If you've been following American politics in the Trump era, there's a decent chance you've heard of something called the New Right.

It's a loose movement of radical intellectuals who share both a basic hostility to American liberal democracy and real influence in the current White House.

They all think the system is rotted,

that it needs to be fundamentally overhauled,

and they all think that Trump can be a vehicle

for putting something better in its place.

But, you know, why do they think that?

How much influence do they really have,

and what would a response to their rising prominence even look like?

I'm Zach Beecham, and this is the gray area.

My guest today is Laura Field.

Laura and I have followed each other's work for a while.

She's the author of a forthcoming book about the new right called Furious Minds.

And I'm the author of On the Right, which is Fox's newsletter about the political right and its ideas.

We came together last week on a panel at the liberalism in the 21st century conference in D.C. And we discussed anti-liberal political

thought, our shared interests about things that are deeply depressing, and so on. That being said,

it was a really fun time. And I'm so glad that I got a chance to meet her there. I'm also really

glad that I got a chance to tape this episode with her.

Laura's a trained political theorist, and she spent a lot of time in the conservative intellectual world,

tracking the trends that would eventually produce the new right.

She saw them firsthand while they were germinating, and got to meet a lot of the people who were involved in sort of the creation of this world.

Her book's a fascinating taxonomy of the wild world of far-right thinking, and it's one you should definitely pre-order.

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