It's rare for nearly all the inhabitants of the KYE podcast universe to gather in one place, but it happened earlier this month in—as you might guess—Florida, where the National Conservatism 2 conference was held. The proceedings were littered with extraordinary claims of a "totalitarian cult" (liberals and the left) deliberately trying to destroy the United States, with the help of Big Tech, China, and...university professors. The conference seemed to mark the ascendency of national conservatism on the Right, and perhaps the Republican Party. Matt and Sam break it all down: what it means, what it portends, and why they're wrong.Sources:Watch all the National Conservatism conference videos (YouTube)David Brooks, "The Terrifying Future of the American Right," Atlantic, November 18, 2021J.G. Ballard, Super Cannes (Picador, 2000)Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (David van Nostrand Company/William Volker Fund, 1962)Background Listening:Know Your Enemy, "The Definitely Not-Racist National Conservatives," July 30, 2019                                            "The Rise of the Illiberal Right," July 12, 2019                                             "Frank Meyer: Father of Fusionism," November 10, 2021...and don't forget you can subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Matt talks with playwright Ben Firke about I Am The GooseKing, which just finished its debut run at The Tank theater in New York City. Here's a description of the play:Jane Vazquez is a journalist on assignment for a tech blog. She travels to New Hampshire to interview a young conspiracy theorist and YouTuber named Phil, who has thousands of followers who embrace his elaborate "vegetable conspiracy," first outlined by the mysterious GooseKing. As Jane goes deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of Phil's family, she finds herself in a mire of journalistic ethics.To learn more, watch the I Am The Gooseking trailer or read an excerpt from the play. To contact Ben Firke, follow him on Twitter (@pasta_ben).Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Matt and Sam dedicate an entire episode to an under appreciated but indispensable figure in the founding of post-war conservatism: Frank Meyer, the father of "fusionism."Meyer was  a man of  contradictions: an ex-communist ideologue who longed for consensus; a cantankerous, unyielding debater who kept his friends and rivals close; a bohemian, individualist Jew who argued vociferously for freedom and against repressive orthodoxies, but who converted to Catholicism on his death bed. In this episode, we explore his life, work, and legacy — including a close reading of his most famous book, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo. Along the way, we ask some big questions: Why was it so important for Meyer to find a philosophical justification for fusing the traditional and libertarian strains of the conservative movement? How did he go about doing it? And did it work? Today, many — especially younger — conservatives consider fusionism to be a dead consensus, a marriage of erstwhile convenience in which one partner, economic libertarians, got everything they wanted, while the other, Christian traditionalists, have seen unfettered capitalism and licentious liberalism destroy the precious permanent things they had hoped to conserve: Church, family, and community.  As the seams of the fusionist alliance fray, we look back to the man who conceived it in the first place. This one is for the nerds. We hope you enjoy it! Further Reading: Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Regnery, 1962)George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976)Jeffrey Hart, The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times (ISI Books, 2006)Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative (Doubleday, 1979)Kevin J. Smant, Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and  the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement (ISI Books, 2002)Various, "Against the Dead Consensus," First Things, March 21, 2019Frank S Meyer, "The Twisted Tree of Liberty," National Review  Jan 16, 1962L. Brent Bozell Jr. "Freedom or Virtue," National Review, Sept 11, 1962...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes! 

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy 

Matt and Sam are joined by historian Lauren Stokes and writer John Ganz to unpack the American Right's ongoing embrace of Viktor Orbán's Hungary, from Rod Dreher's springtime junket there  to Tucker Carlson broadcasting from the country to the adoring attention it receives from an assortment of "postliberal" intellectuals What gives? Your hosts and their esteemed guests break it down, including: what the American Right gets from Orbán, and what he gets from them; the 20th century history of Hungary that provides the backdrop to its current politics; the long history of U.S. conservatives of admiring authoritarians abroad; John's visit to a Nazi bookshop in Budapest; and more!Sources and Further Reading:Elisabeth Zerofsky, "How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary," New York Times Magazine, Oct 19, 2021Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "What American Conservatives See in Hungary's Leader," New Yorker, Sept 13, 2021David Baer, translation/Twitter thread of Rod Dreher's interview with Klubradio, Aug 29, 2021John Ganz, "Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part I: The Right Goes to Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 10, 2021                           "Anti-Democratic Vistas, Part II: Reflections on the Revolutions in Hungary," Unpopular Front, Aug 13, 2021...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon.com for access to all of our bonus episodes.

Matt is joined by Know Your Enemy favorite Sarah Jones to discuss her recent New York Magazine essay, "An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic." They discuss their shared religious upbringing and college years among fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, why Sarah became an atheist (and Matt didn't), and the reasons she reopened the question of God's existence during the pandemic—and what she did and didn't find along the way. Other topics include: C.S. Lewis, the nature of rituals, how we hold our beliefs, and more!Sources:Sarah Jones, "An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic," New York Magazine, October 11, 2021Andre Dubus, "A Father's Story," from Selected Stories (Vintage)T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," from Four Quartets (1943)C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne)...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes.

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to this bonus episode, and all of our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/knowyourenemy

It's impossible to comprehend the state of conservative politics — or American politics in general — without looking closely at the wars we've been waging for the past two decades. The story we've been telling about American conservatism has been incomplete without a deep-dive on the so-called Global War on Terror. Luckily, Spencer Ackerman has written the perfect book to occasion such a dialogue. In Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, Ackerman provides a richly detailed (and acutely frustrating) account of the perversions of justice, liberalism, humanity, and the constitution wrought by the forever wars. Our discussion with Ackerman goes from the Oklahoma City Bombing to the cancellation of Susan Sontag to the battles among neocons and paleocons to define the post-9/11 era. We also touch on the CIA's torture program, nation-building in Afghanistan, and the hypocrisies of the Trump-era Resistance. In typical KYE fashion, it's a complex and wide-ranging conversation you won't find elsewhere. Further Reading:Susan Sontag et al. "Tuesday, and After: New Yorker writers respond to 9/11." The New Yorker, Sept 16, 2001.Bernard Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," The New Yorker, Nov 11, 2001.Jake Tapper, "Pat Buchanan: America First," Salon, Dec 4, 2001.Spencer Ackerman, "The CIA’s Outsourced Torture Is Lost To History," Forever Wars, Aug 6, 2021.Sam Adler-Bell, "How the War on Terror Fuels Trump," Jacobin, Aug 13, 2016....and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon to hear all of our bonus episodes!

This is a slightly different kind of Know Your Enemy episode—a conversation about hope and despair as the effects of climate change bear down upon us. At the center of that conversation is a brilliant new book, Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of the World, that focuses not on the facts of climate change or how to stop it, but what it feels like to imagine and live into the future in the knowledge of its existence. Matt and Sam are joined by Sherrell and Dorothy Fortenberry, a playwright and television writer currently working on Extrapolations, an upcoming limited series for Apple TV+ that focuses on climate change. Sources and Further Reading:Daniel Sherrell, Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World (Penguin, 2021)Pope Francis, Laudato si' ("On Care for Our Common Home"), May 2015Dorothy Fortenberry, "Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore: What Donald Trump Understands about Politics Today," Commonweal, November 5, 2020Sam Adler-Bell, "Beautiful Losers: The Left Should Resist the Comforts of Defeat," Commonweal, March 11, 2020...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!