Christopher Roach
American conservative writer and attorney; regular contributor to American Greatness; author of “The Salazar Option” (American Greatness, 2021) — the wiki’s named touchstone for the contemporary American conservative argument that Salazar’s Estado Novo is a model for “use of State power at the service of a counterrevolution” against revolutionary leftism.
Why He Matters Here
Per Iberian Vistas, Roach’s “The Salazar Option” enumerates the Estado Novo’s lessons for the American Right:
- Implement “systemic change” rather than incremental reform
- Take off the “kid gloves” when dealing with hostile and revolutionary elements
- Reject the Dreher “Benedict option” of cultural retreat
- Become “willing to use power in order to survive and win”
Roach’s argument is the cleanest single statement, in mainstream-conservative venue, of the Salazar-as-operational-model thesis. It is published in American Greatness, the Claremont Institute-adjacent journal that the wiki tracks as a central institutional venue for the MAGA New Right.
The structural significance of “The Salazar Option” is its translation of Salazar from historical figure to strategic instrument. Where mid-century NR admiration of Salazar was retrospective (“Salazar governs Portugal well”), Roach’s framing is prospective (“here is what Salazar’s regime did that the American right should emulate”).
Cross-References
Stub.