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At this moment in time, the very future of democracy in America has become a serious question. Many journalists and commentators have raised questions of crisis of White, Christian, male authority that impel an 'illiberal democracy', one-party rule, and/or a new civil War. The wave of progressive movements in the 1960s, resurgent in the 21st century, and challenging traditional, essentialist, identities and values were experienced by many as threats and dangers, fostering fears, anxieties, and grievances that elicited backlashes engendering various reactionary movements that are now a powerful force. These 'authoritarian populisms', racialized nationalisms, gendered ethnoreligious nationalisms, neo-fascisms, and indeed some clearly fascist movements extolling racial, gender, or Christian supremacy are mobilizing to preserve the culture and country of the 'real people' who feel victimized, challenged, and face demise. A basic fault of modern political economies has been the fundamental conflict between political democracy, majority rule, and/or rules of law and the economic anarchy, which privileges a few while many face duress; these conditions lead to the irrationality and scapegoating, especially racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism flourish to foster a variety of authoritarian, reactionary mobilizations across the globe.

For Marx, the alienation of wage labor and inherent crisis tendencies of capital would foster collective grievances and support for communist movements promising revolution and the abolition of private property, creating a society wherein "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." But a combination of material factors, the rise of the welfare state, increased wages, and later consumerism as well as ideologies such as religion and/or nationalism, thwarted revolutionary fervor in industrial societies. Nevertheless, Marxist theory provides a number of important insights that help us understand contemporary social mobilizations beginning with noting how historical legacies, materials conditions, class interests, and episodic crises dispose many movements, even those that take place on cultural terrains in public spheres and spaces while political economic/historical factors may not be evident. This can clearly be shown by understanding the nature of racism and the massive protests following the murder of George Floyd. The roots of racism, qua white 'superiority' were rooted in the colonial era in which the settlers enslaved Africans and forcibly displaced the native populations for clear economic gains. This was ideologically 'legitimated' by the dehumanization of racialized Others, it also provided 'superior' status and identity to Christian Caucasians. Moreover, such ideologies were sustained through violence, whether armed plantation owners, slave catchers, militias, and later police. For a variety of reasons, slavery ended but racism endures to this very day. But that said, between the growing economic and educational status of Africans Americans and the more progressive cosmopolitan/inclusive values and practices of the young, racism, for many, has waned. But police violence has not. In the face of growing inequality, the pandemic crisis that led to an economic crisis, especially onerous for the young and peoples of color, the murder of George Floyd, going viral, indicated how a number of the crises of neoliberal transnational capitalism migrated to the culture and led to massive protests and resistance against racism and police brutality.

One of the more fundamental questions for sociological theory and research is the extent to which rule though consent is generally far more effective than coercion, but how do ruling classes, or perhaps status groups, engineer that very consent? How do elites get large masses of people to "willingly assent" to their claims of entitlements to their wealth, power and status? This was a fundamental question for Marx, who attempted to understand how and why capitalism endured despite its hardships and adversities for the vast majorities of the workers. This became one of the central questions for later Marxist thinkers such as Lukacs, Gramsci and the Frankfurt Scholars. In the present issue, the work of a number of scholars, influenced by these traditions, will attempt to provide some answers to the fundamental question of why people act in ways that subvert their own self-interests, elide their freedom and thwart self-realization.

Throughout history, people have accepted ideologies that 'legitimate' certain hierarchical social arrangements and subsequently valorize the 'desirability' of consent to the system and its leadership cadres. While rules, norms and regulations, as well as leadership, are essential for social life in any complex society, all too often certain political economic systems, their dominant values and leadership cadres tend to move beyond maintaining social order if not harmony, and instead become systems of domination, subjugation and exploitation of subalterns. For the most part people have 'willingly consented' to class and ideological domination. But why do people consent to systems/leaders that act contrary to their self-interests whether economic, political or personal (self-direction/realization)? This has often been understood as 'false consciousness', a term first used by Engels and Lenin. But this concept raises a number of questions about culture, mediation, desire, agency and the limited capacity of people to understand social reality without a strong party. For Gramsci, hegemony, the ideological control of culture, fostered 'willing assent' rather than simply compliance to power. His insights are especially valuable given how millions of Americans vehemently support economic policies that benefit only the elites, while their own economic situations become more precarious. They oppose unionization, universal healthcare and deny global warming .We must ask why so many people 'willingly assent' to policies that benefit only the wealthy and thus act contrary to their own economic political self-interest and actively engage in denial of the consequences of their actions.

The recent mobilizations in the Middle East, Southern Europe, and United States were both inevitable given the implosion of global capital, and at the same time unexpected and unpredictable. How are we to understand these mobilizations? This article suggests that NSM, New Social Movement theory, with its concerns for identity, culture, and meaning, in which the transformation of identity becomes the basis of subsequent social transformation remains a useful starting point. But given the contradictions of global capital, as well as developments in social movement theory, there is a need to further consider the importance of the legitimation crises of the political economy migrating to the subjective realms of identity and emotion that impel mobilizations that are informed by morality and visions that may be utopian. The Occupy movements illustrate these relationships.

Right wing populism has typically consisted of anti-statist/elitist mobilizations by the 'common people' opposed to government policies and/or various out-groups. Such cycles of contention, typically prompted by various social changes and/or crises, have long been an essential feature of American society. The Tea Party (Parties) appeared in 2009 as a response to economic stagnation and crisis, secular challenges to traditional religious identities and the election of an African American president. The Tea Partiers were generally highly conservative, highly religious, rural/suburban, lower middle class Republicans. Such movements might be best understood as reactionary 'resistance movements' that attempt to defend and retain traditional identities and statuses based on race, patriarchy and hetero-normativity that have been under assault by late modern 'network' society. Such movements, prompted by anger, rage and ressentiment may garner attention and even wider support, but if/when they gain power, they foster 'buyer's remorse' and eventually wane.

How can we best understand contemporary reactionary movernents? What are the continuities and differences with classical fascism, what qualities are invariant,. what qualities are historically contingent? Marxian analyses, especially after the Second Internationale, critiqued capitalism from the standpoint of wage labor. But Fascism was far more than a response to unemployment, it was a complex political outcome of historical legacies. cultural traditions, the pre-fascist political economy, and its class structure. class relationships and class contradictions reflected in voting patterns and the kinds of social movements. Last, but not least, certain patterns of individual character structure, qua authority, and its expressions in personal identities held a cultural and psychic affinity for fascism, This was a central concern for the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (cf Smith 1992).

Following work by Michel Foucault and Bryan Turner, the body has become an important topic for social inquiry. One major debate concerns the nature of social control vs agency. For Foucault, the gaze, surveillance, imposes disciplinary practices that inscribe identities upon docile bodies. Yet he also notes that domination fosters resistance. For others such as Turner or Shilling, the body can be seen as a site of agency and locus of empowerment. Late capitalism, in its globalized moment, has produced enormous wealth, but at the same time this wealth sustains hierarchies in which only a few benefit. Vast numbers of people remain alienated in their work and politically powerless to foster change. People find themselves entrapped in a disenchanted, rationalized world of rules and regulations. Finally, for many, the mass-mediated commodified culture is superficial and inauthentic. Given such conditions, we have seen the re-emergence of the carnival, which Bakhtin saw as legitimating a variety of forms of transgressions as critique and resistance. This can be seen in many ways: in the popularity of tattoos and piercings, in punk/metal music and lifestyles, and in `porn chic' as a fashion statement. Each form of adornment, fashion and lifestyle can be understood as a way of claiming agency to resist domination, invert disciplinary codes and experience `utopian moments'. Body adornments would valorize the `primitive' as a protest against economic inequality and repression of the body. Punk/metal music and fashions empower audiences and allow expressions of rage and protest. Finally, `porn chic' can be seen as a critique of patriarchal codes of morality and adornment in which the body becomes a basis of empowerment and authenticity. Notwithstanding, most such `transgressions' serve as `repressive desublimations' that shunt discontent from the political economy to the culture and incorporate potential dissidence.