Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, published earlier this month, is a book we simply had to discuss. Listeners to this podcast will recognize its cast of characters—conservative intellectuals like Patrick Deneen, Michael Anton, John Eastman, Adrian Vermeule, and Harry Jaffa, among others—whose ideas and influence Field carefully categorizes and evaluates, bringing order to an unruly decade of intellectual history. Topics include: Leo Strauss and the problem of great teachers; the use and abuse of grand narratives by the right; how the Claremonters went all in on Trump; the permission given by postliberals to some of the nastiest impulses on the right; and more!

Sources:

Laura K. Field, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (2025)

— "Revisiting Why Liberalism Failed: A Five-Part Series," Niskanen Center, Dec 21, 2020

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (2018)

— Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023)

Matthew Sitman, "Liberalism and the Catholic Left," Commonweal, Dec 3, 2018

Publius Decius Mus/Michael Anton, "The Flight 93 Election," Claremont Review of Books, Sept 5, 2016

Adrian Vermeule, "Integration from Within," American Affairs, Spring 2018

The Editors, "The Fight is Now," The American Mind, Nov 5, 2020

Anemona Hartocollis, "On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need 'Safe Spaces,'" New York Times, Dec 8, 2016

Further Listening: 

KYE: "Rise of the Illiberal Right," July 12, 2019. 

KYE: "Midnight in the Garden of American Heroes (On West Coast Straussians)," Feb 11, 2021. 

KYE: "Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow," June 21, 2021. 

KYE: "The Afterlife of January 6," July 19, 2021.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoing arguments about architecture that his ascension has occasioned. Proponents of a RETVRN to the architectural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome are prominent in MAGA circles; partisans of a neo-classical revival populate government commissions, and their prescriptions have found expression in several executive orders. To understand who these people are, what their movement wants, and the kernel of truth in their grievances, we talked to architectural critic and proprietor of McMansion Hell Kate Wagner. We start by analyzing Trump's ballroom and the demolishing the East Wing of the White House — the perfect way into MAGA architecture and the mind of their Beautiful Builder himself, Donald J. Trump.

Sources:

Kate Wagner, "Duncing About Architecture," New Republic, Feb 8, 2020

— "Trump Will Not Make Architecture Great Again," The Nation, Jan 7, 2025

— "The Real Problem With Trump’s Cheesy Neoclassical Building Fetish," Feb 12, 2025

— "what the fuck are we doing anymore," The Late Review, Jan 9, 2025.

Charlie Nash, "Trump Admits He Could've Built Ballroom Without Destroying the East Wing, But 'It Looked Like Hell,'" Mediate, Nov 10, 2025

This episode isn't focused on a single topic or text, but rather just wanting to have a wide-ranging conversation with our guest, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and author of the recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. We start by discussing the appalling wave of Islamophobic attacks against Zohran Mamdani during the last weeks of his victorious mayoral campaign, the short-sighted embrace of such bigotry by too many American Jews and Jewish institutions, the current iterations of anti-semitism roiling the right, religious tradition and progressive politics, changing your mind, and more.

Listen again: "Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL" (w/ Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, & Peter Beinart), Sept 26, 2023

Sources:

Zohran Mamdani, "My Message to Muslim New Yorkers—and Everyone Who Calls This City Home," YouTube, Oct 24, 2025

Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025)

Mark Mazower, On Antisemitism: A Word in History, (2025)

Arwa Mahdawi, "Mamdani's Mayoral Race was Marred by Unhinged Islamophobia. It's Not Going Away Soon," The Guardian, Nov 6, 2025

Romanus Cessario, O.P., "Non Possumus," First Things, Feb 1, 2018

George Washington, "To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island," August 18, 1790

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

This is a different kind of episode than is typical; there's no book, no central text, not even a single, central event that guides the conversation. Instead, we begin with a few recent news items—speculation about Trump 2028, Speaker Mike Johnson's refusal to swear in a Democratic congresswoman, the stunning abdication of Congress as the shutdown continues, and, incredibly, a secretive billionaire and Mellon heir donates over a hundred million dollars to pay the military, among others—and then lay out our profound worries about Trump ruling by decree, and the coming of MAGA-style Caeserism. How and when might that occur? We discuss troubling signals the Trump administration is sending about upcoming elections, and especially the 2026 midterms; the ticking time bomb that is the Insurrection Act; how the right thinks about executive power (then and now), and more.

Sources:

Peter Rothpletz, "Trump's Third Term?" Zeteo/First Draft, Oct 24, 2025

Dana Milbank, "How Reactionary is MAGA? Try the First Century B.C.," Washington Post, Sept 7, 2022

Steve Bannon interview with The Economist, Oct 23, 2025 (YouTube)

Shawn Hubler & Laurel Rosenhall, "Justice Department Will Monitor Elections in California and New Jersey," New York Times, Oct 24, 2025

Steve Contorno & Ashley Killough, "Frustrated Arizonans Have Waited More Than a Month for Their New Congresswoman to be Seated," CNN, Oct 25, 2025

Yoni Applebaum, "America's Fragile Constitution," The Atlantic, Oct 2015

Abraham Lincoln, "Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield," Jan 27, 1838

Bob Bauer & Jack Goldsmith, "Here’s What Trump Could Unleash by Invoking the Insurrection Act," New York Times, Oct 18, 2025

Damon Linker, "The Surest Path to Dictatorship: A Quick Plug for a Short Primer about the Insurrection Act," Notes from the Middleground, Oct 18, 2025

"Discussing Caesarism," New Founding Podcast, Oct 21, 2022. 

Harvey Mansfield, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (1989)

James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (1959)

Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010)

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

The theme of this rank punditry episode is Getting in Trouble on the Internet, and we begin with the frankly unsurprising story of the Young Republican Hitler group chats, then move on to a longer discussion about Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, Graham Platner, and the revelations about controversial past posts on Reddit about guns and fighting fascism, rural white voters, his ideological allegiances, and more—all recorded before the news of his tattoo, now covered over, of a Nazi skull-and-bones insignia. Along the way we talk about what makes a change of mind and heart persuasive, how grace comes to us in our struggles, if Platner is Fetterman 2.0, and the class dimension of all these debates, and finally close with a relatively hopeful take on the "No Kings" protests last weekend.

Sources:

Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo, "'I Love Hitler': Leaked Messages Expose Young Republicans' Racist Chat," Politico, Oct 14, 2025

Julianne McShane, “No One in the GOP Hitler Chat Was a ‘Kid’: We checked. Sorry, JD Vance," Mother Jones, Oct 15, 2025

Adam Wren, Erin Doherty & Jessica Piper, "Maine Senate Candidate Promoted Violent Political Action in Since-Deleted Online Posts," Politico, Oct 16, 2025

Lauren McCauley, "Unearthed Reddit Comments Present First Stumble in Platner’s Rise," Maine Morning Star, Oct 17, 2025

Kimberlee Kruesi & Patrick Whittle, "Maine Senate Candidate Platner Says Tattoo Recognized as Nazi Symbol Has Been Covered," Associated Press, Oct 23, 2025

Ben Terris, "The Hidden Struggle of John Fetterman," New York, May 2, 2025

Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013)

This episode is the second in our occasional series on important, controversial, or unusually relevant conservative texts from the recent past. Here we take up Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. With its focus on the ascendence of a new "cognitive elite," cultural divides, and the pathologies afflicting working and lower class whites, the book might seem prophetic of the Age of Trump — but the reality is more complicated. Murray's oversights, it turns out, are as interesting as his insights. We walk listeners through Murray's account of how America "came apart," take the test he provides to see how thick our class/cultural bubbles are, then rip into the moralizing prescriptions with which he concludes the book. Along the way we discuss Murray as an emblematic success story of the right-wing welfare state and intellectual pipeline, revisit his obsession with race and IQ, and more!

Sources:

Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012)

— Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (2003)

— Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (1984)

Jason DeParle, "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'? Charles Murray," New York Times, Oct 9, 1994

Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016)

Pew Research Center, "Religious Landscape Study," Feb 26, 2025

Quinn Slobodian & Stuart Schrader, "The White Man, Unburdened," The Baffler, July 2018

"Do you live in a bubble? A quiz." PBS Newshour, Mar 24, 2016. 

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Zohran, and giving a damn about both your "fellow man" and democracy. Then, we walk you through the latest catalogue of horrors: Hegseth's lame TED talk in front of the generals, the menacing yet comically inept dimestore Gestapo that is ICE, the shutdown, and more!

Sources:

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, 1840)

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Jasper Craven, "Battle of the Sexes," The Baffler, Sept 2025

"Deafies for Zohran" (YouTube)

"Things Can Change" (X)

To try to understand both the power and strangeness of the Charlie Kirk memorial—one part evangelical worship service, one part MAGA rally—we turned, of course, to our friend Pat Blanchfield. All three of us stewed in the event's footage, which runs to over four and a half hours, then convened to discuss it. After laying out for listeners what happened at State Farm Stadium in Arizona just over a week ago, replete with clips, we tried to understand how the event aimed to turn death and grief into power by unpacking its imagery, symbols, references, and, of course, how it might play "out there" among Americans not already plugged into the menagerie of seen subcultures on stage. 

Sources:

Charlie Kirk Memorial at State Farm Stadium, Sept 21, 2025 (Fox News on YouTube)

— Transcript of President Donald Trump's speech at Kirk Memorial

— The story behind the hymn, "It is Well with My Soul" (link)

Jack Jenkins, "At Charlie Kirk's memorial, religion, politics and antagonism toward liberals combine," Religion News Service, Sept 22, 2025

Amber Phillips, "3 takeaways from the Charlie Kirk memorial," Wash Post, Sept 22, 2025

Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, (2004)

Gabriel Winant, "On Mourning and Statehood: A Response to Joshua Leifer," Dissent, Oct 13, 2023

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.

The assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscape of American politics in an instant, inspiring a startlingly unanimous battlecry of vengeance from the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Trump White House. In this episode, Matt and Sam respond to this ominous moment, analyzing Kirk’s legacy, the politics of martyrdom, and the dangers that lurk ahead. 

Two notes: (1) This episode was recorded on Tuesday 9/16, before some of the administration's specific repressive efforts — e.g. the FCC intimidating ABC into suspending late night host Jimmy Kimmel — had taken place. (2) Matt's sound quality is diminished toward the end of episode because of a technical problem with his mic.

Since the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary voters to determine their country's fate in a complex world. From there, he levels a critique of the Constitution for its myriad democratic deficits, then details what refounding the United States to be genuinely democratic—politically and economically—would require of us.

Listen again: "The Wolfe in the White Suit" (w/ Osita Nwanevu), July 5, 2024

Sources:

Osita Nwanevu, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (2025)

— "Conservatism’s Baton Twirler," New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2025. 

Sheldon Wolin, Fugitive Democracy: And Other Essays (2016)

Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016)

Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)

Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)

Publius, Federalist 49 (February 1788)

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023

...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!