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

Roman Polanski's 2019 film about the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and a Spy, only recently made it's U.S. "premier," running for a few weeks in August at Film Forum in New York City. When it originally was released, it couldn't find an American distributor (and likewise was shunned by streaming services), a consequence of the MeToo moment meeting Polanski's criminal past—in 1978 he fled to Europe after being indicted for the rape of a 13 year-old girl in the United States. Polanski's past is particularly relevant for his film about the falsely accused Jewish officer in the French military, to whom, in publicity materials circulated when An Officer and a Spy came out in Europe in 2019, the director explicitly compared himself.

Of course, we couldn't possibly have had on any other guest than John Ganz to help us understand the politics of the Dreyfus affair, both in 1895 and 2025, and what to make of Polanski's cinematic rendering of it. Topics include: Polanski's life and crimes; Hannah Arendt's treatment of the Dreyfus affair in The Origins of Totalitarianism; anti-semitism in 19th and early 20th century France; the way Polanski largely ignores the political convulsions caused by the Dreyfus affair, instead handling it more as a crime procedural, and why he might have done so; and more.

Sources:

John Ganz, "Reading, Watching," Unpopular Front, Aug 10, 2025

— "Gramscians vs Sorelians," Unpopular Front, Jan 23, 2021

— "The Third Republic and Today," Unpopular Front, Jan 27, 2021

— "The Century of Rubbish," Unpopular Front, Feb 2, 2021

— "From Republic to Reaction," Unpopular Front, Feb 4, 2021

David Bell, "An Officer and a Spy," H-France, March 2021

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Devoted Know Your Enemy listeners will recall that, in November 2021, we released a fairly dense, theory-driven episode on Frank Meyer, the Communist from New Jersey whose exploits on behalf of the Party in the UK got him kicked out of the country and back to the United States, where he eventually turned right and became a key figure in the post-war U.S. conservative movement, both as an editor at National Review and an architect of institutions like the American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, and the Conservative Party of New York. Of course, we had more to say about Meyer, and we're devoting another episode to him, this time focused on the details of his incredible life, thanks to the publication of an extraordinary new biography of Meyer, Daniel J. Flynn's The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Flynn discovered a trove of never-before-seen papers of Meyer's that range from personal documents (tax returns, Christmas cards from Joan Didion, his dance card from college) to his correspondence with nearly every conservative writer and intellectual of note in the 1950s and 60s. Armed with these files, Flynn offers a vivid portrait of a brilliant, eccentric political life and mind.

Listen again: "Frank Meyer: Father of Fusionism" (November 10, 2021)

Sources:

Daniel J. Flynn, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer (2025)

Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Regnery, 1962)

F.A. Hayek, "Why I am Not a Conservative," from The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (2011)

George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976)

Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative (Doubleday, 1979)

"Against the Dead Consensus," First Things, March 21, 2019

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

This episode was first published in October 2024, and has been un-paywalled following the death this week, on August 21, of Focus on the Family founder and influential figure on the religious right, James Dobson, at age 89. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear more episodes just for subscribers.

In this episode, Matt is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, one of the most fascinating and unique books published on the Christian right during the Trump-era. Lavin takes her subjects seriously, but not uncritically, and especially focuses on the wrecked and ruined lives left in the wake of conservative evangelicalism's more conspiratorial and authoritarian elements, from the Satanic Panic to James Dobson's parenting manual on how to discipline a "strong-willed child" into compliance. Along the way, they talk about the triumph of QAnon, End Times theology, the importance of the New Apostolic Reformation, and more—all with an eye toward how these religious views and practices help explain conservative evangelicals' overwhelming support for Donald Trump.

Sources:

Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (2024)

— Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (2020)

— "The Sword and the Sandwich" (Talia's newsletter)

Listen again:

"The Prayers and Prophecies of Pat Robertson," Know Your Enemy, July 17, 2023

A major topic following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election has been his gains with racial and ethnic minorities, a trend that's scrambled many people's assumptions about American politics, not least those of anti-racist liberals. Why have minority voters drifted toward Trump, despite his many comments and campaign pledges that demonize or disparage them? To try to understand this phenomenon, we talked to Daniel Martinez HoSang, who has studied the minorities entering the GOP coalition, not only but especially in the MAGA era, including extraordinarily rich interview with people of color on the right attending Turning Point USA conference, CPAC, Trump rallies, following right wing influencers, and more. 

Sources:

Daniel Martinez HoSang, "Inside the Rise of the Multiracial Right," New York Times, July 24, 2025

Daniel Martinez HoSang, Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone, (2023)

Stuart Hall, Selected Writings on Race and Difference, (2021)

Joseph E. Lowndes & Daniel Martinez HoSang, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (2019)

Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (2008)

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

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

Our mailbag runneth over! Unsurprisingly, we received so many excellent questions from subscribers for our most recent episode that we decided to answer even more of them. Once again religion seemed to be on the minds of listeners, and we take up charismatic Christians and the evolution of both the religious right and the Republican Party, as well as the role of Christian Zionism in U.S. policy toward Israel. But that's not all: other topics include leftist theory bros; Roy Cohn, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the politics of sexual blackmail; Gore Vidal at 100, and more.

Sources:

Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)

Daniel G. Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle over the End Times Shaped a Nation (2023)

Wilson Carey McWilliams, "The Bible in the American Political Tradition," in Redeeming Democracy in America, ed. Patrick Deneen & Susan McWilliams (2011)

The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem (1992)

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, (1938)

Phil Christman, Why Christians Should Be Leftists (2025)

Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (2025)

Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)

Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)

Gore Vidal, United States: Essays 1952-1992 (1993)

It's been nearly a year since we asked our subscribers to send us questions for a mailbag episode—which they did, with remarkable thoughtfulness and intelligence, for our 100th episode back in September 2024. A lot has happened since then (to say the least), so we wanted to once again open up the mailbag and find out what was on the minds of Know Your Enemy listeners, who sent too many excellent questions for just one episode—so, if you like what you hear, consider subscribing on Patreon to listen our next bonus episode when we'll answer even more of them.

In this round of listener questions, we take up how much Trump has kept his campaign promises, our favorite bourbons, the politics of Judaism, St. Augustine and original sin, novelists (gay and straight), and more!

Sources and further reading:

Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1945)

— A Single Man (1964)

Don Bachardy, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1990)

Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s (2009)

— A Boy's Own Story (1982)

— The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988)

— The Farewell Symphony (1997)

— The Married Man (2000)

Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins (1971)

— Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)

Henri du Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (1962)

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (1949)

— Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968)

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Father of All Secrets," The Baffler, Dec 2022. 

— "The Essential John le Carré," NYTimes, Jul 12, 2023.

Henry Roth, Call It Sleep, (1930)

Javier Marías, A Heart So White, (1995)

Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai, (2000)

Percival Everett, Erasure, (2001)

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

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

Over July 4th weekend, the Department of Justice and FBI put out a memo essentially declaring "case closed" on the matter of Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected sex criminal and pedophile who died (apparently) by suicide in federal custody in 2019. No more files. No more questions. He killed himself and that's that. This was quite the reversal from an administration stacked with figures — like FBI director Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino — who built their celebrity in MAGA circles by ginning up the Epstein conspiracy and demanding his case files be released. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi had said the the Epstein client list was "sitting on her desk for review." Now the White House says no such list exists. And Trump wants everyone to stop talking about it.

As all this unfolded, a number of listeners wanted the KYE take on the Epstein story—so here it is. We recount some of the most salient details of the case for the uninitiated, then offer our takes on what we think really is going on, and, perhaps more importantly, assess how this might affect Trump's second term: how serious the breach between Trump and the MAGA movement is, the possible consequences of administration officials spinning stories about Hillary's emails (still!) instead of doing their actual jobs, the ongoing attacks on the basic functions of the federal government, Trump's spectacular, open corruption, and, as we all pay attention to the crisis of the day, what sending tens of billions in new funding to ICE will mean for our country.

Sources:

Emily Davies, Perry Stein, Jeremy Roebuck and Kadia Goba, "Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines, overshadows agenda," Washington Post, Jul 27, 2025.

Khadeeja Safdar & Joe Palazzolo, "Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump," Wall St. Journal, July 17, 2025

Sadie Gurman, Annie Linskey, et al, "Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files," Wall St. Journal, July 23, 2025

Jacob Weindling, "FBI Deputy Director Takes Mental Health Day Over Trump’s Epstein Betrayal," Splinter, July 11, 2025

Lauren-Brooke Eisen, "Budget Bill Massively Increases Funding for Immigration Detention," Brennan Center, July 3, 2025

Julie Turkewitz, "Convicted Murderer Released by Trump From Venezuelan Prison Is Free in U.S." New York Times, July 24, 2025.

Glenn Thrush & Julian E. Barnes, "Gabbard’s Attacks on Obama Put the Attorney General in a Tough Spot," New York Times, July 24, 2025

Miriam Waldvogel, "Rogan Hits Patel Over Epstein Claims: 'Doesn’t Make Any Sense,'" The Hill, July 25, 2025

This episode from January 2025 has been un-paywalled for your summer enjoyment...

A stock rhetorical trope on the right is to invoke ancient Rome when talking about American decline—often making direct comparisons between the Goth invaders and contemporary immigrants, obsessing over homosexuality and Rome's fall, and more. If their understanding of history isn't very serious, what should we make of these appeals? And are there any "lessons" we should learn from Roman history?

There's no better time to take up such matters than while Matt is in Rome, and there was no one better for him to talk with about them than Mike Duncan, the prolific and brilliant history podcaster; he currently hosts the Revolutions podcast and, especially relevant for the purposes of this conversation, hosted the History of Rome podcast from 2007-2012, a project that led him to write The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (2017). Matt and Mike discuss the use and abuse of history, how "norms" do and do not matter, the relationship between imperialist foreign policy and domestic politics, the perils of vast income inequality, then and now, and more.

Sources:

For quotes from conservatives about Roman decline: Reagan, Nixon, Buchanan, Vance (and Pete Navarro & Michael Anton)

Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm(2017)

— Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution (2021)

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

We don't do too many New York City-focused episodes on Know Your Enemy, but Zohran Mamdani's decisive win in the Democratic mayoral primary last month certainly warrants this one. The thirty-three year old democratic socialist, state assemblyman, and Muslim of Indian descent born in Uganda, ended up running away with it, defeating the runner-up, former governor and sex pest Andrew Cuomo, by over ten points—and, when all the ballots finally were counted, set a record by receiving the most votes of any candidate for mayor in a Democratic primary in the city's history.

Our format in this episode is a little different. In the first half, your podcast co-hosts lay out the basics of Zohran's victory, from Zohran's biography to the final tallies to our impressions of the candidate and his message. In the second half, we're joined by veteran progressive campaign strategist Waleed Shahid to get more of an insider's take on Zohran's achievement: the campaign's stunningly effective turnout operation, which brought out young voters in droves; how he withstood the disgusting way he was attacked as an anti-semite for his protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza; the substance of his pitch to New Yorkers, and it's contrast with Cuomo's uninspiring, mostly negative campaign; the deranged Islamophobic attacks on Zohran since he became the Democratic nominee, and not only from the right; the role of current NYC comptroller and a progressive, Jewish candidate in the race, Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed Zohran, refused to punch left, and joyfully campaigned with Zohran in the final weeks leading up to the election; and more!

Sources:

Waleed Shahid, "How Broadcast Media Covered Zohran Mamdani's Win," Waleed's Substack, July 3, 2025

Matthew Miles Goodrich, "It's...the Politics of No Translation," Something Different, July 2, 2025

Sam Adler-Bell, "Can DSA Go the Distance?" Dissent, Fall 2022

John Cassidy, "The Case for Zohranomics," The New Yorker, June 30, 2025

David Wallace, "10 Ways of Making Sense of Zohran Mamdani’s Win," New York Times, July 2, 2025.

Nicholas Fandos, Benjamin Oreskes, Emma G. Fitzsimmons, & Jeffery C. Mays, "How Zohran Mamdani Stunned New York and Won the Primary for Mayor," New York Times, July 1, 2025

This episode is one that Matt and Sam have been anticipating for years: after two-and-a-half decades of research and writing, Sam Tanehaus's authoritative biography of William F. Buckley, Jr.—youthful booster of America First, enfant terrible at Yale, CIA agent, founder of National Review, best-selling author, brilliant television host, and more—has blessedly arrived. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America stretches to just under 900 pages of text, before you get to the endnotes and index, an appropriately epic biography of an overstuffed, consequential life, containing far more than could be covered in a single episode. This conversation focuses on the challenges of writing a biography of a man whose archives rivaled those found in presidential libraries; Tanenhaus's discovery of a newspaper the Buckley's owned in South Carolina that essentially was a mouthpiece for the White Citizens' Council, and the Southern roots of Buckley's "northern segregationist" politics; the influence of his oilman father, who fled the revolution in Mexico and instilled anti-communist politics, as well as the Catholic faith, in his children; Buckley's role in forging the post-war conservative movement, through National Review and his frenetic endeavors as a columnist and speaker; the controversies, disappointments, failures, and triumphs of his decades-long career; and more. 

Sources:

Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America (2025)

— Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997)

John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (1988)

Sam Adler-Bell, "A Practical Fanatic," The Idea Letters, June 26, 2025

Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B.," Longreads, June 18, 2025

Christopher Owen, Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall, (2022)

Listen again to these Know Your Enemy episodes for background on:

Brent Bozell: "Keeping up with the Bozells," Feb 26, 2021

Willmoore Kendall: "The Long Farewell to Majority Rule? (w/ Joshua Tait)," May 17, 2021

Frank Meyer: "Frank Meyer, the Father of Fusionism," Nov 10, 2021

Joan Didion: "Joan Didion, Conservative (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)," Jan 13, 2022

William F. Buckley, Jr.: "Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)," Aug 23, 2021

— "The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman)," May 9, 2022

— "Consider the Cranks (w/ David Austin Walsh)," May 21, 2024

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