Wisdom of Crowds What the New Right Actually Believes
Jan 27, 2026
Laura K. Field, political theorist and author of Furious Minds, maps the intellectual currents behind the MAGA new right. She outlines core ideas like economic nationalism and strict borders. The conversation traces how essays become policy, dissects factional schisms, and probes liberalism’s blindspots and how that opened space for radicalized boundaries.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
How The Book Began
- Laura K. Field describes how her Straussian training led her to follow the Claremont world after being shocked by the 2016 Trump victory and Michael Anton's "Flight 93" essay.
- She expected the movement to fade after January 6 but instead watched it consolidate power and wrote Furious Minds to trace that evolution.
From Intellectuals To Policy
- The new right rejects establishment conservatism's free-trade, liberal-internationalist model and emphasizes economic nationalism, secure borders, and America First foreign policy.
- These ideas have migrated from argument into policy, shaping tariffs, reindustrialization, immigration, and aspects of the Biden administration's stance.
Ideas Behind Immigration Hardening
- The Flight 93 argument and Claremont-influenced writing framed immigration as an existential threat with racial and cultural overtones tied to "great replacement" themes.
- That intellectual framing now informs hardline immigration policy and exclusionary moves in the current administration.
