William S. Lind and His Single-Factor Explanation of History

How William S. Lind—a former director of the Free Congress Foundation’s Center for Cultural Conservatism—used the phrase “Cultural Marxism” as a delegitimizing tool

In July 1998, Lind was invited to speak at an Accuracy in Academia (AIA) conference. Founded in 1985, AIA was set up to expose instances of political bias on American campuses. Its founder, Reed Irvine, believed that universities were indoctrinating students with progressive ideologies rather than teaching them facts and ...
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William S. Lind and His Single-Factor Explanation of History

The Cultural Marxism Bogeyman

An interview with author A. J. A. Woods on their new book about the Right’s favorite conspiracy theory

A specter is haunting the West—the specter of Cultural Marxism. Or at least that’s what many conservative operatives would like us to think. From military theorist William S. Lind to Texas Senator Ted Cruz, prominent right-wingers deploy “Cultural Marxism” as a catch-all for the forces behind our reputed decline: feminism, ...
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The Cultural Marxism Bogeyman

Has Conservatism Outlived Its Usefulness?

A short note on a hoary concept

Matt Walsh: The definition of conservatism … It has no definition, I think. We talk about the words that don’t mean anything anymore, words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don’t anymore because of how they’ve been used and abused and overused. ...
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Has Conservatism Outlived Its Usefulness?

Think Happy Thoughts

An excerpt from The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World

In the wake of the animator’s strike, Walt’s reflexive conservatism turned into a frothing anti-communism. But while his politics grew more unhinged and hateful, his creative output turned definitively toward the production of nostalgia. Song of the South’s reenvisioning of plantation childhood was one particularly egregious example, as was Peter ...
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Think Happy Thoughts

The Return of the Oppressed 

A conversation with Robert Fieseler on American Scare and the recovery of queer history long obscured by state censorship

“I kept wondering why it felt like we were all living in the United States of Florida,” says Robert W. Fieseler. In his new book, American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (Penguin Random House, 2025), Fieseler examines the forces shaping the fastest-growing state in the ...
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The Return of the Oppressed 

Goldbugs

An excerpt from Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right

People make bad money, and that money makes bad people.— Peter Boehringer Monetary issues have long divided neoliberals. Can you trust a central bank to manage currency? Can the growth of the money supply be made automatic? Should fixed or floating rates reign in global currency markets? Must money be backed ...
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Goldbugs

Germany Holds Up a Mirror for America

The rise of the AfD, “Alternative for Germany,” now the nation’s most popular political party

On May 2, 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that Germany was “not a democracy, but a tyranny in disguise.” True extremism, he said, lay not in the “popular AfD” but in the “deadly immigration policy of the establishment with open borders, which the AfD rejects.”  Rubio's ...
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Germany Holds Up a Mirror for America

A Martyr and a Meme

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Walter Benjamin’s politics of spectacle should serve as a warning to Trump’s America

Within minutes of the deadly shot, millions of viewers across the digital public sphere saw right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s last moments in full graphic horror, from multiple angles. Each clip was pared down to shareable content. His death made him at once a martyr and meme. German philosopher Walter Benjamin, writing ...
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A Martyr and a Meme

In I’m Still Here, a Mother Refuses to Let a Dictatorship Rewrite Reality

Political engagement must not preclude the fullness of life

Put on earrings. Go out for ice cream. Swim. Expose the conditions of torture. For Eunice Paiva, the protagonist of 2024 Brazilian film I’m Still Here, the fight against dictatorship has a rhythm. After being interrogated about her association with communists and terrorists, she must now try to find out where ...
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In I’m Still Here, a Mother Refuses to Let a Dictatorship Rewrite Reality

Guantanamo, Again

No one is above the law, and no president should become a king

Tracking the damage President Trump has done in his first two months in office sometimes seems like counting the homes flattened in a hurricane. Every house matters to someone—but it’s the cumulative devastation that most matters to society as a whole. Yet as long as people are still picking through ...
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Guantanamo, Again

Curzio Malaparte’s War

The notorious war correspondent wanted to show us a civil war between different modes of industrialized modernity

Two of the most shocking books about World War II were written by the Italian fascist litterateur and dandy Curzio Malaparte. His “novels” Kaputt and The Skin have been canonized through incorporation into the wonderful series of New York Review Classics. They are hailed by luminaries like Milan Kundera, Gary ...
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Curzio Malaparte’s War