The right’s only way out of podcast chaos is radical honesty



To say the conservative movement has come off the rails would comically understate the damage. Wild accusations bounce from show to show. Members of Congress pick petty fights on social media. President Trump even waded into internet drama while another war rages in the Persian Gulf.

Plenty of commentators blame podcasts for this new disorder, and the new ecosystem gives them no shortage of bad behavior to cite. But that diagnosis misses the deeper cause. Establishment conservatives treated their audiences the same way the legacy press did: as a resource to be managed, manipulated, and occasionally milked. A movement that spent decades being lied to will not be stitched back together by scolding the people who finally stopped listening.

Conservative audiences will not return to reality through scolding. They will return through honesty.

After Democrats lost in 2024 to a resurgent Donald Trump, they went hunting for culprits. They blamed a new breed of podcasters who cracked the information monopoly progressives had grown used to enjoying. Talk radio always bothered the left, but it remained a kind of cultural ghetto for older conservatives. Podcasts like Joe Rogan’s reached a younger, largely male audience that rarely participated in politics at all. Democrats screamed about “disinformation,” warned about the danger of free speech, then launched research projects designed to replicate what they claimed to hate.

The right cheered the upheaval. Establishment conservatives, however, never fully grasped what the shift meant for them. The left’s control of mainstream media gave it a weapon of enormous magnitude, but Fox News and talk radio served a parallel purpose on the right: discipline the acceptable narrative, keep Republican voters inside a manageable story, and punish those who stepped too far outside it.

Institutional conservatives also abused that power. They sold narratives that served donors, careers, and comfortable assumptions. They treated their base as a captive audience. This behavior helped fuel the Trumpian revolution in the first place. Trump did not rise only as a battering ram against progressive media. He rose as a middle finger to a conservative establishment that had earned the people’s contempt.

That plan worked, then kept working in ways many people did not anticipate. The democratization of information that destroyed the progressive narrative machine has now turned its solvent on the conservative one. Populism behaves like universal acid. It rarely dissolves only the targets you prefer.

Conservative gatekeepers now display the same panicked reflexes the left showed: warnings about “dangerous rhetoric,” demands for deplatforming, and pleas for “responsible” voices to regain control. These instincts never belonged to one ideology. They belong to institutions that sense their monopoly slipping away.

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Blaze Media Illustration

Podcast distribution changes the game. Commentators once required the reach of major networks and the production value that came with large teams. Now anyone with a microphone, a ring light, and an internet connection can reach millions.

It turns out that younger audiences value relatability and long-form conversation more than professional polish. Even established names found the freedom of the podcast more attractive than a coveted cable slot.

The low barrier of entry produces obvious downsides. Wild speculation spreads faster than corrections. Personal feuds drive engagement more reliably than careful analysis. The audience rewards charisma and intensity, not always judgment. The result looks ridiculous at times. This week, the president inserted himself into a juvenile online dispute while U.S. forces struck Iran, a perfect example of how unserious the culture can become when attention becomes the currency and everyone fights for a share of it.

But all the moralizing in the world will not restore the old order. Mainstream conservatives cannot lecture podcast audiences about “responsible broadcasting” after years of manipulating their own viewers. The level of mistrust runs too deep.

Censorship will fail too. Shaming and platform policing did not rebuild credibility for Democrats. It will not rebuild Republicans’ credibility.

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Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

This is the part conservative leadership does not want to hear. The path out requires admitting that the problem did not begin with podcasts. The problem began with institutions that treated truth as a tool. Restoring coherence demands that conservative leaders stop trying to reassert narrative control and start rebuilding trust. That means fewer games, fewer insinuations, fewer anonymous smears, and more willingness to say, “We were wrong,” and explain why.

Conservative audiences will not return to reality through scolding. They will return through honesty. That will require a different posture from conservative leaders: less control, more candor; fewer moral lectures, more receipts; fewer slogans, more clarity about what can be done and what cannot. The movement will stumble until it learns that discipline beats drama.

So expect things to get worse before they get better. Conservative media spent years breaking trust. The bill has come due. And now the only way out is through.

'Subhuman ghouls': People, WaPo trash Scott Adams hours after his death



On Tuesday, Scott Adams, the creator of the beloved comic strip "Dilbert," died after a prolonged battle with metastatic prostate cancer. However, some of his opponents in media wasted no time before criticizing Adams and his accomplishments.

Hours after it was announced that Adams had died, People magazine published an article titled "Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 68."

'You are the scum of the earth.'

The author then claimed in the very first paragraph that Adams "degraded Black people in a 2023 rant."

People updated the article at 12:33 p.m. ET, including changing the author of the piece. The updated version says it was written by "People Staff."

RELATED: Beloved 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams dies at age 68

Photo by Bob Riha Jr./Getty Images

However, an earlier, archived version of the article timestamped at 10:47 a.m. ET shows that it was written by Victoria Edel, as many X users, including Eric Daugherty, made sure to emphasize.

Several prominent X users did not try to hide their disgust over the tasteless headline.

"Subhuman ghouls," BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre said in a reply to People's post.

"You are the scum of the earth," Raw Egg Nationalist wrote.

People's original X post promoting the article also appears to have been deleted.

Other news outlets couldn't resist the opportunity to drag Adams through the mud either.

An archived article originally published from the Washington Post and apparently shared later by the Boston Globe bore the headline, "Scott Adams, ‘Dilbert’ creator who veered into racist, far-right commentary, dies."

Just like the People article, this article wasted no time attacking Adams' right-wing views. The first paragraph reads: "Scott Adams, who became a hero to millions of cubicle-dwelling office workers as the creator of the satirical comic strip 'Dilbert,' only to rebrand himself as a digital provocateur — at home in the Trump era’s right-wing mediasphere — with inflammatory comments about race, politics and identity, died Jan. 13."

For evidence, critics point to a February 22, 2023, stream of Adams' show, "Real Coffee with Scott Adams." The "rant" that they are referring to involves Adams' discussion of a Rasmussen poll of black Americans responding to the statement "it's okay to be white." Fifty-three percent agreed, 26% disagreed, and 21% were not sure about the statement.

Adams took issue with the fact that nearly half of black Americans did not agree with that statement. He said in part, "If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people … that's a hate group. I don't want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people ... because there is no fixing this."

Adams' critics failed to mention that he went on to encourage his viewers to be "friendly" to everyone and that he was not trying to "start a war" with anyone.

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Data Doesn’t Lie: Political Violence Is An Overwhelmingly Left-Wing Problem

The rot in the so-called data pushed by leftist scholars studying political violence gets worse the deeper you dig.

Bogus ADL Report Either Mislabels Leftist Violence As ‘Right-Wing’ Or Omits It Entirely

The ADL's latest annual report claims that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings 2022-2024.

DOJ no longer highlighting flawed study insinuating right-wing violence is on the rise



As President Donald Trump explained in the wake of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk last week, many of the loudest voices in politics and media have consistently appealed to the rising danger of "far-right extremism." Some, including the president, have connected this rhetoric to a left-wing justification for violence, and the administration is cracking down on those who have contributed to the problem.

404 Media reported that the DOJ quietly removed a flawed National Institute of Justice study entitled "What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism." The removal was first noted by Daniel Malmer, a Ph.D. student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill.

'My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.'

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in a speech following Kirk’s death. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

RELATED: Media tries to protect Antifa with tired al-Qaeda talking points

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The study explains that "militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism."

The study explains this "trend" in more detail: "Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives."

In 2023 congressional testimony, Heidi L. Beirich, co-founder and executive vice president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, echoed the findings of the June 2024 study:

Data on acts of political violence clearly shows that it is the far right that is driving terrorism in the U.S., including targeting and, in certain cases, murdering law enforcement. That is not to say there is no violence from far-left actors, it is just simply not on the scale or as deadly as what is coming from far-right actors.

The Biden-era study is no longer available on the DOJ website, but Blaze News was able to locate the document off-site.

Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, told Blaze News, "This is typical of the countering violent extremism approach that has predominated the response to terrorist threats and also the Biden administration’s effort to make hate crimes and hate speech as equivalent to terrorism."

Shideler continued, "The problem with these kinds of studies is they rely on slanted or biased databases which poorly categoriz[e] or refus[e] to categorize or underreport[] far-left extremism. This has even included things like coding black supremacists as white supremacists, counting drug deals gone wrong as hate crimes, and the like."

"The Trump administration recently canceled funding for one such database," Shideler added, referring to the government's July revocation of funding for the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism program.

"We don’t live in 1975. We don’t live in 1995. We don’t live in 2001, or even 2015," National Journalism Center Director Geoff Ingersoll explained in an X thread about a similar study out of the libertarian-left Cato Institute. The researcher, he wrote: "cooked the books and muddied the water. Any suggestion that the problem we face RIGHT NOW is something other than political violence on the left is being dangerously dishonest. More than a quarter of college students believe violence is justified to silence a speaker. Self identified 'very liberals' think political violence is justified at 6x the rate of 'very conservatives.'"

A significant section of the study explores extremism tied to "white supremacist" groups. A footnote says: "The project included three human rights groups (Anti Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Southern Poverty Law Center) and Life After Hate, an organization that assists white supremacists in exiting the movement."

This marks another of the Trump administration's decisive steps toward quelling the justification for left-wing violence since these flawed studies are used to back up their arguments. This is also an opportunity for the government to continue investigating the federal funding of these studies and institutes.

The Department of Justice and Steven Chermak, one of the co-authors of the study, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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SHOCKING: Glenn Beck interviews 'detransitioner' deceived by doctors



Detransitioner Claire Abernathy was just 14 years old when doctors told her parents she’d take her own life without hormones and surgery — and promised “gender care” would save her life.

“I started identifying as trans when I was 12 years old following a sexual assault and some pretty severe bullying that I was experiencing at school,” Abernathy tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

“Adopting this identity gave me, well, one, it gave me the ability to pretend to be a new person, someone that this didn’t happen to. And it also gave me an entire social network, a whole friend group of other kids who felt similarly to the way I did,” she explains.

That’s when Abernathy began going to therapists who were recommended by others with the same issues.


“They made my parents feel like abusers for being skeptical, for wanting to take pause before making irreparable changes to their child’s body,” she tells Glenn.

“Did anyone say, did any doctor say, ‘Hang on, we should look at the abuse’?” Glenn asks.

“No one. My mom asked about the abuse, the bullying, all these things that I’d gone through, disordered eating, and she was told in no uncertain terms, ‘No, that does not make a child think that they’re trans,’” Abernathy explains, noting that this occurred at “one of the most well-funded children’s hospitals in the nation.”

Abernathy was then put on testosterone at 14 years old, and then shortly after they were discussing surgery.

“I started testosterone in November of 2018, and by January, I was approved for surgery. It didn’t happen until June, but that was just because we wanted to wait until the summer between my eighth and ninth grade years,” she says.

Doctors told Abernathy and her parents that the only effective treatment for her “gender dysphoria” was “chemical and surgical intervention” and that if she did not go through with it, “the most likely outcome was suicide.”

“They didn’t tell me that it would permanently take away my ability to breastfeed. They didn’t tell me that the majority of kids who look to pursue this end up growing out of it,” she says. “There was a lot of things that I wasn’t told.”

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'Woke right' smear weaponized by liberal interlopers against MAGA conservatives, populists — and Arby's?

James Lindsay. Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

On his website, he stated:

Woke Right refers to right-wing people who have adopted the characteristics and underlying worldview orientation of the Woke Left for putatively "right-wing," "conservative," or reactionary causes. They are, as reactionaries, the image of the Right projected by the Left made real by players claiming to be on the Right. That is, they’re right-wing people who act and think about the world like Woke Leftists.

Lindsay echoed this definition in his written responses to Blaze News, in which he suggested that woke right "means using critical theories or Marxian analysis for right-wing or anti-Left causes."

"It is very specific," Lindsay continued. "Most conservatives do not meet this definition."

A sizeable portion of the MAGA coalition does, however, supposedly meet this or one of Lindsay's other definitions. Right-wing populists, for example, are on the liberal's naughty list, as are those who subscribe to national conservatism, which he dubbed "the Woke Right final boss."

The application of "woke right" to national conservatives amounts to the more tactical smear, as it not only cuts through the MAGA coalition but deep into the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

Past speakers at the National Conservatism Conference, which is run by the Hazony-led Edmund Burke Foundation, include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Michael Anton, another senior State Department official; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Trump border czar Tom Homan; and Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).

Of course, there's also JD Vance, who underscored in a NatCon speech — given just days before President Donald Trump chose him as his running mate — that while America was founded "on great ideas," it is not, as some have suggested, reducible to "just an idea."

James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term 'illiberal' — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives.

While Lindsay has danced around labeling Vance "woke right" for daring to express such thoughts, stating in December, "I haven't called JD Vance Woke Right anywhere yet," he has implied as much — calling him a "post-liberal" with a predominantly woke right team, who not only entertains the woke right definition of "nation" but did the unspeakable: speak at a National Conservatism Conference.

RELATED: JD Vance cuts straight to the heart of what animates Trump's nationalism — and it's not 'just an idea'

Vice President JD Vance. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

In fairness to Vance and his fellow NatCon alumni, it is apparently easy to find oneself labeled "woke right." After all, even a fast-food chain has been tagged.

Lindsay recently indicated online that Arby's had veered into woke right territory with its post, "Unlike dad, our ham & swiss actually came back."

In the much ridiculed post, which he has since apologized for and walked back, Lindsay noted, "That's curtains for them. Cringe af."

When asked why national conservatives warrant their categorization as "woke right," Lindsay suggested that while "not all of National Conservatism is Woke Right ... the general thrust of the movement meets the basic definition."

Final boss

Hazony, the author of "The Virtue of Nationalism" whom Lindsay has repeatedly targeted with the “woke right” smear, explained to Blaze News that the strategy behind the term is not new.

"The main people who are behind this — and James Lindsay is the one who's most explicit, but I don't think that he's at all the only one — they've been doing the same thing for many years, long before the term 'woke right' came out; at least as far back as Donald Trump being elected, you know, so it's almost a decade ago," said Hazony. "There was this game of saying that in between liberals and Nazis or racialist fascists — in between, there is no legitimate position. That is a standard argument of the anti-nationalist liberal camp that has been used by many, many different people, and it's always the same."

"When people started using 'illiberal' ... in the mid-2000s, what they were doing was eliminating the legitimacy of the word 'conservative,' because 'illiberal' is anybody who's an authoritarian or a Nazi or a theocrat or a fascist, plus anybody else who's not a liberal," continued Hazony. "So that strategy, using the term 'illiberalism' as a way of saying, 'No, I'm not going to recognize that there are any legitimate conservatives or nationalists' — that's been around in that form for at least 15 years."

Hazony noted that more recently,

James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term "illiberal" — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives. So they switched to "Christian nationalism," and it was the same kind of thing, where, you know, you pick the absolute least palatable people who can be called "Christian nationalists," you quote them, and then you say, "Well, everybody who's a nationalist and a Christian all the way right up to the borders of liberalism — that entire sphere of conservatives and nationalists who are basically normal but they have criticisms of liberalism — no, they're all illegitimate. They're all totalitarians. They all reject the American Constitution." And so they tried that; that peaked in 2023; and it failed. It petered out. They didn't succeed in convincing the average, intelligent person who's paying attention that the political spectrum is only liberals and fascists.

Whereas previous attempts failed, Hazony indicated that "this time, they have succeeded in drawing blood."

"This term [woke] was designed to be humiliating by taking the term that we were using for the Maoist-style cultural revolution that was taking over America and Britain and other countries. And now they say, 'Those of you who are fighting against this, you're exactly the same. You're the same exact thing.' And it upsets people."

'You got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest.'

Hazony further told Blaze News that "it's deeply insulting at a personal level for people who've devoted their time to trying to save America and the West from the woke, and at the same time, it's incredibly effective at destroying the coalition that was built — the anti-woke coalition — by making the different parties despise one another."

"The idea that liberalism is about toleration was just thrown out the window and you got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest."

Playing with fire

Lindsay has tried tarring Blaze Media with the same brush he has used on Hazony and others, characterizing it as "the first captured stronghold" in his imaginative woke right "takeover" narrative.

'The term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement.'

Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, whom Lindsay has implicated as a key player in this supposed takeover, said, "I know Lindsay and we had a decent relationship until he suddenly lumped me and my tenure here at Blaze Media with his slur."

"Obviously, we have a wide variety of people and opinions at Blaze Media. We represent the broad MAGA-MAHA majority coalition, and I take that role seriously," continued Peterson. "But I do not need to say for the record that we are not 'woke right' because the term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement."

Peterson suggested that the term's capricious usage has helped empty it of meaning.

"What's puzzling and ultimately discrediting about the term is that Lindsay and others lump disparate people and groups together into a wild, grand conspiracy," continued Peterson. "He and his associates refer a lot to abstract -isms like hermeticism, communism, and gnosticism and call all kinds of people followers of various schools of thought: 'Nietzscheans' and 'Schmittians.'"

The "Schmittian" smear lobbed around evokes Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who critiqued liberalism, defined politics as the distinction between the categories of friends and enemies, and lent intellectual support to the Nazi regime in Germany.

Peterson noted that he once tried to explain his thoughts on Schmitt to Lindsay over text.

"As a student of political thinkers who were taught by Leo Strauss, who fled Nazi Germany (as opposed to Schmitt, who became a Nazi), I think Schmitt's writings are important to anyone who wants to seriously consider the nature of executive power, which is why they are still studied by people of all kinds throughout the world," said Peterson. "But the idea that this makes me a Nazi or that I agree with everything Schmitt says or believed is ridiculous. James recently asked me to 'denounce Schmitt' on X at his command, which sounds a lot like he's trying to initiate the very 'struggle sessions' he often decries."

Peterson emphasized the range of people and institutions that Lindsay and his fellow travelers have lumped into his "grand conspiracy," noting, for instance, that "they throw in institutions from the Roman Catholic Church to the Claremont Institute, countries from Hungary to China, and individuals from General Michael Flynn to Yoram Hazony to Peter Thiel in the mix as part of whatever the 'woke right' is."

"It becomes silly pretty quick," said Peterson.

Threatened liberals

The host of BlazeTV's "The Auron MacIntyre Show" — one of Lindsay's frequent targets — said that when it comes to Lindsay, woke right "seems to be more of a branding exercise and a political weapon than it does anything with definitive content."

"I think that's the reason so many people have had difficulty when attempting to have even a basic discussion about the term," MacIntyre said. "The guy who is most famous for coining and popularizing it himself has admitted that it wasn't a great one, and it doesn't really have a lot of content besides its ability to be used as a political weapon."

'The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win.'

MacIntyre suggested that woke right's apparent transformation in the wild from a denigratory term for anti-Semites and identitarians into a strategic full-spectrum put-down is “the real trick of this term.”

"A lot of people assume that [anti-Semites and identitarians] were the original targets, and because of that, many people thought that perhaps there could be some value in it because, you know, not all of those groups are particularly ones that people enjoy being associated with," said MacIntyre. "That said, it's become quickly clear that the expansion of the term has now come to encompass Orthodox Jews like Hazony, guys who are big fans of Israel like Tim Pool, and others."

"He's included a large number of very well-respected people who are obviously well outside of this — guys like Matt Walsh."

RELATED: Let's build a statue honoring Pat Buchanan

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre. Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

"The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win, their willingness to fight back against the left, their willingness to say, 'Actually, we're going to take affirmative steps. We're going to take power. We're going to use power to win political battles.' And that seems to be the main violation," continued MacIntyre.

'What they're finding is actually, no, conservatives would like to be in charge.'

When asked whether this campaign might be, at least in part, the early stages of an effort to politically neutralize JD Vance ahead of the next presidential election, MacIntyre answered in the affirmative.

"Not only is that the case, I think he's been pretty explicit about that," said the BlazeTV host.

MacIntyre suggested that Lindsay and other "new atheists, rational-centrist types" feel threatened by Vance and the national conservatives, given their willfulness and refusal to "be ruled by people who hate them, hate their values, hate their religion."

MacIntyre suspects that while the "salience" of the "woke right" term has risen, the credibility of those wielding it has "plummeted."

"[Lindsay has] made many enemies of pretty high-profile figures with good reputations by throwing around this term and attacking people who clearly don't hold any of the nefarious views he's attributing to them," said MacIntyre.

The attacks have also served to expose bad actors who "ultimately were hoping to undermine the conservative movement rather than be a productive part of it," said MacIntyre. "That's something that's critical to know at this juncture."

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Against Bari Weiss-ism

Anti-woke liberals are positioning themselves as gatekeepers on the right. We should reject their fake process neutralism, and ignore them.

Twisting the truth: Wikipedia’s ongoing misinformation war



For over a decade, I have argued with Wikipedia curators about the biographical sketch covering my life and work. Each time a surrogate or I correct false or slanderous details, the misinformation reappears within weeks — often with even greater distortions. Friends who have helped me in this thankless effort suggest giving up, believing that no matter how many corrections we make, the falsehoods will always reappear.

Christopher Rufo has assured me that anyone paying attention knows Wikipedia leans left and misrepresents those with views deemed unacceptable. However, after decades of acquiring unfriendly critics, I doubt most readers will dismiss Wikipedia’s misrepresentations in my case.

One position I will never conceal is my contempt for peddlers of what George Orwell called 'smelly little orthodoxies.' One can’t despise such people enough.

I have also observed Wikipedia’s double standard in editing biographical sketches. Friends with technical expertise have spent weeks trying to correct inaccurate statements about me. Each time, they must provide excessive documentation and navigate endless disputes before even minor corrections are approved. No matter how often they succeed, new distortions inevitably replace the old ones.

When left-leaning contributors make unsubstantiated claims about figures they associate with the political “dark side,” those assertions often go unchecked. The most recent version of my Wikipedia entry falsely states that I oppose Israel’s existence. I have never expressed any sentiment remotely resembling that.

While I have criticized AIPAC for unfairly attacking Israel’s critics, I have consistently defended Israel’s right to protect itself. Yet my biographer offers flimsy evidence to suggest otherwise. One supposed indicator is my past friendship with the late Murray Rothbard, who was explicitly anti-Zionist. But why assume I shared all his views, including his stance on Israel?

Another so-called proof is that I once wrote a review essay for the American Conservative about Elmer Berger, a Reform rabbi critical of Israel’s founding as a Jewish state. Although I described Berger’s position as unrealistic, I apparently didn’t denounce him strongly enough to satisfy those eager to paint me as anti-Israel.

Guilt by association

Wikipedia contributors also attempt to discredit me by linking me to white nationalism. They note that I spoke at an American Renaissance conference in the 1990s but fail to mention that my remarks focused solely on my research on American conservatism — without endorsing white nationalism in any form.

The entry also highlights my past acquaintance with Richard Spencer, though that relationship largely predated his public embrace of white nationalism. Even more tenuously, it refers to an attack from the ADF against an organization I once led, claiming it was “friendly” to white racists. However, even the Wikipedia entry admits that our group was never identified as inherently racist.

These misrepresentations follow a familiar pattern. When leftist editors shape a narrative, they demand exhaustive proof to correct errors. Meanwhile, baseless smears against those they oppose remain unchallenged.

The Wikipedia entry omits that I spent years writing for leftist magazines and that members of the conservative establishment once attacked me as a “right-wing Marxist.” Over decades, I have engaged with a wide range of political groups — both right and left — but rarely with establishments. My work does not focus on race, as it is not my field of study. Instead, my scholarship examines European and American political movements.

Despite this, Wikipedia and Tablet's Jacob Siegel claim that I have written extensively on Latin fascism and seek to create a “post-fascist” imitation of it for the present age. Nothing in my research on changing concepts of fascism supports that bizarre conclusion. I have consistently argued that fascism belonged to a past historical era and should be viewed as an archaic, failed political model.

Opposite of reality

One of the weirdest, most glaring errors about my work appears not in Wikipedia’s biography but in its discussion of “cultural Marxism” as a supposed Jewish conspiracy. There, I am falsely listed as a major source of this ugly, pervasive, anti-Semitic accusation — an assertion that conveniently aligns with the misleading portrayal of me in my biographical sketch.

This charge is entirely baseless. Not only have I never held the views Wikipedia attributes to me, but my books explicitly reject them. The reality is the opposite of what my critics claim.

I have argued that critical theory’s success in the United States stems from its compatibility with the country’s evolution into a managerial state engaged in social engineering. I have also repeatedly noted that today’s woke ideology — promoted by the media, educators, and public administrators — is far more radical and far less insightful than anything the Frankfurt School theorists proposed. Compared to modern woke activists and even some so-called conservatives, early Frankfurt School thinkers could be considered homophobic and sexist.

Wikipedia also claims that Telos, originally a defender of critical theory, was a legitimate leftist magazine until I supposedly took control and transformed it into a “far-right” publication. The entry falsely states, “Under Gottfried’s tenure, Telos became far-right in its outlook.” In reality, I never served as the magazine’s editor in chief; Paul Piccone held that role. I was one of many contributors on the editorial board and played only a minor role in the publication’s engagement with European right-wing thought.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Telos began exploring critiques of centralized managerial regimes, including perspectives from “decentralist” thinkers on the right. This shift was not the result of my supposed influence but rather part of a broader intellectual evolution within the publication.

Of course, I have no expectation that Wikipedia will ever portray me fairly, but I hope others won’t judge me based on its fabrications. One position I will never conceal is my contempt for those who defame me and others like them — peddlers of what George Orwell aptly called “smelly little orthodoxies.” One can’t despise such people enough.

Trump, Milei, and Orbán lead a conservative resurgence worldwide



Over the past several years, global political ideologies have shifted dramatically from left to right. Across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, nations that once embraced progressive policies have experienced a surge in right-leaning populism and conservative movements.

Liberal politicians aligned with the Davos-driven global agenda are being replaced by nationalists putting their countries first. Leaders like Javier Milei in Argentina, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Donald Trump in the United States have transformed the political landscape, leaving traditional elites scrambling.

The current shift to the right has ushered in Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. A successful Trump presidency could sustain this momentum for decades to come.

This trend continues. Governments in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom face mounting pressure from right-leaning factions. In the United States, even liberal figures like New York Mayor Eric Adams are echoing Donald Trump’s rhetoric, while progressive prosecutors, such as San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, backed by George Soros, have been voted out of office.

This shift reflects more than political realignment. It signals a broader societal transformation driven by economic instability, cultural upheaval, unchecked immigration, and the political fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The failed Biden administration serves as a clear example of the transformation underway.

Economic instability

The fiscal and monetary policies of the Biden administration led to the highest inflation rate in decades, going from 1.4% when Joe Biden took office in January 2021 to a peak of 9.1% in June 2022. On average, prices were up approximately 20% during the Biden presidency. People could not afford to put gas in their cars, fill their grocery carts, or make their mortgage payments. Americans’ credit card debt reached record levels, topping $1.1 billion in February 2024.

The Biden administration’s answer was to tell the American people that inflation was transitory and that Americans had it better than the rest of the world. Not much help to a single mother trying to afford to feed her children and pay the rent.

Trump understood this and promised to return America to the economic success it realized during his first term as president. Vowing to Make America Great Again ... again.

Social and cultural upheaval

During the Biden administration, the United States experienced a cultural transformation as private companies and government agencies put diversity, equity, and inclusion over profits and efficiency.

Controversial decisions, such as using a transgender influencer as a spokesperson for Bud Light and Target’s introduction of “tuck-friendly” swimsuits for transgender teens, led to consumer backlash, boycotts, and significant revenue losses.

The White House hosted Pride Month celebrations, where some transgender attendees paraded topless. The administration also flew the transgender flag at the White House and U.S. embassies around the globe and supported policies allowing biological men to compete against biological women in sports.

Working Americans perceived these moves as a threat to traditional values and their children’s well-being. With a struggling economy, many found it difficult to support a president who, in their view, prioritized cultural debates, like access to bathrooms, over addressing pressing financial issues.

Trump capitalized on this discontent, opposing policies that allowed men to compete against women in sports, keeping boys out of girls’ bathrooms, and emphasizing unity by celebrating all Americans rather than dividing them into groups. As the newly elected president, Trump has gone further, declaring it U.S. policy to recognize only two sexes. He also mandated that only the American flag be flown at government buildings, embassies, military bases, and on government websites.

Illegal immigration

Trump made immigration and building the wall a central focus of his first presidential run. Then, Biden made a joke out of the nation’s borders by allowing unchecked illegal immigration and forbidding organizations such as ICE from deporting those illegal aliens who committed violent crimes.

An estimated 10 million people — at minimum — entered the country illegally since January 2021. Violent crimes committed by illegal aliens became a central part of the 2024 election, partly due to the brutal murder of nursing student Laken Riley at the hands of a Venezuelan national in the country unlawfully.

Trump promised the most massive deportation effort in American history of those in the country illegally. It resonated, especially with legal immigrants, with Trump winning a record number of Hispanic votes.

The COVID response

The response to COVID-19 underscored the stark divide between left-leaning and conservative leadership. Democratic governors in states like New York, Michigan, Illinois, and California imposed strict lockdowns, confining residents to their homes and forcing businesses to close. Meanwhile, Republican governors in states like Texas and Florida kept their economies open, allowing their states to thrive.

President Biden mandated that military personnel receive the experimental COVID-19 vaccine and attempted to use OSHA to enforce a nationwide vaccine requirement for workers. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down the mandate. In contrast, Donald Trump opposed such mandates, a stance that resonated with many Americans who rejected forced vaccinations. Trump leveraged his opposition to COVID mandates to bolster his support for smaller, less intrusive government, continuing his “drain the swamp” message from 2016.

Sometimes called the “people’s billionaire,” Trump demonstrated a keen understanding of Americans’ frustrations during his successful 2024 presidential campaign. By addressing hot-button cultural issues such as men in women’s sports and illegal immigration, Trump appealed to voters alarmed by perceived negative changes to America’s values and culture. His promises to restore the economy, dismantle DEI initiatives, and reduce government interference in daily life resonated with middle-class voters seeking to provide for their families, keep more of their paychecks, and simply be left alone.

Political influence tends to swing between left and right over time. The current shift to the right has ushered in Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. A successful Trump presidency could sustain this momentum for decades to come.