare him for life, viewed as statist life” (Rushdoony, 1963: 323). State overreach was a crucial flashpoint that later galvanized the Christian homeschooling movement. Since humanists controlled the system from top to bottom, Christians needed to build their own schools to save their children from anti-Christian ideologies. The end goal was for Christian education to eventually replace public education (North, 1984: 259).

A Situationist group made similar critiques of primary education in two leaflets that it released during the New York City teachers’ union strike of 1968. ⁸ The first detailed the disciplinary and ideological function of schools:

The school is assigned the task of breaking the will to individuation, of ‘channeling the mind’, of incapacitating the child with the rules that hold this society together. . . It is not accidental that the newest school buildings are indistinguishable from the newest prisons or the newest industrial complexes. (TAM.530 Box 1 Folder 68)

Schools were seen as carceral institutions that produced docile subjects and instilled the passivity that characterized the communal isolation of the spectacle. The American Situationists were also hostile towards universities because they produced the “oppositional bureaucrats and ideologists” that administered the welfare state (Situationist International, 1969: 45; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 14; see also Flacks and Lichtenstein, 2015: 232–233). As one Berkeley group observed, the state had become more adept at recuperating leftist critiques: “These changes have resulted. . . in an advanced welfare-state which has been able to incorporate many of the ‘radical’ solutions of the left in order to perfect its functioning” (Point Blank, 1972: 25). If the university merely produced “future bureaucrats,” then it had to be dismantled (Situationist International, 1969: 19; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 14). Black Mask advocated “withdrawing from the system” to develop intellectual practices that were more rooted in the “social fabric” and circumvented the institutionalization of radical thought (Morea and Hahne, 2011: 34). The rejection of the university set the pro-Situs apart from leftist intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse who believed that the university could be reformed (Neumann, 2008: 85; Situationist International, 1969: 8; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 14; see also Millner-Larsen, 2023: 100–103). Since universities were tied to the state and neutralized critical thought, the movement would have to work outside these institutions and eventually dismantle them.

The problem that the two movements had to face was: what comes after exiting institutions? Party bloc configurations produce different possibilities. A hegemonic party like the Republicans links together struggles and “[aims] at entering and inhabiting civil society at every possible point, establishing an entire alternative system of power and culture within it” (Anderson, 1965: 279). When Christian Reconstructionists abandoned public schools, an alternative system of power was flourishing. They encountered institutions and movement organizations ranging from Christian colleges and homeschoolers to legal advocacy groups and the Council for National Policy (CNP), the secretive umbrella organization that facilitated communication between right-wing activists and Republican politicians (Cooper, 2024: 330; McVicar, 2015: 173–175, 211; Nelson, 2019; Schlozman, 2015: 202; Schlozman and Rosenfeld, 2024: 173). These resources were not only abundant, but were coordinated and unified, linking the radical fringes to the center of the Republican Party bloc. When American Situationists exited the university and entered the streets, they found no such party bloc configuration nor comparable resources. Without this integrated infrastructure, they were delinked from the center of the Democratic Party bloc and, more significantly, from the working classes – their intended social base.

Embracing decentralization

Both movements rejected the formal parties, embraced decentralization, and emphasized the importance of theory and intellectual practices. But again, differences between the party blocs shaped the prospects of these decentralized strategies.

Christian Reconstructionists were skeptical of the GOP and party politics. North critiqued bureaucratic organizations and believed hierarchical structures would hamper the movement: “Christian Reconstruction, unlike Christian ‘movements’ in general, has no central director, no overall, tightly controlled strategy” (North and DeMar, 1991: 81; see also North, 1984: 135, 187, 189; North and DeMar, 1991: 176). Reconstructionists also did not approve of violently seizing the state, which, for them, was akin to attributing the power of salvation to the state. ⁹ Victory would be achieved through other means: “It is victory through steady, long-term replacement. . . It must be a bottom-up, decentralized offensive campaign. The top-down, centralized strategy is the strategy of our opponents” (North, [1986] 1996: 98–99, author’s italics; see also McVicar, 2015: 143; North, 1984: 253–261). Central to this bottom-up strategy was “sound Christian scholarship—not, to be sure, irrelevant ivory-tower scholarship” (BANC MSS 98/70 cz Carton 1 Folder 4; Sandlin, 1995: 6; see also Rushdoony, 1961: 20). Whereas evangelicals had abandoned Christian intellectual traditions, Reconstructionists promoted self-education and the formation of study groups, circulated monthly newsletters, produced journals, and inundated Christian bookstores with their publications (BANC MSS 98/70 cz Carton 1 Folder 2; Diamond, 1990: 136; North, 1984: 165–169, 262–266; North and DeMar, 1991: 83–84; Wilson, 1997: 13–14).

The SI also embraced decentralization, drawing from the tradition of workers’ councils and emphasizing the spontaneity and self-organization of the working class (Knabb, [1981] 1995: 223, 270–282; Routhier, 2023: 57–58; Stracey, 2014: 74, 117). Situationist theory was supposed to ignite autonomous action and the SI developed the practice of exclusions as a precaution against hierarchy, dogmatism, and revisionism, preferring to keep its membership small (Jappe, 2018: 55–56, 84–85, 94, 96; Kaufmann, 2006: 33n5; Knabb, [1981] 1995: 86, 112, 147–149, 173, 180, 231–232; Stracey, 2014: 3–4; Trier, 2019: 4–5). In the United States, this practice became a form of “radical decorum” that was delinked from the SI’s anti-authoritarian critique and as Knabb would later concede, “what was perhaps appropriate for the SI [was] not necessarily essential for others in other circumstances” (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 59; Knabb, 1997: 133; see also Wark, 2008: 9). The primacy accorded to theory also proved to be impractical. Ex-members of a Berkeley pro-Situ group recognized that, “the ‘Situationist’ who can only passively distribute his posters, tracts, slogans, etc., and leave the ‘next move’ up to others, may as well pack it up and head for home” (Rosenberg and Shutes, 1974: 24). Lacking strong mediating institutions like workers’ parties and unions meant that facilitating “a radical dialogue with workers” was exceedingly difficult (Rosenberg and Shutes, 1974: 24). ¹⁰ While decentralization and autonomy were perhaps merited in France, these principles were arguably less strategic in a country where the working class was more fragmented and lacked organizational power.

Christian Reconstructionists promoted decentralized forms of study to counteract the anti-intellectualism of evangelicals and revive Christian scholarship. The Republican Party bloc offered intellectual and organizational resources to support this mission. Although the American Situationists emphasized similar intellectual practices, the Democratic Party bloc did not furnish equivalent sources of support. In the following section, I present further evidence that substantiates these findings and specifies how the availability of brokers and the Republicans’ hegemonic configuration further advantaged Christian Reconstructionism.

The schismatic process of radicalization: Process-tracing prosopographies

This section examines the resources Rushdoony, North, Knabb, and Morea encountered as they radicalized. Tracing their trajectories also highlights the importance of brokers and how party bloc configurations did or did not generate opportunities for the movements to exert influence.

Rousas John Rushdoony

Intellectual resources

Rushdoony found support from influential scholars during his undergraduate and graduate studies and his early work as a minister. At the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Rushdoony’s primary mentor was the medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz, a controversial scholar whose work was revered by Nazi leaders (Benson et al., 1992; Cantor, 1991; Lerner, 2017; Lipkin, 2016). Rushdoony tried to build on Kantorowicz’s work, but failed to publish and his experiences in higher education were mostly alienating (McVicar, 2015: 28–31; North, 2002). After obtaining a divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion in 1944 and being ordained by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), Rushdoony began missionary work on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. During this time, he discovered the work of Van Til and cemented his theological worldview (McVicar, 2011b, 2015: 35). Rushdoony and Van Til began to collaborate and edit each other’s writing in the late 1940s, but their relationship grew strained as Rushdoony radicalized and fanatically defended Van Til’s ideas, disregarding the mores of academe that Van Til followed (McVicar, 2011c).

Although Rushdoony was too extreme to follow a traditional path in academia, his experiences with Kantorowicz and Van Til still benefitted his intellectual and political development and show that despite charges of bias, universities did in fact provide right-wing radicals with key resources. The GOP continued to cultivate these resources as a hegemonic party, which were more robust by the time North entered higher education.

Radicalization and sect-building

Rushdoony’s zealous uptake of Van Til’s thought also strained his relations with the PCUSA. In 1950, Rushdoony expressed concerns that the PCUSA was attempting “to run all orthodox, evangelical Presbyterians out of church” and that “modernists [were] in power” (Rushdoony, 2016a). His writing for the Westminster Theological Journal and his efforts to launch a new partisan publication modeled after the fusionist magazine Faith and Freedom further aggravated tensions, Rushdoony soon splitting from the PCUSA (McVicar, 2015: 56; Rushdoony, 2016b; see also Cooper, 2024: 351; Lynn, 2023: 206–208). Rushdoony founded a new congregation with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in 1958 before committing to writing and lecturing full-time, transitioning from the pulpit to politics (McVicar, 2015: 57; Rushdoony, 2016b).

Rushdoony established links to Spiritual Mobilization, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and the William Volker Fund, fusionist organizations that merged market fundamentalism with conservative Christianity (Diamond, 1995: 27–31; McVicar, 2015: 44). Executives such as Sun Oil Company’s J. Howard Pew and DuPont’s Jasper Crane backed Spiritual Mobilization and the FEE while the Volker Fund financially supported the Mont Pelerin Society, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and James Buchanan (Lichtman, 2008: 73–75, 80–81, 160, 171, 173–174, 206; MacLean, 2017: 49; McVicar, 2011a: 199–200; 2015: 50; 2017: 207–208; Nickerson, 2012: 35–36). Rushdoony began a consulting and research position at the Volker Fund in 1962 as the organization morphed into the Center for American Studies (CAS) and realigned with conservative Protestantism (McVicar, 2015: 66–73). For Rushdoony, the organization’s new Christian profile was still too ecumenical, and he was fired in late 1963 after pushing CAS to adopt Calvinism and maneuvering to take control of the organization (McVicar, 2015: 73–78).

Losing this institutional affiliation was not a major setback because Rushdoony had already made a name for himself in conservative Christian circles across California. North introduced Rushdoony to the John Birch Society and Goldwater activists affiliated with the Betsy Ross Book Shop in Los Angeles and Women for America, Inc. These suburbanite activists brought Rushdoony to Southern California in August 1965, the businessmen Phil Virtue and Walter Knott sponsoring the move (Diamond, 1995: 52; McVicar, 2015: 98–99). Rushdoony soon founded Chalcedon, Inc. and released his first newsletter, which repeated an argument that he had developed in a memo about Fabianism for the Volker Fund in 1962 (McVicar, 2015: 62–64). He asserted, “History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith” (Rushdoony, 1991: 545, author’s italics). With the establishment of the Chalcedon Foundation, Rushdoony consolidated a hard-core base of activists to begin the “long-term battle” (Rushdoony, 1991: 545). ¹¹

Rushdoony traversed paraparty organizations as he radicalized, meeting powerful brokers who helped him grow his following and spread his ideology. For example, Pew pushed for Rushdoony to become an editor and regular contributor at the evangelical magazine Christianity Today (McVicar, 2015: 116, 121). Rushdoony’s sectarianism, however, led him to burn bridges, forming his own organization rather than compromising.

Continued influence

Although Rushdoony ended up on the fringes of the Republican Party bloc, its hegemonic configuration continued to integrate him and generate opportunities. The right-wing associational sphere was blossoming and as conflicts over Christian schools and their tax-exempt status galvanized the homeschooling movement at the end of the 1970s, Rushdoony’s early writings earned belated recognition and found new readers. More so than abortion, Christian schooling was the issue that politicized evangelicals and gave Christian Reconstructionism new relevance (Hacker and Pierson, 2010: 202–203; Ingersoll, 2015: 97–98; McVicar, 2015: 166–167; Sanford, 2014: 16–17). Rushdoony served as an expert witness in court cases twenty-three times between 1980 and 1988 and is credited with helping advance the legal tactics that are now a fixture of right-wing strategy (Ingersoll, 2015: 79–80; McVicar, 2015: 169, 175, 211; see also North, 1984: 184–190). The growth of Christian media also presented new opportunities, the evangelical author Tim LaHaye and the broadcaster Pat Robertson coming to embrace Rushdoony’s ideas (Ingersoll, 2015: 22–23; McVicar, 2015: 198–199; Worthen, 2008: 431–432). While Rushdoony’s sectarianism never waned, the ascending integration of the Republicans helped his ideas fuse into the party project and synthesize with other conservative currents.

Rushdoony’s obstinacy and doctrinal purity cannot be overstated. He cut ties with the evangelical magazine Christianity Today and the CNP, even after the organization granted him an audience with President Reagan’s chief of staff in 1981 (McVicar, 2015: 110–122, 145–147, 206–210). Despite his polarizing sectarianism, brokers like Robertson continued to give Rushdoony a platform, integrating him into the Republic Party bloc and enabling him to exert ideological influence from the margins.

Gary North

Intellectual and organizational resources

North benefited from more intellectual and organizational resources than Rushdoony, which indicates just how much the Republican Party bloc’s alternative system of power had matured. North first met Rushdoony at an Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI) Student Conference in 1962, after which Rushdoony helped North obtain a summer internship at CAS (McVicar, 2015: 82–83; Rushdoony, 2016c; see also Diamond, 1995: 30; Lichtman, 2008: 171–172; McVicar, 2011a: 200). After North graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 1963 and briefly attended Westminster Theological Seminary, he returned to Riverside to complete a PhD in History supported by grants from the ISI, the Earhart Foundation, and the Chalcedon Foundation (McVicar, 2015: 151; North, 2002). Like Rushdoony, North had an academic mentor. He studied under the sociologist Robert Nisbet, later referencing Nisbet’s critique of state power in his own writings (North, 2002; North and DeMar, 1991: 44–45, 128).

North’s experience in higher education evidences the robust intellectual and organizational resources that the Republican Party bloc offered emerging radicals. These resources helped North solidify his ideology and constructively develop and channel his radicalism.

Radicalization and sect-building

North continued to deepen his ties to paraparty organizations. After contributing to the FEE’s magazine during his graduate studies, North briefly worked at the think tank’s headquarters in New York before joining the Chalcedon Foundation full-time in 1973 (McVicar, 2015: 152; North and DeMar, 1991: xi). He married Rushdoony’s daughter, Sharon, in February 1972 and cemented himself as heir to Christian Reconstructionism. In 1974, North began editing the Journal of Christian Reconstruction and launched his own newsletter called the Remnant Review, laying the groundwork for ICE. North also briefly served on the congressional staff of Republican House Representative Ron Paul in the late 1970s, but his experience in Washington, DC deepened his skepticism of electoral politics (North, 1978: 57). North then moved to the Economics Department at Campbell University in North Carolina before establishing the ICE headquarters in Tyler, Texas in 1979 (McVicar, 2015: 154–155).

ICE formed the militant wing of Christian Reconstructionism and adopted a survivalist agenda that emphasized “decentralization, gold, and guns” (McVicar, 2015: 187, 189). Disagreements over whether the family or the church was more important for Christianizing society deteriorated in this period, Rushdoony eventually severing ties with North over an editorial dispute in 1981 (Ingersoll, 2015: 253n42; McVicar, 2015: 182–184, 192–193; 2017: 224; North, 1984: 130; Sanford, 2014: 95). North’s prophesying also became more apocalyptic. War, epidemics, and economic crises were encouraging developments because the coming disaster would give Reconstructionists an opportunity to secure victory (Cooper, 2024: 353–355; North and DeMar, 1991: xxi). He argued, “We must be ready to pick up the pieces after the disintegration” (North, 1984: 57–58).

Breaking from Rushdoony and developing a more militant form of Christian Reconstructionism did not end up isolating North and delinking him from the Republican Party bloc. Instead, brokers and paraparty organizations continued to integrate North and provide political opportunities.

Continued influence

In 2001, North closed ICE and shifted his efforts to his personal website, prefiguring today’s far-right digital sphere. Whereas the development of Christian broadcast media and legal activism benefited Rushdoony, survivalist networks, hard-money (e.g. gold and silver) financial advising, and online media were the rising branches of the right-wing associational sphere that enabled North to reach new audiences and exert influence (Cooper, 2024: 357; McVicar, 2015: 184–190; Worthen, 2008: 426). Even when his predictions about the Y2K crash proved wrong, paraparty organizations and brokers provided opportunities. He won the Murray N. Rothbard Medal of Freedom in 2004 from the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank where he retained an Associated Scholar position until his death in February 2022 (McVicar, 2017: 233–234). Former Representative Paul also commissioned North to help create the Ron Paul Curriculum, an online homeschooling portal that launched in 2013 (Cooper, 2024: 355; McVicar, 2015: 227–228).

Equally as sectarian but more militant than Rushdoony, one might expect that North’s radicalization would have made him a persona non grata in right-wing circles. However, North avoided this fate because paraparty organizations and brokers continued to help him build new connections and spread his ideas, the Republicans’ hegemonic configuration cohering an associational sphere that integrated his extremism.

Christian Reconstructionism and the Republican Party bloc

Rushdoony and North had conservative academic mentors, partisan patrons, and links to paraparty organizations, which supported their intellectual and political development. These resources also helped them build connections and ensure that Christian Reconstructionism avoided isolation despite its narrow social base. Although their sectarianism provoked schisms and damaged their reputations, the hegemonic configuration of the Republican Party bloc was integrative and generated opportunities for them to exert ideological influence without diluting their extremist doctrine.

Ken Knabb

Intellectual and organizational resources

Knabb lacked critical resources as he turned to Situationism in the late 1960s. After graduating from Shimer College in 1965, he moved to Berkeley and immersed himself in the Bay Area counterculture (Knabb, 1997: 99–100, 108–110). Knabb embraced Situationist theory in 1969 as Berkeley was becoming a hub of Situationism and boasted several competing pro-Situ groups (Brown, 1997; Knabb, 1997: 111–112). To mark his political realignment, Knabb staged his first Situationist action in May 1970, scattering a leaflet critiquing Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky, the “poet-priests” of the left, at a reading by Snyder in Berkeley (Knabb, 1997: 113–115, 116; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 3).

The counterculture boasted organizations and thinkers, but there were neither paraparty organizations nor established academics comparable to that of the right-wing associational sphere, ones that could have guided Knabb’s radicalization while integrating him into the Democratic Party bloc. What he encountered was an “organizational bazaar,” turning to Situationism through a siloed, conversion-like process and without the support of intellectual and organizational resources (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 142).

Radicalization and sect-building

Knabb co-founded his first pro-Situ group called 1044 in July 1970 and soon fell into the pattern of dogmatism and incessant critique that impaired the pro-Situs. Knabb later admitted, “Some of our ventures reflected our American countercultural background more than would have been typical of our European counterparts” (Knabb, 1997: 117). This countercultural background reflected the underdevelopment of Democratic Party bloc resources, Knabb and his peers assimilating Situationism and radicalizing without recourse to established institutions and movement cultures. The schisms continued and Knabb went on to form Contradiction in December 1970. The group produced printed ephemera and planned to publish a journal with a wide-ranging critique of the New Left that was supposed to help members purge their countercultural leanings (TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 1; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 4). Failing to complete the journal, Contradiction entered a period of stasis during which Knabb traveled to New York and Paris and met with ex-members of the SI (Knabb, 1997: 120–122, 131). Knabb blamed Contradiction’s dissolution in September 1972 on the group’s lack of doctrinal purity, claiming that its members exhibited the same political defects that they had sought to critique (Knabb, 1997: 179; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 6). However, what this setback really demonstrates is the group’s intellectual and organizational immaturity, a weakness that could have been counterbalanced if Knabb and his peers had access to the same kinds of resources that shaped North’s radicalization trajectory.

Moving forward, Knabb “[saw himself] as a restorer of the ‘purity’ Situationist theory formerly seemed to have when not very many people in America knew about it” (Knabb, 1997: 190, 286; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 6). “Theoretical perfection” was a frequent concern among the pro-Situs that laid “claim to the Situationist throne” after the SI dissolved in 1972 (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 59, 63; Shutes and Cronin [1974] 1975: 1; see also Elbaum, 2002: 196, 324–325). Knabb’s Bureau of Public Secrets (BPS) represented the apotheosis of this tendency. Established in April 1973, BPS was highly productive and quickly came to dominate the pro-Situ scene, but critics claimed that the organization’s dominance was due to its “sheer prolificacy” as opposed to the originality of its theoretical output (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 66).

Although he was now more productive, Knabb’s Situationism remained stunted due to the paucity of intellectual and organizational resources. His dogmatism hardened and he resorted to imitating the original SI texts since he did not have the necessary support to radicalize in a more progressive fashion. The absence of brokers was also an issue, making it difficult for Knabb to break out of this increasingly isolated milieu.

Isolation

BPS became the clearinghouse of Situationist theory in the United States, Knabb attempting to safeguard the SI’s legacy. According to his critics, this showed that he “[wished] to play the role of curator of the Situationist movement” as though “everyone outside of himself and his associates [was] unable to interpret the Situationist project” (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 72). There was some truth to these charges. When Knabb announced his plans to translate the French SI’s journal into English, he criticized the existing English-language anthology (Knabb, 1997: 274; TAM.097 Box 1 Folder 5). He eventually published his own anthology through the BPS imprint in 1981 (Knabb, 1997: 137–138).

Without crucial resources to successfully develop an autochthonous Situationism, Knabb tried to keep the movement alive through translating. While comprehensive, the anthology ultimately symbolizes the movement’s hermeticism. Doctrinal purity tended towards isolation in the absence of brokers and paraparty organizations, the Democratic Party bloc’s interest-group configuration compounding the problem and leaving Knabb to pursue his insular work on the fringes of the associational sphere with little chance of integration.

Ben Morea

Intellectual and organizational resources

The avant-garde artist Aldo Tambellini and the anarchist Murray Bookchin were Morea’s primary mentors and represent the two traditions that shaped his political formation. In the early 1960s, Morea pursued painting and collaborated with Tambellini in the Group Center artist collective (Millner-Larsen, 2023: 25, 34–47, 66–99). Morea was also active in the anarchist scene on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, attending the meetings of local groups (Cornell, 2016: 256–258; Grindon, 2015b: 183, 206n33). He developed a confrontational leadership style and fetishized Black radical groups, abandoning his painting practice and co-founding Black Mask in 1966 (Biehl, 2015: 99; Grindon, 2015b: 187; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 6–7, 148–149). The group’s name nodded to different political traditions and cultural touchstones, from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks to the African symbols of Black nationalism and the black flag of anarchism (Cornell, 2016: 258).

Like Knabb, Morea’s uptake of Situationism was also conditioned by a lack of intellectual and organizational resources. Although Morea had mentors, they were not established academics like those that aided Rushdoony and North. Left intellectual traditions did not have a foothold in the university, North arriving at Situationism through traversing the New York counterculture’s active, but uncoordinated “organizational bazaar” (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018: 142).

Radicalization and sect-building

Because of its militancy, Black Mask is best classified as a “dissident Situationist” group (Biehl, 2015: 111; Grindon, 2015b: 187; see also Millner-Larsen, 2023: 118). ¹² On October 10, 1966, members blockaded the entrance of the New York Museum of Modern Art and released a manifesto referencing the Watts riots and espousing the group’s opposition to art institutions (TAM.530 Box 1 Folder 33). The manifesto later appeared on the cover of the first Black Mask broadside in November 1966, which reinterpreted Debord’s Watts analysis in subsequent issues after riots exploded in Detroit and Newark in 1967 (Knabb, [1981] 1995: 153–160; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 12–13, 51–60; Morea and Hahne, 2011: 4, 53, 75–77). ¹³ Black Mask also carried on the Situationist tradition of criticizing the left counterculture. The group singled out Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg in one of its broadsides, writing: “The poets clamor at the gates of the university while the real poets are in the streets crying ‘Burn, Baby, Burn’” (Morea and Hahne, 2011: 30). Debating and producing theory was seen as inadequate, Morea growing more focused on direct action.

Black Mask developed a visually spectacular form of direct action that strained the group’s relations with the SI. Dressed in all black and wearing balaclavas, Black Mask marched on Wall Street on February 10, 1967, pioneering the “black bloc” aesthetic that remains prevalent among anarchists today (Cornell, 2016: 260; Grindon, 2015b: 194; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 1–3, 15). In October that same year, the group helped organize the breakaway contingent that marched on the Pentagon and called for demonstrators to deploy the “snake dance” formation used by the Zengakuren, a radical Japanese student organization (Millner-Larsen, 2023: 110–111; TAM.530 Box 1 Folder 35). ¹⁴ The following month, during a protest outside the New York Hilton Hotel as the Secretary of State Dean Rusk attended a dinner celebration, Black Mask deployed new tactics inspired by the Dutch Provo movement, including throwing bags of cow blood (Bigart, 1967; Gitlin, 1987: 241, 254, 281; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 111; Neumann, 2008: 76–77). Morea remarked that the Rusk demonstration “was the closest act to black riots yet on the part of whites” (TAM.530 Box 2 Folder 10). Some of the SI began to suggest that Black Mask was advancing “practice without theory” (Chasse and Elwell, 1970: 9; Grindon, 2015b: 187; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 113; PE.036 Box 89 Folder SI II). Tensions flared when a member of the SI refused to meet with Morea on a visit to New York in November 1967, the confrontation prompting Debord to formally cut ties with Morea and Black Mask (Biehl, 2015: 111–112; Debord, 2003: 247; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 113–118; TAM.530 Box 2 Folder 11).

Although the exact circumstances behind the schism remain unclear, it is undeniable that Black Mask had become much more militant and bellicose than the SI. This trajectory was shaped by the Democratic Party bloc’s underdevelopment. Intellectual and organizational resources can discipline movements and provide a layer of accountability that counteracts recklessness (Elbaum, 2002: 144). These checks were nonexistent and unlike North, who found opportunities and remained integrated in the Republican Party bloc after breaking with Rushdoony, Morea did not encounter such support as his militancy increased.

Implosion

Black Mask discontinued its broadside in the spring of 1968 and reformed as a “street gang with analysis” called Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAW/MF) (Biehl, 2015: 116–117; Grindon, 2015b: 188; Morea and Hahne, 2011: 86, 159–161). ¹⁵ As its first action, UAW/MF deposited trash from the Lower East Side at Lincoln Center during the sanitation strike of February 1968 (Grindon, 2015b: 190; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 120–132; TAM.530 Box 1 Folder 61). UAW/MF later participated in the Columbia University occupation that spring before leading occupations of the Fillmore East to protest the privatization of the East Village theater venue (Millner-Larsen, 2023: 151, 165–179). Besides producing leaflets and photomontages for underground newspapers, UAW/MF took inspiration from the Black Panther’s model of self-defense and began doing street patrols to interrupt arrests and deter police brutality on the Lower East Side (Grindon, 2015b: 192, 202; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 134, 142–143, 148–150, 159–165; Neumann, 2008: 100, 113–116). The skirmishes that ensued were a testing ground for Morea’s “affinity group” concept, a tactic inspired by anarchist militias from the Spanish Civil War (Grindon, 2015b: 192; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 155, 157–158; Morea and Hahne, 2011: 127–128, 156; Neumann, 2008: 60). UAW/MF’s deployment of the affinity group took a macho, spectacular form, these increasingly risky actions soon drawing police attention (Gitlin, 1987: 239; Grindon, 2015b: 202; Neumann, 2008: 149, 163–164).

By the beginning of 1969, after Morea was tried and acquitted of attempted murder charges for a stabbing that occurred during a confrontation in the Boston Common, it was undeniable that his militancy was unsustainable (Grindon, 2015b: 193; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 179; Morea and Hahne, 2011: 162; Neumann, 2008: 118–119). In the face of increased police repression, Morea and other UAW/MF members left New York City and fled to rural locales in western states, some joining the commune movement (Gitlin, 1987: 397; Grindon, 2015b: 203; Millner-Larsen, 2023: 182–184; Morea and Hahne, 2011: 165; Neumann, 2008: 124–132; Veysey, 1978: 184–185). The group ended up isolated and collapsed under pressure from the state.

Morea’s trajectory mirrors that of North, both being radicals who made miscalculations about collapse and the ripeness of revolution. Yet, the Democratic Party bloc was not in a hegemonic configuration nor equipped with brokers and paraparty organizations that could reintegrate Morea when his militancy led him astray. Whereas North found a robust and integrative party bloc that nurtured his militancy and introduced him to new audiences, Morea found an atomized party bloc that was unable to counteract the deleterious effects of radicalization and prevent his wing of the movement from imploding.

American Situationism and the Democratic Party bloc

Knabb and Morea radicalized during a conjuncture when “the left was a barren wasteland” that furnished few intellectual and organizational resources (Eidlin, 2018: 199). They adopted Situationism in a siloed fashion, without robust support during the early stages of the radicalization process. As they developed their distinct strains of Situationism, they did not encounter brokers nor paraparty organizations. Even if they had found partisan patrons, the Democrats’ interest-group configuration was not integrative and made it all but impossible to exert influence beyond the fringes of the New Left. These conditions locked them into the destructive loop of radicalization and led to isolation and implosion.

Conclusion and discussion

These four figures radicalized through sectarian schisms, advocated doctrinal purity, and commanded narrow movement bases. While the radicalization of Knabb and Morea resulted in isolation and implosion and confirms Gitlin’s theory of the consequences of radicalization, the trajectories of Rushdoony and North represent an anomalous case because they achieved ideological influence. The robust resources and hegemonic configuration of the Republican Party bloc helped Christian Reconstructionism develop while integrating, not diluting, its core ideas. The Democratic Party bloc’s resources were comparatively underdeveloped and its interest-group formation did not integrate radicals, American Situationism dissolving without achieving ideological influence.

Brokers granted Rushdoony and North opportunities and helped them leave an imprint on the Republican Party bloc’s agenda and discourse (Ingersoll, 2015: 22–23; Sanford, 2014: 96, 117–119). As the formal party hollowed, brokers such as J. Howard Pew, Pat Robertson, and Ron Paul gained increasing power and gave Reconstructionists a wider reach, making up for the movement’s narrow base (Cooper, 2024: 355–357; McVicar, 2015: 198–199, 209; Sanford, 2014: 187–190; Worthen, 2008: 431–432). This ideological influence has endured with figures like Senator Hawley and OMB Director Vought calling to “advance God’s kingdom” or invoking Abraham Kuyper, one of the forefathers of Christian Reconstructionism (Ingersoll, 2016; Stewart, 2021; Tanenhaus, 2018; Vought, 2021). The diffusion of Christian Reconstructionist orthodoxy parallels the Koch network’s dissemination of market fundamentalism (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2018; Skocpol and Hertel-Fernandez, 2016). However, instead of hosting tightly controlled gatherings like AFP, it was the resources and configuration of the Republican Party bloc that enabled Rushdoony and North to exert influence from the margins.

Christian Reconstructionism’s ideological influence was not guaranteed because of the embeddedness of Christianity in American politics. Rushdoony and North quarreled with other Christians and their sectarianism was polarizing, the New Right figure Richard Viguerie calling Rushdoony “harsh, judgmental, [and] divisive” (McVicar, 2015: 207). Moreover, they remained outsiders and represented an eschatological tendency that was subordinate to that of mainline evangelicalism. Yet, resources and opportunities expanded as the Republican Party transitioned to a hegemonic configuration and built an alternative system of power across civil society that had the capacity to integrate radicals.

Knabb and Morea encountered starkly different conditions as they radicalized. In 1965, Debord expressed his optimism that the “confused” state of the American left presented Situationists with a political opportunity to advance their struggle and surpass the “exhausted and integrated intelligentsia” in Europe (Debord, 2003: 102–103). But ten years later, ex-pro-Situs recognized that “the relative backwardness of American cultural theory” was a severe weakness that stunted American Situationism (Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 62). The evidence I presented here largely confirms this observation. Specifically, there were few intellectual and organizational resources with which to develop Situationist theory in a progressive direction and the Democrats’ interest-group configuration left radicals isolated on the margins of the party bloc. While the movement’s practices have influenced the repertoires of contention of the anti-globalization movement, Situationism has largely been relegated to museums and debates within academe (Ford, 1995: xiv; Grindon, 2009; Jacobs and Winks, 1975: 29; Klein, 2000; Stracey, 2014: 130–131).

Counterfactual left-wing success and limitations

Ideological influence had a specific meaning for the American Situationists. It meant breaking out of the confines of university campuses and developing a mass base. Although this did not occur, the mobilization of the Italian far left offers an instructive counterfactual scenario that Alimi et al. (2015: 182–186) have previously compared with the Weathermen and confirms the importance of hegemonic configurations. Between 1970 and 1973, protest broke free of the universities and Old-New Left alliances solidified, enabling “the students to ‘meet’ the working classes” (Della Porta, 1995: 27–28, 108). This was possible due to rising labor militancy and because the left party bloc adopted a hegemonic configuration that united trade unionists, members of the Italian Communist Party, and New Left activists (Alimi et al., 2015: 60, 72, 88–90; Della Porta, 1995: 28, 109). As in Italy, there was also a rise in labor militancy in the United States during the 1970s (Brenner et al., 2010; Hardt, 2023). The piece that was missing was a hegemonic party configuration. While the American Situationists’ resource deficit would have likely persisted due to the weak presence of the socialist tradition, the integrative dynamics of a hegemonic party configuration would have at least helped their movement connect with labor.

Could the Democrats have transitioned to a hegemonic configuration? The Jesse Jackson/Rainbow Coalition movement indicates this was on the table when, at the movement’s peak, Jackson received seven million votes in the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primaries. The Rainbow Coalition exhibited the key features of hegemonic party configurations. First, it articulated a unified party project using the theme of “economic common ground” (Elbaum, 2002: 275, 279). Second, it “[undertook] nonelectoral as well as electoral activism,” building an alternative system of power across civil society (Elbaum, 2002: 276, 280). Third, it achieved ascending integration, fusing social movement activists into a party bloc with labor and helping New Communist Movement organizations “[acquire] both a stabilizing anchor and a way to expand their reach and influence” (Elbaum, 2002: 279, 281). Explaining why this path was not taken is beyond the scope of this paper, but the Rainbow Coalition’s integrative dynamics and resource development affirm how hegemonic party configurations can alter the fortunes of radicalization and help movements achieve ideological influence.

Expanding the scope of the comparison and leveraging other methods would help future research specify the relative effect of different mechanisms. Several key studies about the trajectories of student radicals, while rich in detail, have run into problems of generalizability due to their small sample sizes (Giugni et al., 1999: 119–121). To address this problem and clarify whether resources such as brokers or academic mentors carry more causal weight, researchers might pursue in-depth interviews with a larger number of subjects from a wider array of groups within the left-libertarian and right-libertarian families. Future research might also incorporate new primary source material. While this paper analyzed party-movement dynamics beyond the immediate confines of the formal parties, data drawn from the Democratic and Republican National Committees’ records could clarify party officialdom’s responsiveness to radicals.

Despite the limitations of small-N prosopography, by deploying a comparative strategy that foregrounds how parties shape movement outcomes, I refine stylized accounts of radicalization and build theory that contributes to the literature on parties and movements. Key to this argument is the idea that parties are not merely demobilizing structures but rather can integrate and sustain radicalism (De Leon et al., 2015; Della Porta et al., 2017; Desai, 2001, 2002; Tuğal, 2009). As activists remain critical of the party form and fail to secure lasting change, it is incumbent on social movements to consider how reconfiguring parties and developing intellectual and organizational resources can increase the chances of success (Bevins, 2023).