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The Ezra Klein Show

Meet the ‘Angry, Aggrieved’ New Right

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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. Mentioned: More information about Ezra’s lecture at UC Berkeley “The Lost Boys of the American Right” by David French “Both Left and Right Are Converging on Authoritarianism” by Stephanie Slade Book Recommendations: Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. 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.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.

0:16.6

Hey it is Ezra.

0:17.6

I am on book leave, but our guest's week is my colleague at the Times Opinion columnist

0:22.0

David French, whose work I have learned a ton from, and whose just way of comporting

0:26.9

himself in public life, I've often quite admired.

0:30.6

He began his career as a lawyer, he has deployed with the US military, he's the author of

0:35.5

many books, including Divided Be Fall, America's Session Threat, and How to Restore Our Nation,

0:41.2

and I'm excited to see what he does here behind the mic.

0:43.4

I hope you enjoyed it too.

0:48.3

One more thing today.

0:49.5

So I am doing the annual Jefferson Memorial Lecture for UC Berkeley, which I'm excited

0:55.4

about as a kid who grew up in California, idolizing, and then getting repeatedly rejected

0:59.2

by UC Berkeley when I applied there.

1:02.2

And it's going to be the first time I try to work through the ideas of the book in public,

1:06.3

with an audience, in conversation, with someone else who knows what they're talking about

1:09.7

on these issues, Amy Lerman in this case.

1:12.4

And if you'd like to join and hear what I've been thinking about, you can.

1:16.0

Tickets are available at calperformance.org, we'll put the link to the event page in

1:21.2

show notes.

1:22.2

And again, that is October 5th at UC Berkeley.

1:30.5

At first glance, the US Senator J.D. Vance, Catholic, Integralists, and Bigoted Right Wing

1:35.4

Influencers, might not be so obviously connected, but they've all been associated with the

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