Fresh off a fracture in the MAGA world with the resignation of GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the imminent release of the Epstein files, savvy political observers will still be hesitant to question the resiliency of the MAGA machine because Trump and his followers have flouted almost all predictions for a decade. But that doesn’t mean we should bury our heads. Indeed, we stand to learn a great deal in the coming days and weeks and no one is watching more closely than today’s guest, Laura Field, author of the recently released Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.

In his starred November/December review in Foreword, Jeff Fleischer says the book details the “myriad strands of thought driving the United States away from democracy and toward autocracy,” even as it “explains the sources of these myriad groups’ ideas, from misinterpretations of Bronze Age history to the thoughts of Nazi lawyer Carl Schmitt, working through some of the logical fallacies upon which key right-wing intellectuals rely.”

An accomplished political writer himself, Jeff was thrilled to connect with Laura. Enjoy the interview.

In Furious Minds, you trace the right-wing movement in the United States going back more than fifty years. What prompted you to write a book about the movement and how did you decide to approach the movement’s long-term history?

I had been writing about the intellectuals behind Trumpism during the first Trump administration. Frankly, I expected them to take the off-ramp after January 6, 2021—I thought that would basically be the end of it. Instead, the movement kept consolidating its power, and that’s what prompted me to write Furious Minds. So it was very much motivated by current events. I learned about the movement’s long-term history along the way—by researching figures like Sam Francis who kept getting mentioned, reading other peoples’ books, and learning from friends. The main narrative of the book is in the present, but in the introduction and early chapters I trace some of the important historical threads and precursors and I really enjoyed learning about all that.

How did your experience interacting with the New Right impact how you viewed the movement and how you approached writing about it?

I studied in conservative academic circles for a long time. The book describes my exit from conservative academia, which began before Trump’s victory in 2016. Conservatives basically speak a different language from their liberal counterparts, so my academic background gave me initial access to what was happening on the New Right that wasn’t so readily available to others. My conservative circles weren’t Trumpy. But as I researched the book, I attended a few New Right conferences and events, saw the people I write about give talks, spoke with a few, and listened to a lot of podcasts. That all gave me some feel for the mood of the movement at different moments and gave me a better sense of what these figures are like in person. Being in person at a few of these events helped add some texture to the writing and gave me more confidence in my overall descriptions of what was going on.

What surprised you most in the research for the book? What didn’t you expect to learn?

Well, the movement itself kept surprising me. John Eastman surprised me with his involvement in January 6. It was surprising to me when Kevin Roberts became the president of the Heritage Foundation. I was surprised by Project 2025, by the rise of JD Vance, and by Elon Musk’s role with DOGE. So lots of surprises.

But in terms of the research, I was surprised by the extent to which the early intellectual proponents of MAGA leaned on paleoconservativism—on thinkers like Sam Francis whom I mentioned before, and others like Paul Gottfried and Pat Buchanan. The roots of Trumpism went deeper than I had previously understood. I was also surprised by the extent to which the thinkers of the New Right claim to be working on behalf of “Western Civilization” and “the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.” It was very odd to me, especially given that they were at the same time abandoning the principles of the Declaration of Independence and other liberal democratic cornerstones of American politics and the Constitution.

I was also surprised by the rampant misogyny of the New Right—and amazed by how ideas that festered with someone like [the online influencer] Bronze Age Pervert then trickled up into much more “respectable” circles (I’m thinking of First Things magazine publishing an article about the “Longhouse,” or Helen Andrews’ piece in Compact called “The Great Feminization”).

You describe a number of different nodes within the Far Right that sometimes intersect and sometimes run in parallel. Which do you see as ascendent at the moment?

Things on the MAGA New Right are in a great deal of flux right now because of the uproar surrounding the Heritage Foundation (which is also trickling over to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute). The infighting is happening because the Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, refused to distance himself from Tucker Carlson after he interviewed Nick Fuentes. This apparently made donors and some staff very angry. In the book, I chronicle the radicalization of both of those institutions as part of the story of National Conservatism and the New Right’s so-called “long march through the institutions.”

In my view, all of these factions are intertwined, but the Postliberal faction has been the best at putting some distance between itself and the worst extremes—partly by speaking in abstractions, and very occasionally by speaking out against the extremists (Sohrab Ahmari has done this but he is mainly the exception who proves the rule). That is the group that JD Vance is closest with, though he is close to all three of the groups (the Claremonters, the National Conservatives, and the Postliberals). It will be interesting to see if and how he is able to weather these upsets. I should also probably add that while I am glad to see some people in the conservative world speak out, at long last, against right-wing antisemitism, that is not the only kind of radicalization that these groups have experienced.

Looking at the country both before and after you wrote the book, what do you see as the biggest thing the general public misunderstands about the New Right? Similarly, what is the biggest thing mainstream conservatives misunderstand about the New Right?

The general public tends to misunderstand the intelligence of the New Right—and I think that’s also true of many mainstream conservatives. And both groups also underestimate the radicalism of the movement. Unless you have been paying very close attention, the things these men have been saying and doing are pretty unbelievable—ambitious and destructive, and contrary to much of what the GOP claimed to stand for for decades. But what is surprising to many people is that these actions have now been articulated and theorized such that they are also grounded in thick and historically informed arguments. I disagree with much of what they say and how they argue, but a lot of it is very sophisticated.

The general public wants to dismiss the New Right as fringe and stupid for partisan reasons, and sometimes mainstream conservatives are even more dismissive of the intelligence of the New Right thinkers because they are in a kind of denial and take it personally. What is clear to me is that what we see in the MAGA New Right is not the same as the old Republican establishment, but nor is it some fringe aberration. It’s more like a well-organized extremist takeover of the GOP that has happened very quickly and has been very successful, in large part because it has old and deep roots on the American right.

What do you most hope the audience comes away with after reading Furious Minds?

I hope they come away with a good understanding of what the movement is about—who the important figures are, what they believe, and how the various factions came together and coalesced into a movement between 2016 and 2024. I also want them to come away with a sense of why New Right ideas can also be alluring. I tried to illustrate the appeal throughout, since I have been drawn to some of these or similar ideas in the course of my life. And finally, I wanted to convey a sense of urgency about what has happened to the GOP under Trump because I see the MAGA New Right as a destructive political force.

Jeff Fleischer
November 26, 2025

• Share
• 
• 
• 
• Copy URL