Keen On

So how smart is the MAGA intelligentsia? According to Laura K. Field — a longtime observer of the American right and author of Furious Minds — the making of the new right has less to do with original intelligence than with timing and marketing. What the professors, philosophers, and trolls of this movement have done so effectively, Field argues, is transform rage into a winning political coalition. It’s not that figures like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermuele, Peter Thiel or J.D. Vance are saying anything particularly original; it’s that the way they’re saying it feels new — sharper, more performative, more attuned to grievance. These men — and they are almost all men — have learned to ride a wave of popular anger against every form of traditional authority. Their rage, Field suggests, is what’s truly revolutionary. Their ideas - particularly those of online influencers like Stone Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin - are not.1. “We underestimate them at our peril.”The MAGA intelligentsia aren’t just provocateurs. Fie