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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Authoritarian Ideas, Old and New: From Schmitt to “JD”
Description: On this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director, Eli Karetny talks with Richard Wolin (Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center) about the intellectual roots of today’s anti-liberal right. Tracing a line from Germany’s “conservative revolutionaries” (Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Heidegger) to France’s nouvelle droite and “great replacement” rhetoric, Wolin shows how cultural critiques of egalitarianism and “decadence” resurface in contemporary movements—from the manosphere and Bronze Age Pervert to tech-elite flirtations with political theology and the “state of exception.” The conversation connects these currents to U.S. figures like Peter Thiel and JD Vance, exploring why myths o...