What’s So New About the ‘New Right’?

Over the last few years, a loose coalition of conservative thinkers, journalists, publications and think tanks have emerged under the banner of the New Right. With Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, as its flag-bearer, this still-disparate group has been hailed as the intellectual heft behind the MAGA movement, and even as the future of American conservatism. Its very name declares a radical break with the Republican past — “very nascent, very bleeding edge,” is how Vivek Ramaswamy, a former presidential candidate, described it. But how new is the New Right?

It is risky to ascribe coherence to a grouping like this, especially when its ranks range from the relatively buttoned-up Vance and his Senate colleague Josh Hawley to a ragtag assortment of self-described neo-monarchists, techno-libertarians and right-wing Marxists.

Still, there are some unifying features. At the heart of the New Right is a belief that most of what ails America can be blamed on a liberal elite that has burrowed into the federal government, the news media, Hollywood, big business and higher education — what Vance calls “the regime,” and Curtis Yarvin, one of his New Right influences, calls “the Cathedral.”

The New Right’s position goes beyond rhetorical populism about out-of-touch bureaucrats: To them, liberalism is actively hurting the country, funneling fortunes from hard-working Americans into Washington and Wall Street and then casting any criticism as racist or fascist.

In contrast, the New Right posits a nationalistic nostalgia for a small-town America of decentralized government — a “front porch republic,” in the words of another Vance influence, Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame — in which “good” jobs are available to all