Given the profoundly anti-intellectual posture of the MAGA movement, with its rejection of science and empirical fact, It seems positively counter-intuitive to speak about MAGA “intellectuals.” But a December New York Times book review profiled the men (and so far as I can tell, they’re all White men) who have mounted “scholarly” defenses of the bigotries that animate the movement.
The book is “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” by political theorist Laura Field, who has written broadly about the movement. She divides her “Furious Minds” into three main groups. “Claremonters,” are clustered around California’s Claremont Institute; the “Postliberals,” want to curb individual rights in favor of collectivism, which they label “the common good”; and “National Conservatives,” who “endorse a homogenous nation-state and often embrace elements of Christian nationalism.” She labels another, less cohesive group the “Hard Right Underbelly,” and tells readers that figures in that group adopt “aggressively silly nicknames like “Raw Egg Nationalist” (who has a Ph.D. from Oxford) and “Bronze Age Pervert” (who has a Ph.D. from Yale).” That latter cohort is extremely online, promoting what she describes as a “hyper-masculinist aesthetic.” Several are openly racist and fascist.
What all these groups share is a hatred of liberalism — defined not as a partisan political ideology that is left-wing (though they hate that too), but as a system of government that values individualism and pluralism. Postliberals like Patrick Deneen, a political theorist whom Field credits with “the most palatable, sanitized version of Trumpy populism that one is likely to encounter,” started out by criticizing a liberal establishment composed of mainstream centrists in both parties.
I read one of Deneen’s books–“Why Liberalism Fails”– a few years ago, and was repelled by his thoroughgoing rejection of America’s founding philosophy in favor of a theocratic state rooted in (his version of) Christianity. His dissatisfaction with pluralism and civic equality appear to characterize the other figures she profiles, who she suggests suffer from an “apocalyptic despair, replacing the hard work of thinking and reflecting on the world — in all of its pluralism and plenitude — with a reflexive embrace of coercive political power.”
In her book, Field also examines the fevered misogyny of the New Right, noting that terms like “gynocracy” and “the longhouse” have become “overwrought MAGA epithets for an unbearably feminized and pluralist society.” She doesn’t shy away from admitting the deficits of liberal rationalism, but she also reminds the New Right’s intellectual critics that they are able to indulge their fantasies of authoritarianism thanks to the “freedom and security afforded by the liberal democracy they loathe.”
In the societies they want to emulate, dissent from the preferred ideology of the regime isn’t tolerated. But of course, they seem convinced that the autocracy they favor would be founded on their preferred beliefs…
These “intellectuals” are trying to provide philosophical coherence and theoretical grounding for what is actually an emotional and irrational MAGA movement founded on revulsion for modernism and the social changes that they believe are eroding the dominance of White Christian males–hence their efforts to provide “principled” defenses of racism and misogyny, and the necessity of White Christian control.
As the Times’ book review concludes,
In a memorable passage, Field breaks the fourth wall and addresses the men whose cramped extremism has become so familiar to her. “You take the liberal world for granted, too,” she writes. “This has allowed you to don the language of grievance and oppression far too lightly, without having given enough thought to what oppression actually means — the kind of oppression that doesn’t let you love who you want to, or vote in free elections or not be disappeared.”
Field detects a strain of decadence underlying the fanaticism, with soft, comfortable men mistaking cruel titillation for insight and trying their mightiest to look tough: “It is unseemly, and it is unmanly, and some of you will miss your liberalism when it’s gone.”
We the People need to protect and defend the liberal democratic society that gives these ungrateful “cramped extremists” the freedom to defend the morally indefensible.
It’s good that you put the word intellectual in quotes when referring to these small-minded, frightened little men. I suggest a less-polite description: Intellectual dwarfs. Their egos are in tatters and therefore must be misogynistic out of necessity. Little Suzie must have rejected them back in grade school.
Add to that a kind of pathological self-service. I offer that the majority of these men have never done anything for anyone but themselves. Their actual contributions to society end with their consumption of goods and services. Folks like this have always been around. Sinclair Lewis knew about them when he wrote “It Can’t Happen Here”. That was 1935.
How these guys equate a high degree of masculinity and chest-pounding with Christianity is baffling … until you realize that they don’t even know how to spell the word “hypocrisy”.
Welcome all to 2026!
This article gave me a headache. Maybe I stayed up too late! 😉
Or, maybe it was a tad too scholarly. If the book or review didn’t mention Curtis Yarvin, then it missed the underbelly of the right-wing philosophy (thinker). He still thinks that Trump can take over the government single-handedly and eliminate the nation-state. He is a major influence over Musk, Thiel, and the Broligarchy, including JD Vance. Then, of course, we have the Christian Nationalists.
I think they all agree that Trump will eliminate this year’s election in November because he is going to lose, and the consequences of what that would entail are enormous.
As for a broader look, the easiest way to lay it out is MAGA vs MIGA. That split was evident at AmericaFest, hosted by TPUSA. As far as the right-wing base, their intellectuals are Ben Shapiro, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Meghan Kelly, and Steve Bannon. Shapiro and the pro-Israel wing have become carved out of MAGA.
p.s. Erika Kirk’s high-profile lawyers have filed John Doe defamation and cease-and-desist lawsuits. She’s getting ready to go on the offensive. It won’t work. If the TPUSA house collapses from within, it will weigh heavily on the movement. And, to be sure, Erika and her mom are pro-Israel. Charlie was drifting away…
The MAGAT world seems to think a dog eat dog scenario, in which only the strong survive, is the ideal. These intellectual midgets often cite studies that have been determined to be manipulated or that come to a different conclusion, but in which some of the narrative seems support their position. Who’s going to go and read tedious papers, after all?
What makes me sad is that we seem to be losing or destroying any notion of the “common good”. We all got the polio vaccine, not just to protect ourselves, but to stamp out a crippling disease. It was the same for measles. It’s no longer the case.
I’ve spent waaay too much time studying Christian nationalism, thanks to our Lt. Governor. I’ve come to the conclusion these folks think backwards from a goal, a theocracy run by white males–some explicitly call for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, I am not kidding–some kind of idealized, gauzy recreation of a 1950s America. The idea that separation of church and state is a “lie” or a “myth” supports the end goal. “Assimilation” supports the end goal. They also play the long game. This year’s Indiana school board elections under the new statute are intended to elect CN nominees, whose #1 priority is to teach Hoosier schoolkids an interpretation of history that works backwards from the same goal. If you have the time, check out this CNN piece on Doug Wilson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u29UJtpA3x0 and LG Beckwith’s position on separation of church and state https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNYVYWjSy7U
So what are the rest of us going to do?
My only difference with Vernon today is to suggest he re-phrase his admittedly “impolite” characterization of small-minded MAGA writers as “intellectual dwarfs”.
One of the most broad-minded and courageous champions of liberal values I’ve ever met was a short-statured artist and musician named Wayne, whose Christian identity exibited in the fullest, richest sense of the word… Showing love and compassion for all. No dwarfism whatsoever. He was a 4-foot tall giant among us.
And the news this New Year’s morning that Kristy Noem intends to deport 100 million Americans – an astonishing number that includes all legal and undocumented foreign-born Americans, plus 50 million native-born US citizens besides, none of them pure-blood white Europeans, one can easily guess – cinches the generalization that this whole crew of MAGA adherents is thoroughly racist and fascist. No room for doubt or argument left.