Populism (New Right)
The rhetorical and political mode of the MAGA New Right that frames politics as a battle between “the people” (authentic American nation) and corrupt elites (the establishment, deep state, globalists); in tension with the movement’s Ideas First elitism
What It Is
Populism, in the New Right’s usage, is not a theory of democracy but a political style and mobilization strategy. It frames all political questions as conflicts between:
- “The people”: the authentic American nation, working class, traditional communities, the Real America
- “The elites”: the deep state, the administrative class, globalists, coastal liberals, the establishment, mainstream media
This framing does several things simultaneously:
- Delegitimizes institutional constraints (courts, regulations, professional norms) as elite tools against the people
- Provides an emotional charge to policy positions (immigration, trade, cultural issues become existential threats by elite design)
- Mobilizes resentment of expertise and credentialing (“the experts don’t speak for real Americans”)
- Creates a permanent sense of embattlement that justifies emergency measures
Populism Across the New Right’s Camps
The Claremonters give populism its most philosophically sophisticated form: the “regime change” argument in The Flight 93 Election frames elite rule as a form of soft tyranny against which the people must assert their sovereignty. Anton’s charge that Conservatism Inc. “acts as Washington Generals” to the Left’s Harlem Globetrotters is populist anti-elitism from a high-theory perch.
National Conservatism (especially Yoram Hazony) develops populism in a national direction: the people is defined as a specific nation with a history, culture, and interests distinct from both global elites and other national peoples.
The Hard Right (Bannon, the internet Right) deploys populism most nakedly: the language of “elites,” “globalists,” and “replacement” thinly veils what Field and others identify as nativist and sometimes antisemitic themes.
The Populism-Elitism Tension
The New Right is simultaneously populist and deeply elitist:
- Its populism mobilizes mass resentment against the credentialed class
- Its political theory (Ideas First, West Coast Straussianism, Catholic Integralism) is produced by and for elites
- Its actual governing program (Project 2025, Integration from Within) is about elite capture of state institutions
Field notes this tension throughout Furious Minds: the movement needs populist energy for electoral success and cultural resonance, but its actual project is the replacement of one set of elites (liberal) with another (conservative). The people are mobilized, not empowered.
Populism and January 6
The populism-elitism tension reaches its crisis at January 6. The Stop the Steal movement was populist in form — mass rally, “the people” fighting the stolen election — but was organized and intellectually justified by elite figures (the Claremont Institute’s The Fight is Now, John Eastman’s Coup Memos). The crowd at the Capitol was the vehicle for an elite project: overturning the election not through popular will but through procedural manipulation.
Cross-References
- MAGA New Right — the movement populism mobilizes
- The Claremonters — philosophical populism
- National Conservatism — national populism
- Hard Right — raw populism
- The Flight 93 Election — elite-produced populist manifesto
- January 6 2021 — populism as instrument of elite project
- Ideas First — the elitist counterpart to populist rhetoric