Furious Minds
The Making of the MAGA New Right
Laura K. Field
The attention that the media pays to MAGA rally-goers, Midwestern miners, and Proud Boy rioters might lead one to believe that the Republican Party’s embrace of Trumpism is all about noisy members of the grassroots. But many of the people organizing election law changes and book bans have spent their lives in the mainstream, hold JDs and PhDs, and have, heretofore, been the ones to put the brakes on the more extreme elements of the party. As writer and political scientist Laura Field argues in Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, it is these conservative intellectuals, who rallied behind Trump during—and after—his term in office, who are now wielding the most lasting influence on the future of the Republican party.
Furious Minds is the story of the new reactionary intellectual movement—a movement made up of people who are willing to deploy means that they know are highly dangerous in order to achieve their own ends, because they are convinced that the stakes are extraordinarily high. It follows the descent of a significant proportion of the leadership of the conservative intellectual community into vulgar and anti-American authoritarianism, especially in the aftermath of January 6th .
While the future may or may not involve Trump, it is essential that we understand that the movement he has inspired isn’t a fringe phenomenon. There is great risk in not acknowledging the influence of the reactionary intellectuals, and Furious Minds makes clear that they must be recognized, and then defended against, on the campaign trail and in the voting booth, as well as in the public debate.
Published by Princeton University Press
Praise for Furious Minds
[An] excellent new book. ― Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
In the ever-growing field of books aiming to explain the rise of the MAGA movement, Furious Minds, by a political theorist with longstanding experience in conservative academia, stands out for its emphasis on ideas. Field shows how the New Right, drawing on a loose network of academics and influencers, has coalesced around a vision of America that is socially reactionary, economically isolationist and deeply skeptical of pluralism as an inherent social good. ― New York Times
Furious Minds is the most up-to-date introduction we have to the MAGA intellectual right reshaping America with astonishing speed today. ― Mark Lilla, New York Review of Books
A fascinating taxonomy of the wild world of far-right thinking.― Zack Beauchamp, Vox’s The Gray Area
A revelatory, at times horrifying deconstruction of the New Right; it shows how we arrived at this moment, and it discusses the intentions of those who hope to push it further. . . . We recommend her book for the essential knowledge it contains—and for its important advice.― Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword
… a meticulous and unsettling revelation of a right-wing plan for a “new old-fashioned world. ― Publishers Weekly starred review
A pathbreaking intellectual history from the world’s preeminent researcher of the contemporary American right. Furious Minds scrupulously chronicles the coalescence of a modern movement that took place as much online as in the seminar room or the corridors of power. Essential reading to understand today’s political situation. ― John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
Why should we care about the obscure and often fanatical right-wing intellectuals that populate Furious Minds? Because as Laura Field deftly shows, they now have access to the corridors of power, with many now serving as advisers to President Trump and designing his hard-right policies. Readers should be rushing to this book to understand how and why conservative elites embraced extremism. – Elizabeth Anderson, University of Michigan
No one has done more than Laura Field to shine a spotlight on the arcane but enormously important ecosystem of New Right intellectuals that now drives the second Trump administration. Writing with precision and passion, she makes clear why liberals have grievously underestimated these thinkers and their ideas, and why the New Right’s radical plans for remaking the world are appealing, ambitious, and extremely dangerous.
– Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
