Meet the ‘Angry, Aggrieved’ New Right

The New Right has been associated with everyone from Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to right-wing influencers and Catholic integralists. The breadth of the term can make it hard to define: Is the New Right a budding ideological movement or a toxic online subculture? What does it mean if it’s both?

Stephanie Slade is a senior editor at the magazine Reason, and has covered the New Right extensively. She argues that the New Right subverts the conventional left/right political binary and is better understood as the illiberal backlash to classical liberalism.

This conversation is a tour of the New Right. The guest host, David French, talks to Slade about the politicians who have been attached to the ideological movement; why the New Right is critical of Reaganism; her problems with its self-branding as “common good conservatism”; how the Ron DeSantis “Stop Woke Act” signals a diversion from conservative free speech values; why the New Right is so angry; how online factions of the New Right are often in a delicate dance between flirting with bigotry and actually aligning with the provocative beliefs they post; why Catholic integralism matters, even if the average Catholic might have never heard of the ideology; and much more.

This episode was hosted by David French, an Opinion columnist at The New York Times. Previously, he was a senior editor and co-founder of The Dispatch and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

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Book Recommendations:

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Annie-Rose Strasser. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

[Slim]

Ezra Klein is out of touch of reality. The guy probably has never lived in such difficulty in his life.

[michaelk]

Great episode! I was pleasantly surprised by the careful, thoughtful, i -depth analysis with a minimum of opponent demonizing.

[andym]

I like to say that half of all Americans are more conservative than the other half, and that both need equal representation if we're going to maintain a democracy. The true enemy to our little experiment of self-governance is illiberalism.

[Eristtx]

"The right and liberalism sound like an oxymoron"

Ouch. I know she clarified that right away and that it's not her opinion - but rather an attempt to convey the impression of the American voter. Still, "ouch."

I'm from Europe. Our political scene is... boring. Nothing kills fun better than French idealistic chaos crossed with German love of bureaucracy. So, like everyone else, I listen more to American podcasts. It just goes to show the interesting dominance of American culture, which appeals to a wider audience than one might think.

Our public space, for example, often adopts topics that are debated in the US. So when you were addressing abortion? While no one wanted to regulate them here - not surprising in the Czech Republic, the most atheistic country in the world - yet our progressive left took up abortion and began attacking our confused Christians who didn't understand what was going on.

The problem is that we also tend to assign roles when taking up issues - i.e. you're a leftist, you're pro-choice. And you're a right-winger, you're playing conservative. Here's your set of arguments and hooray!

But our right wing... is not very conservative. The political mainstream, the sort of "middle" in our country is the liberal right-wing voter. In both cases, with the caveat "moderate".

And on the other hand - we do have a certain new progressive left, it's just that they may be noisy on Twitter, but realistically they are the group everyone in our country sincerely hates.

The mainstream left in this country is the spiritual successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And it is a conservative party of the grossest extreme.

If I lived in the US, when trying to decide between the Conservatives and their regulation of abortion and denial of global climate change, or the Liberals and their absurd pursuit of justice that will inevitably end in tyranny... I would really suffer as a voter in your country. Then again, I'd be far from the Russians, so... I guess you can't have everything.

[Enkidoo]

11:27 Barak Obama "We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends"

That quote started with Obama.

[michaelrogers]

This is why many of us don't hesitate to call call it "fascism". It's not because we want to be inflammatory or don't understand the historical context. It's because we DO understand the history of the reactionary culturally conservative fascist movement as it developed under the ideas of Evola and Mussolini, and we think this is the same phenomenon happening in an American context, under the same sort of anti-liberal ideology.

[johnstewart]

This is the Alt Right, not the Neo Conservatives or Neo Liberals.

[mrcuttime]

This was very enlightening! Thank you.

[jamesbennett]

Bizarro World - accusing your opponents of what you are doing and thinking.

[fishdudeify]

...like changing the interpretation of "freedom of religion" from freedom of choice of what religion an individual follows to the freedom of the individual to discriminate against groups of people based on the individuals religion?

[itsallminor]

Enjoyable and mildly interesting
Seems "backlash" to the left breaking of the rules is appropriate. Seems the right has awakened to the task of finding equibrium again

[kevinashcroft]

On the face of it great policies ; but I would be reluctant to drop my guard with these people and so become a Conservative cultist ; they probably need a large island to retire to and work out their frustrations .

[lauraw.]

14:09 the state does lean, and the goal should be balancing; aim for kindness, common good more & less abuse of power.
24:09 yikes - this doesn’t bode well for democracy.

[lauraw.]

38:23 38:39 colorblindness AND reparations. It is not appropriate to expect whole groups to not desire overdue acknowledgement of past bad behavior - even if it is a generation or more old.

[bernardzsikla]

This guest leans toward grouping the new right as a group with the more mainstream right. She might build a better formed perspective if she didnt say, this group thinks this or that. She is doing what the right has been doing for decades, which is lumping the most extreme points of the left, with the main stream left.
The right and the new right has a spectrum just as is the left and far left does. There are differences and overlapping opinions with many aspects in politics and of culture.
Btw, I am a Reagan republican that voted for McCain, and then Obama then Biden. I would vote for Biden again or kamala Harris or Nicki Haley.

[JMBvideo]

Do I have to meet them? Ugh. They’ve always been angry and aggrieved. Im kinda sick of it

[js-at]

The "new right" has been angry for at least 15 years.

[behelertrespass]

Funniest thing David French has done in a decade.

[nealhowlett]

I have a friend that's an Evangelical, she's a complete outcast in our community growing up poor in a affluent town. I feel her religion is almost a revenge on those who made her feel bad growing up. She can bludgeon them at least in her mind with the I'm saved in my religious conservative skin and you don't stand a chance of getting to heaven haha.

[baadd]

Love that you make up new boxes with your own definitions and place random people into them. You really need to speak with actual conservatives and realize that their world view is vastly different from yours and though we have common terms it probably has a different meaning in different contexts.