The American political right is undergoing thorough – and exceptionally dangerous – crises of identity and direction. An important new book released this month, Furious Minds, written by the political theorist and expert on the far right Laura K Field, unpacks the development of the intellectual basis for the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement and how even more extreme, reactionary trends may be looming large.
The Donald Trump era will inevitably end, but beyond his charismatic unifying persona, there is no clear sense of where the right is going and who, if anyone, can hold its coalition together.
The Maga movement was shaken this week, as the House of Representatives on Tuesday voted nearly unanimously – just one Republican opposed the measure – demanding the public release of Justice Department files on the now-deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Trump originally fought the release before an abrupt, last-minute U-turn when it became clear his position on the matter was deeply unpopular. Whereas he is usually the one pressuring Republican lawmakers to do as he wishes, this time it was the President who was under pressure.
Meanwhile, the far right is thriving – especially Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white supremacist agitator. Countless would-be right-wing "gatekeepers" have sought to delegitimise Mr Fuentes, mainly because of his extreme antisemitism. He is banned from most online platforms – but his army of "Groyper” supporters consistently post clips that effectively bypass the barriers and promote his odious venom.
His support seems to be expanding consistently, particularly since the September 10 assassination of his fellow "Christian nationalist” and arch-rival for the sympathies of 20-something right-wingers, Charlie Kirk. Some key right-wing figures have effectively given up and are pulling out a seat for Mr Fuentes at the virtual conservative kitchen table.
Perhaps the most potent and influential right-wing platform is Tucker Carlson's podcast, which has thrived despite his dismissal by Fox News. Just this summer, Carlson dismissed Mr Fuentes as "weird" and accused him of trying to "discredit non-crazy right voices" through his hyper-radicalised rhetoric.
Yet in late October, Carlson welcomed Mr Fuentes to a chummy, two-hour conversation. Carlson gently chided him for excessively focusing on "the Jews" rather than Israel, but the two otherwise found themselves in generalised agreement.
But this incident had exposed what seems the final remaining fault-line potentially protecting the American right from the worst fanatical ideologies. Racism, Islamophobia, misogyny and hatred of women typically pass unchallenged, and are often rewarded rather than faulted. Anti-Semitism – whether proclaimed directly against "the Jews" or thinly veiled against Israel with zero sympathy for Palestinians – appears to be the final remaining tripwire that can offend significant parts of the right enough to discredit the speaker.
When several prominent Jewish and other conservatives denounced the welcoming of Mr Fuentes to the widest right-wing platform currently available, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, inexplicably decided to defend Carlson and, by unmistakable implication, Mr Fuentes. This caused one Heritage board member to resign and chaos among his staff, including the virtual disintegration of its antisemitism task force. Mr Roberts emphasised his Christian identity and denounced Carlson's critics as a "venomous coalition", in language smacking of anti-Semitic tropes.
On Tuesday Mr Trump similarly defended Carlson and, again, by implication Mr Fuentes. Mr Trump predictably said he doesn't know much about Mr Fuentes, but the young agitator's main previous brush with greatness was a dinner with him, and rapper Kanye West, at Mar-A-Lago in November 2022.
As Furious Minds explains, the rise of someone like Mr Fuentes has been virtually inevitable given the trajectory of the American right over at least the past decade, if not half-century. Particularly since the rise of Mr Trump, right-wing politics has largely degenerated into an infantile and absurd performative bidding war where faux-authenticity and presumed authority constantly depends on next level transgressions. Any game of norm-smashing in western societies must ultimately conclude with players becoming antisemitic neo-Nazis, since they represent the ultimate, and therefore triumphant, transgression.
Extremists of this variety typically try to make it impossible to confidently distinguish performative trolling and “joking” from sincere advocacy, a tactic also favoured by Mr Trump. The only rational response is to take them at their word, seriously and literally.
Besides, if hatred and hostility towards all other non-white, non-male, and non-Christian identity groups is rewarded, there's no coherent way of preventing Israel and "the Jews” from being swept up in the already whirling hate-speech tornado. To the contrary, in much of western culture they make a particularly tempting target. When conservative activists insist on having "no enemies to the right", far from continuing to condemn neo-Nazism as the ultimate evil, they are instead and in advance surrendering all defences against its influence.
Recently revealed chat group messages among young Republican leaders demonstrated similar neo-Nazi, anti-black and antisemitic sentiments that, at least in private, appeared normative and passed completely unchallenged. They suggest Mr Fuentes is speaking for much of a whole generation on the far-right. Veteran conservative writer Rod Dreher estimates “30 to 40 per cent” of young Republican staffers in Congress and the administration essentially embrace this outlook.
There's certainly no appetite to challenge the rise of Mr Fuentes from leaders of the Maga right, even though he has even mocked and rejected Vice President JD Vance because of his Indian-American wife and mixed-race children. Mr Vance has previously dismissed Mr Fuentes as "a total loser" but has been conspicuously silent since the Carlson interview. There’s simply no effective mechanism on the Trumpian, and much less the rapidly developing post-Trumpian, American right to draw a clear line against any racism, misogyny, many other hatreds, and the definitive taboo, antisemitism and white supremacism – despite the presence and power of numerous prominent right-wing Jewish Maga influencers and activists.
With Mr Trump politically weaker, Mr Fuentes is beckoning the American right into the ultimate rabbit hole of reactionary madness. The abyss yawns wide, and, as Fields explains in so much crucial detail, the guardrails were long ago smashed to pieces.
