Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right was released in the United States in November and will be available in the United Kingdom as of January 6, 2026. The reception here has been exciting, with great write-ups in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The LA Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Unpopulist, and I’ve been busier than ever with the podcast circuit. In anticipation of the UK release, I wanted to write an overview of the project for the Illiberalism Studies Program—to say something about my background and approach, and then articulate some of the main arguments of the book. The full introduction to the book is available on the PUP website.
My Background and Approach
I am trained as a political theorist in the “Straussian” tradition—that is, I studied with students of, or students of students of, Leo Strauss, the Jewish-German political philosopher known for the rediscovery of the esoteric tradition in political philosophy (the idea here being that philosophers have often written in a somewhat coded and stylized way—to reach various types of readers, to avoid persecution for unorthodox ideas, and to avoid pedagogical dogmatism). Strauss brought ancient political philosophy to life for generations of Americans, and I was a beneficiary of that project. But I also watched with some astonishment throughout 2016 and 2017 when Michael Anton, a “West Coast Straussian” and student of Strauss’s pupil Harry Jaffa, became the first person to deliver an intellectualized defense of Trump and Trumpism. At that moment, I started paying close attention to the intellectual world of right-wing conservatism, including by reading the works of others like Patrick Deneen and Yoram Hazony. And I started writing about it.
After January 6th, 2021, I assumed that this burgeoning intellectual movement would take the off-ramp and die off, but that never happened. And so in 2022, I wrote up a book proposal, got a contract with Princeton UP, and started writing.
Though I occasionally dip back into more historical terrain to discuss some of the precursors to the New Right, the book mainly moves chronologically from 2016 through 2024. The chapters usually include a profile or two of a key figure (the “Dramatis Personae ” for the book is available on the PUP website), and cover a year or so of history, though the chronology is loose.
What is the MAGA New Right?
I use the term MAGA New Right to describe the networked clusters of thinkers, intellectuals, and activists who have gathered together since 2016 and given intellectual sustenance to Trumpism. The term “New Right” is tricky because it has been applied to each new iteration of conservative intellectualism for the past fifty years or more: hence the MAGA qualifier.
The MAGA universe is very big, and my book maintains a sharp focus on the intellectuals and ideological dimensions of the movement. The thinkers matter because they are the people who have inspired Vice President JD Vance, and who are fellow-travellers with the conservative activist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo—the authors of the 1776 Commission Report and of Project 2025. They provided discursive hype and legal fodder for the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021. They have had a significant impact on right-wing culture over the last decade, from the staffers on Capitol Hill to the manosphere. If you were one of the many millions of people this summer who watched Mehdi Hasan’s “Surrounded” debate with the 20 far-right young people, then you saw some of these ideas in action there, too.
Before I go into more detail about the various factions of the movement, let me say something about the ideas that unify them. One of the best ways to do that is to describe what they have rejected—which is the old fusionist establishment.
Fusionism is the name of a governing philosophy invented by American conservatives in the middle of the 20th Century that aimed, in brief, to fuse libertarian economic policies with social conservatism and anti-communism. This trifecta of interests—free-market economics, social conservatism, and anti-communism abroad—is often referred to as Reagan’s three-legged stool (or “The Gipper’s Stool”), and it dominated the conservative intellectual movement for many decades. In addition to the Reagan administration, it shaped William F. Buckley’s National Review, as well as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation; it also informed neoconservatism, the conservative legal movement, and the modern Christian Right.
Today’s New Right stands for something quite different. Already back in 2016, in his famous “The Flight 93 Election” essay, Michael Anton offered a useful definition of the new movement. He said that three things define TRUMPISM: Nationalist economics, Secure borders, and an America First foreign policy.
We can see a clear contrast here with the old stool and some big shifts. Instead of free-market economics, we have nationalist, protectionist economics. Social conservatism is certainly still there, but it is more fervent and reactionary—and, I argue, more misogynistic. And we also have a new leg: Anton’s “secure borders,” which stands for restrictionist immigration policy (and its corollary, the preservation of the traditional American “nation”). Finally, instead of anti-communism, we have an America First foreign policy, which means, at least in theory, non-intervention and a retreat from the global stage. Certainly, it means a reorientation and transformation of how America uses its power.
That is the nature of the ideological shift, which can be summed up as a rejection of the universalist, rights-based liberal order and internationalism and its replacement with nativist populism. And although it is not the framework that I use in the book, the broad ideology of the MAGA New Right matches very well with the framework of “illiberalism” being developed by Marlene Laruelle and others. I discovered this body of work only late in the process of writing my book, and it was highly illuminating. Laruelle’s work on illiberalism neatly describes the most significant ideological elements of the MAGA New Right: Its rejection of checks and balances and constitutional rights protections in favor of executive power and majoritarianism, its embrace of state sovereignty, realpolitik and a transactional approach to foreign affairs, and its emphasis on cultural homogeneity and traditional social hierarchies.
The Factions
The MAGA New Right shares some basic ideological commitments, but it is not a monolith. I divide the New Right into four basic camps, each oriented in a particular direction, towards a distinctive telos or purpose (with the exception of the fourth group, the “Hard Right,” which is less cohesive). These several visions are often in tension with one another.
First, we have the Claremonters like Michael Anton and John Eastman, plus Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College. Inspired by Harry Jaffa and the Claremont Institute in California (not to be confused with Claremont-McKenna College or Claremont Graduate University), this group is oriented towards restoring the virtuous order of the American founding, as they understand it. They generally hold that we have departed so far from that republican vision today that counterrevolutionary actions are warranted. “Do you know what time it is?” the Claremonters ask, and they warn that “The hour is late.” This group is consumed by an existential catastrophism about the direction of the country and argues actively for extremist actions like what we saw on January 6th, 2021. The Claremonters have traditionally been against the growth of the administrative state.
Next, we have the Postliberals, which also includes some Catholic Integralists. All Catholic Integralists are Postliberals, but not all Postliberals are integralists. The Postliberal faction in America includes people like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, and Gladden Pappin. They stand opposed to liberalism and liberal democracy writ large, and ultimately want to usurp and commandeer the modern American state and to redirect it towards more communitarian—or conservative Catholic—ends, as they understand them. The goal here is described variously as spiritual salvation, or the Highest Good, or simply the Common Good. As Sohrab Ahmari put it in May of 2019, “‘The only way is through’—that is to say, to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”
Third, we have the National Conservatives (the NatCons), led by Yoram Hazony. This is the big umbrella organization for the New Right, and it is a capacious big tent. The NatCons line up behind hardcore, capital-N Nationalism. They want closed borders and a homogenous, Christian, American nation, because they think the nation-state system is the foundation of good politics. In the international arena, that means a diversity of nation-states, each with its own culturally homogenous core that risks veering into ethno-nationalism. The basic elements of this outlook were articulated by Yoram Hazony in his 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism. Peter Thiel was a supporter of National Conservatism from its outset. Furious Minds describes the gradual ideological radicalization of the National Conservative movement, as people like Amy Wax, Darren Beattie, Jason Richwine, Jonathan Keeperman, and Paul Gottfried were welcomed into the conference.
Finally, there is the Hard Right, where we find people like Bronze Age Pervert, Curtis Yarvin, Raw Egg Nationalist, and Stephen Wolfe. Ideologically, they all have their own special takes and worldviews that span the other three outlooks. They are more radical and violent in their rhetoric, and some of them are open about their fascism. Here is a chart from my book that categorizes some of the key players and institutions of the MAGA New Right:
Summary Thoughts
When I set out to write this book in 2023, I had several things in mind that I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to provide an explainer—to chronicle the development of the movement with some care, to profile the key figures involved, and to provide a clear and good-faith rendition of their ideas. I also wanted to convey the allure of the movement and to show why it could be seductive and exciting to young people. One of the surprising things about the MAGA New Right is how it mixes up high-brow themes and references—think of all the appeals to Greek and Roman iconography—with all things crass and low-brow, and I wanted to explore that.
Finally, I wanted to convey a sense of urgency with the book because much of what is happening on the MAGA New Right is properly extremist, highly reactionary and, in my view, volatile and dangerous. I wanted to capture that. I was also partly animated by a desire to address the smug arrogance of so many liberals who naively assume that there is nothing serious or intelligent about MAGA. If anything, Trump’s own anti-intellectualism and instinctual approach to politics has served to camouflage the elaborate intellectual terrain that has emerged in his wake, and which is sure to play a central role in the future of American politics. If Furious Minds has managed to peel back some of that camouflage and reveal the landscape it disguises—and to fuel further discussion and contestation—then I will count the book a success.
Laura K. Field is a writer and political theorist in Washington, DC, and a senior advisor for the Illiberalism Studies Program at The George Washington University. Her book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, was published by Princeton University Press in November 2025.
