Know Your Enemy

On February 28, both the United States and Israel attacked Iran, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation's Supreme Leader, along with other political leaders and government officials, destroying various military targets, and bombing a girls elementary school that took at least 175 lives, many of them children. Just under a week into the war, where are we? Why did Trump decide to attack Iran now? What reasons did they give, and were any of them plausible? What have the consequences been so far? And what can Democrats do to fight back? To answer these questions, we had on Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders. Other topics include: Michael Ledeen and the right's fixation on Iran; Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and the Iranian hostage crisis, and more. Sources: Matthew Duss, "War With Iran Would Be Illegal and Stupid. Democrats Should Care," Foreign Policy, Feb 27, 2026 Zachary Basu, "Trump's Lethal Presidency," Axios, Mar 2, 2026 Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, et al, "How Trump Decided to Go to War," New York Times, Mar 2, 2026 Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win (2002) — The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction (2007) — Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West (2009) ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. On Monday, Manhattan Institute fellow Chris Rufo posted this: "The Right's collective brain is getting melted in a vat of slop, conspiracy, and algorithm-chasing. An intelligent man will guard himself against all of it." Given that Rufo was, after J.D. Vance, perhaps the most prominent Haitians-are-eating-pets-in-Ohio conspiracy theorist in the country, his complaint generated many, many responses rightfully calling him out for his lack of self-awareness and his own role in mainstreaming such a politics. As our friend John Ganz wrote, "Is this hypocrisy, stupidity, or unabashed malevolence? Try all three: it’s politics. Specifically, it’s the politics of the American Conservative Movement. People cry out for a new William F. Buckley. Give the title to Rufo, I say; he’s doing the job already." In this episode we talked to Ganz about how the dynamic Rufo identified has always been a feature of the postwar conservative movement, stretching back at least to William F. Buckley, Jr. and Brent Bozell's defense of McCarthyism; what's distinctive about the Right's present slop era, especially the alignment of conservative movement propagandists, the Republican Party, and the state; populism and the "Madisonian model"; and more! Sources: John Ganz, "I Told You So..." Unpopular Front, Feb 24, 2026 — "Finding Neverland: The American right’s doomed quest to rid itself of Trumpism," New Republic, Feb 17, 2020 Olivia Bellusci, "Candace Owens Drops Trailer for Investigative Series About Erika Kirk Months After Charlie’s Death," Yahoo, Feb 24, 2026 Matthew Sitman, "Riding the Trump Tiger," Commonweal, Aug 7, 2015 Nathan Taylor Pemberton, "Is ‘Slopulism’ Shaping Our Politics?" New York Times, Feb 13, 2026 Ruby Cramer, "You Don't Know Bernie Sanders," Buzzfeed, Dec 16, 2019. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, (1982)

When people break with MAGA, most of them walk away and don't look back, whether out of shame or fear or both. So it's a rare thing to talk with someone willing to describe publicly why they joined the Trump movement, what life was like on the inside, and the reasons they left — but it's just such a conversation we have for you today, with writer and former New Right firebrand Pedro Gonzales. Enjoy. Sources: Pedro Gonzalez, "The Right Lost the Culture War, and America," Contra, Feb 16, 2026 — "Trump Demands the Worst of Us," Contra, Feb 8, 2026 — "Why the New Right Can’t Quit Conspiracy Theories," Contra, Dec 18, 2025 — "Welcome to Hell," Contra, Dec 10, 2025 — "Gen Z’s Flight From Trump," Contra, July 24, 2025 James Burnham, The Machiavellians, (1943) Sam Francis, Beautiful Losers, (1993) Michael Anton, "The Flight 93 Election," Claremont Review of Books, Sept 5, 2017. Matthew Doyle, "Rising Conservative Influencer Pedro Gonzalez Regularly Espoused Racist and Anti-Semitic Sentiments in Private Messages," Breitbart, June 27, 2023 ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. This episode is about Shattered Glass, the 2003 movie portraying former New Republic writer Stephen Glass's fall from the heights of magazine journalism after he was exposed as a serial fabulist who routinely made up quotes, sources, key details, and more in his stories. We've both loved this movie for years, and thought discussing it would serve as a companion of sorts to our interview with Jason Zengerle about Tucker Carlson—and, of course, as a chance for us to geek out about it. After describing the basics of the plot and introducing the main characters, we explore the history of the New Republic under its then-owner and editor in chief Marty Peretz; its string of young, Harvard educated editors during the Peretz Era, who often had short, turbulent stints in that role; fact-checking and the mythos of objective journalism; the relationship between elite magazine writing and celebrity culture during "the end of history"; and more. Sources: Shattered Glass (2003) Buzz Bissinger, "Shattered Glass," Vanity Fair, Sept 1998 Howard Kurtz, "Stranger Than Fiction: The Cautionary Tale of Magazine Writer Stephen Glass," Washington Post, May 12, 1998 Jonathan Last, "Stopping Stephen Glass," Weekly Standard, Oct 30, 2003 Pete Croatto, "Why ‘Shattered Glass’ Endures," Poynter, Jan 24, 2024 Martin Peretz, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center (2023) Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Peretz in Exile," New York, Dec 23, 2010 John Cook, "Why Won't Anyone Tell You That Marty Peretz Is Gay?" Gawker, Jan 25, 2011 David Klion, "Everybody Hates Marty," The Baffler, Sept 13, 2023 Andrew Sullivan, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality (1996) — "The Tao of Marty," The Weekly Dish, July 21, 2023 Alex Shultz, "Nobody Wants To Talk About John Fetterman And Buzz Bissinger’s Pricey Memoir Project," Defector, June 23, 2025

Finally, an episode about Tucker Carlson—and at an auspicious time, as his influence on the right seems only to have grown in the first year of Trump's second term. To help us understand him, we turned to journalist Jason Zengerle, who first crossed paths with Tucker in the last, halcyon days of magazine journalism before cable news and the internet, and now has written Hated By All the Right People, a book that tells two intertwined stories: the life of Tucker Carlson, and the changes in the media that he's navigated so deftly (despite some low points along the way). This conversation takes you from his adolescence to his early fame writing for The Weekly Standard and Talk to his recent interview with Nick Fuentes, and all the phases and stages of Tucker's sad trajectory toward anti-semitism and conspiracy-mongering. Sources: Jason Zengerle, Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind (2026) Andrew Marantz, "The Tucker Carlson Roadshow," New Yorker, Nov 1, 2024 ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. The shocking execution of Alex Pretti occurred after we recorded our last episode for subscribers about Minneapolis, and so the city and its people have remained in our thoughts in a special way. To help us understand what's happening on the ground there, we talked to our friend Lydia Polgreen, who grew up in Minneapolis and traveled there to report on the situation for the New York Times. Topics include: how Lydia approached her reporting in Minneapolis; the way the resistance and response to ICE/BP has drawn on networks forged during the George Floyd protests; the ordinary Minnesotans acting with bravery and courage; the "civil war" she glimpsed on the streets of Minneapolis; original sin and democracy; and more. Previous episodes referenced: "The Donroe Doctrine" (Jan 26, 2026); "The Killing of Renee Good" (Jan 19, 2026) Sources: Lydia Polgreen, David French, & Michelle Goldberg, "'Noem Needs to Go': Three Columnists on ICE in Minneapolis," New York Times, Jan 26, 2026 Lydia Polgreen, "In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War," New York Times, Jan 19, 2026 — "Trump’s One Small Trick to Destroy American Democracy," New York Times, Jan 9, 2026 Garry Wills, The Second Civil War: Arming for Armageddon (1968) Emily Witt, "The Battle for Minneapolis," The New Yorker, Jan 25, 2026

Last week, all eyes were on Davos as President Trump unfurled his deranged desire to buy or take Greenland from Denmark—just weeks after the United States kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Trump asserted the so-called "Donroe Doctrine." To help us understand what the Trump administration is doing in the Western hemisphere, we talked to the Progressive International's David Adler and Matt Kirkagaard, who take us from the Monroe Doctrine to what Trump had done both in his first term and in the first year of his second term in Venezuela and other Latin American countries before abducting Maduro. We then try to grasp what the Trump administration is up to with Greenland, all the while trying to offer a better explanation of the forces shaping Trump's foreign policy than the elusive search for a coherent theory of "Trumpism." Sources: Patrick Iber, "The Trump Doctrine," Dissent, Jan 5, 2026 Alexandra Stevenson, "Trump Is Making a Power Play in Latin America. China Is Already There," New York Times, Jan 9, 2026 David Adler, Vanessa Romero Rocha, Michael Galant, "The Fourth Transformation: The political economy of Claudia Sheinbaum’s popularity," Phenomenal World, Apr 3, 2025. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Matt and Sam discuss the January 7 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an ICE agent, the promising signs that it is proving deeply unpopular, and the less hopeful indications coming from Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller, and others in the administration and the Republican Party about what it portends. Sources: Nancy Cook, "Inside the White House, Stephen Miller is Making His Vision of America Real," Bloomberg, Jan 9, 2026 Peter Hamby, "Support for ICE is Collapsing," Puck, Jan 13, 2026 Greg Sargent & Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, "Transcript: Trump Press Sec Snaps at Media as Polls on ICE Turns Dire," New Republic, Jan 16, 2026 Marilynne Robinson, Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989)

For years now on Know Your Enemy, we've taken the January 6, 2021 insurrection as a glimpse of Trumpism unbound—not a few naive Q-anon types and tourists bumbling around, and not an excuse to be blackmailed into voting for Democrats, but a violent prelude to what a second Trump term would be like, a judgment that, sadly, has been entirely vindicated. One reason we've taken this perspective is Robert Draper's exceptionally insightful reporting from the Capitol that day and the days that followed, beginning with being in the Capitol on January 6 and seeing first hand the MAGA mob's unfolding violence, then following figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Kevin McCarthy, and others who followed Dear Leader's coattails to power, offering fascinating portraits of the menagerie of conspiracy theorists, liars, and frauds at the center of power in Trump's Washington. We discuss what Draper experienced on January and what he's learned since about the motivations behind, and meaning, of the riot, then ask him about Greene, Nick Fuentes, and Charlie Kirk, all of whom he's profiled in the last year. Sources: Robert Draper, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind (2022) — To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq (2020) — When the Tea Party Comes to Town: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives' Most Combative, Dysfunctional, and Infuriating Term in Modern History (2012) — Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007) — "'I Was Just So Naïve': Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump," New York Times Magazine, Dec 29, 2026 — "Once He Was 'Just Asking Questions.' Now Tucker Carlson Is the Question," New York Times Magazine, Nov 15, 2025 — "Nick Fuentes: A White Nationalist Problem for the Right," New York Times Magazine, Sept 9, 2025 — "How Charlie Kirk Became the Youth Whisperer of the American Right," New York Times Magazine, Feb 10, 2025 And please check out KYE's own Will Epstein's new record, "Yeah, Mostly." ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. We were excited to record and share this conversation with Matt Dinan, a professor who teaches in a Great Books program at St. Thomas University, a liberal arts college in New Brunswick, Canada. It brings together longtime preoccupations of the show — Saul Bellow's late novel, Ravelstein, Allan Bloom, Straussian political philosophy — with the fraught emergence of LLMs like ChatGPT. This past semester, Dinan took a fairly radical approach to confronting AI in the classroom, and it seemed to work. We consider the art of teaching, the qualities of great teachers, and what it all reveals about an insidious technology's effect on how we live and learn as citizens in, at least for now, a democratic republic. Listen again: "Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow," June 21, 2021 Sources: Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (2000) Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987) Matt Dinan, "Saul Bellow's Ravelstein," Hedgehog Review, Spring 2025 — "Permission Structures," Prefaces, Dec 10, 2025 — "It's Not Just a Calculator," Prefaces, Aug 28, 2024 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Lottery in Babylon," Collected Fictions (1999) Jonathan Malesic, "ChatGPT Is a Gimmick: AI cannot save us from the effort of learning to live and die," Hedgehog Review, May 21, 2025 — "Taming the Demon: How desert monks put work in its place," Commonweal, Feb 2, 2019

This episode originally aired November 17, 2025 on Patreon — we're unlocking it as a holiday treat. If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoing arguments about architecture that his ascension has occasioned. Proponents of a RETVRN to the architectural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome are prominent in MAGA circles; partisans of a neo-classical revival populate government commissions, and their prescriptions find expression in various executive orders again. To understand who these people are, what their movement wants, and the kernel of truth in their grievances, we talked to architectural critic and proprietor of McMansion Hell Kate Wagner. We start by analyzing Trump's ballroom and the demolishing the East Wing of the White House — the perfect way into MAGA architecture and the mind of their Beautiful Builder himself, Donald J. Trump. Sources: Kate Wagner, "Duncing About Architecture," New Republic, Feb 8, 2020 — "Trump Will Not Make Architecture Great Again," The Nation, Jan 7, 2025 — "The Real Problem With Trump’s Cheesy Neoclassical Building Fetish," Feb 12, 2025 — "what the fuck are we doing anymore," The Late Review, Jan 9, 2025. — "Wrecking Ballroom," The New York Review of Architecture, Dec 17, 2025. Charlie Nash, "Trump Admits He Could've Built Ballroom Without Destroying the East Wing, But 'It Looked Like Hell,'" Mediate, Nov 10, 2025 Jonathan Edwards & Dan Diamond, "Trump hires new White House ballroom architect," WaPo, Dec 4, 2025. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to look back at another year of trying to understand the American right—what we got wrong, what we got right, and what to expect in 2026. The conversation begins with the cracks showing in Trump's coalition, his plummeting approval ratings, and the possibility that Charlie Kirk really was helping hold the marriage of MAGA and the GOP together, then consider if we should have seen this coming (or not) and what it might say about our understanding of Trump, Vance, Kirk, Musk, and others we've considered on KYE in 2025. Sources: Christopher Flavelle, "How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration," New York Times, Dec 7, 2025 Bilal Baydoun, "What Musk's DOGE Really Cut: Trust, Safety, and Democracy," Roosevelt Institute, May 29, 2025 Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (2025) "Jill Lepore on Nationalism, Populism, and the State of America," EconTalk, April 15, 2019 Ryan Burge, "Religion Has Become A Luxury Good For The Middle Class, Married College Graduate With Children," ReligionUnplugged, July 12, 2023 Matt Dinan, "Permission Structures: How AI-skeptic Professors Can Still Help Students Write Papers," Prefaces, Dec 10, 2025

Given the not-terribly-uplifting streak of episodes we've had lately, we thought it was time for a Know Your Enemy movie night, and were joined by the podcast's intrepid producer, Jesse Brenneman, for a conversation about Paul Thomas Anderson's 2025 film, One Battle After Another. Its tagline—"When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own"—suggests why all three of us absolutely loved it. We discuss: the film's relationship to the contemporary United States, and what it might reveal about our political situation; how it portrays both the left and the right; the family drama at the heart of the film, and the connection between origin and identity, personally and politically; the way Ronald Reagan haunts a surprising number of its scenes; and more! Spoiler alert: we offer a quick plot summary for those who haven't (yet!) seen One Battle After Another, but that does mean certain surprises will be spoiled for you. Sources: Sam Adler-Bell, "The Fantasy of Assassination Culture," New York Magazine, Nov 1, 2025 Armond White, "There Will Be Bloodlust in One Battle After Another," National Review, Sept 26, 2025 Richard Brody, "The Real Battle of 'One Battle After Another,'" New Yorker, Oct 7, 2025 ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. Should you try to improve your friends or leave them be? Do friendship and politics mix? Is friendship about virtue or delight? In 2023, we were interviewed by Andrew Elrick, now a professor at Marist University, for a documentary podcast he was making about men and friendship. (Two of our favorite topics!) That podcast never came to fruition, but Andy was kind enough to share this audio with us, and now we're sharing it with you: a conversation about friendship — Matt and Sam's in particular — politics, and podcasting. Enjoy! Further Reading: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (350 BCE) Michel de Montaigne , “On Friendship” from The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580) Judith Shklar, “On Political Obligation,” (2019) Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (1993) Michael Oakeshott, “On Being Conservative,” (1956) Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916) Andrew Elrick, "Friendship is a Dangerous Thing," Game Stories, Nov 9, 2025.

Laura K. Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, published earlier this month, is a book we simply had to discuss. Listeners to this podcast will recognize its cast of characters—conservative intellectuals like Patrick Deneen, Michael Anton, John Eastman, Adrian Vermeule, and Harry Jaffa, among others—whose ideas and influence Field carefully categorizes and evaluates, bringing order to an unruly decade of intellectual history. Topics include: Leo Strauss and the problem of great teachers; the use and abuse of grand narratives by the right; how the Claremonters went all in on Trump; the permission given by postliberals to some of the nastiest impulses on the right; and more! Sources: Laura K. Field, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right (2025) — "Revisiting Why Liberalism Failed: A Five-Part Series," Niskanen Center, Dec 21, 2020 Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (2018) — Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023) Matthew Sitman, "Liberalism and the Catholic Left," Commonweal, Dec 3, 2018 Publius Decius Mus/Michael Anton, "The Flight 93 Election," Claremont Review of Books, Sept 5, 2016 Adrian Vermeule, "Integration from Within," American Affairs, Spring 2018 The Editors, "The Fight is Now," The American Mind, Nov 5, 2020 Anemona Hartocollis, "On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need 'Safe Spaces,'" New York Times, Dec 8, 2016 Further Listening: KYE: "Rise of the Illiberal Right," July 12, 2019. KYE: "Midnight in the Garden of American Heroes (On West Coast Straussians)," Feb 11, 2021. KYE: "Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow," June 21, 2021. KYE: "The Afterlife of January 6," July 19, 2021. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. If there's a Trump-era topic that manages to fascinate without being entirely depressing, it's probably the ongoing arguments about architecture that his ascension has occasioned. Proponents of a RETVRN to the architectural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome are prominent in MAGA circles; partisans of a neo-classical revival populate government commissions, and their prescriptions have found expression in several executive orders. To understand who these people are, what their movement wants, and the kernel of truth in their grievances, we talked to architectural critic and proprietor of McMansion Hell Kate Wagner. We start by analyzing Trump's ballroom and the demolishing the East Wing of the White House — the perfect way into MAGA architecture and the mind of their Beautiful Builder himself, Donald J. Trump. Sources: Kate Wagner, "Duncing About Architecture," New Republic, Feb 8, 2020 — "Trump Will Not Make Architecture Great Again," The Nation, Jan 7, 2025 — "The Real Problem With Trump’s Cheesy Neoclassical Building Fetish," Feb 12, 2025 — "what the fuck are we doing anymore," The Late Review, Jan 9, 2025. Charlie Nash, "Trump Admits He Could've Built Ballroom Without Destroying the East Wing, But 'It Looked Like Hell,'" Mediate, Nov 10, 2025

This episode isn't focused on a single topic or text, but rather just wanting to have a wide-ranging conversation with our guest, Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and author of the recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. We start by discussing the appalling wave of Islamophobic attacks against Zohran Mamdani during the last weeks of his victorious mayoral campaign, the short-sighted embrace of such bigotry by too many American Jews and Jewish institutions, the current iterations of anti-semitism roiling the right, religious tradition and progressive politics, changing your mind, and more. Listen again: "Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL" (w/ Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, & Peter Beinart), Sept 26, 2023 Sources: Zohran Mamdani, "My Message to Muslim New Yorkers—and Everyone Who Calls This City Home," YouTube, Oct 24, 2025 Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025) Mark Mazower, On Antisemitism: A Word in History, (2025) Arwa Mahdawi, "Mamdani's Mayoral Race was Marred by Unhinged Islamophobia. It's Not Going Away Soon," The Guardian, Nov 6, 2025 Romanus Cessario, O.P., "Non Possumus," First Things, Feb 1, 2018 George Washington, "To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island," August 18, 1790 ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

This is a different kind of episode than is typical; there's no book, no central text, not even a single, central event that guides the conversation. Instead, we begin with a few recent news items—speculation about Trump 2028, Speaker Mike Johnson's refusal to swear in a Democratic congresswoman, the stunning abdication of Congress as the shutdown continues, and, incredibly, a secretive billionaire and Mellon heir donates over a hundred million dollars to pay the military, among others—and then lay out our profound worries about Trump ruling by decree, and the coming of MAGA-style Caeserism. How and when might that occur? We discuss troubling signals the Trump administration is sending about upcoming elections, and especially the 2026 midterms; the ticking time bomb that is the Insurrection Act; how the right thinks about executive power (then and now), and more. Sources: Peter Rothpletz, "Trump's Third Term?" Zeteo/First Draft, Oct 24, 2025 Dana Milbank, "How Reactionary is MAGA? Try the First Century B.C.," Washington Post, Sept 7, 2022 Steve Bannon interview with The Economist, Oct 23, 2025 (YouTube) Shawn Hubler & Laurel Rosenhall, "Justice Department Will Monitor Elections in California and New Jersey," New York Times, Oct 24, 2025 Steve Contorno & Ashley Killough, "Frustrated Arizonans Have Waited More Than a Month for Their New Congresswoman to be Seated," CNN, Oct 25, 2025 Yoni Applebaum, "America's Fragile Constitution," The Atlantic, Oct 2015 Abraham Lincoln, "Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield," Jan 27, 1838 Bob Bauer & Jack Goldsmith, "Here’s What Trump Could Unleash by Invoking the Insurrection Act," New York Times, Oct 18, 2025 Damon Linker, "The Surest Path to Dictatorship: A Quick Plug for a Short Primer about the Insurrection Act," Notes from the Middleground, Oct 18, 2025 "Discussing Caesarism," New Founding Podcast, Oct 21, 2022. Harvey Mansfield, Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (1989) James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (1959) Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (2010) ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy. he theme of this rank punditry episode is Getting in Trouble on the Internet, and we begin with the frankly unsurprising story of the Young Republican Hitler group chats, then move on to a longer discussion about Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, Graham Platner, and the revelations about controversial past posts on Reddit about guns and fighting fascism, rural white voters, his ideological allegiances, and more—all recorded before the news of his tattoo, now covered over, of a Nazi skull-and-bones insignia. Along the way we talk about what makes a change of mind and heart persuasive, how grace comes to us in our struggles, if Platner is Fetterman 2.0, and the class dimension of all these debates, and finally close with a relatively hopeful take on the "No Kings" protests last weekend. Sources: Jason Beeferman and Emily Ngo, "'I Love Hitler': Leaked Messages Expose Young Republicans' Racist Chat," Politico, Oct 14, 2025 Julianne McShane, “No One in the GOP Hitler Chat Was a ‘Kid’: We checked. Sorry, JD Vance," Mother Jones, Oct 15, 2025 Adam Wren, Erin Doherty & Jessica Piper, "Maine Senate Candidate Promoted Violent Political Action in Since-Deleted Online Posts," Politico, Oct 16, 2025 Lauren McCauley, "Unearthed Reddit Comments Present First Stumble in Platner’s Rise," Maine Morning Star, Oct 17, 2025 Kimberlee Kruesi & Patrick Whittle, "Maine Senate Candidate Platner Says Tattoo Recognized as Nazi Symbol Has Been Covered," Associated Press, Oct 23, 2025 Ben Terris, "The Hidden Struggle of John Fetterman," New York, May 2, 2025 Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer (2013)

This episode is the second in our occasional series on important, controversial, or unusually relevant conservative texts from the recent past. Here we take up Charles Murray's 2012 book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. With its focus on the ascendence of a new "cognitive elite," cultural divides, and the pathologies afflicting working and lower class whites, the book might seem prophetic of the Age of Trump — but the reality is more complicated. Murray's oversights, it turns out, are as interesting as his insights. We walk listeners through Murray's account of how America "came apart," take the test he provides to see how thick our class/cultural bubbles are, then rip into the moralizing prescriptions with which he concludes the book. Along the way we discuss Murray as an emblematic success story of the right-wing welfare state and intellectual pipeline, revisit his obsession with race and IQ, and more! Sources: Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012) — Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (2003) — Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (1984) Jason DeParle, "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'? Charles Murray," New York Times, Oct 9, 1994 Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016) Pew Research Center, "Religious Landscape Study," Feb 26, 2025 Quinn Slobodian & Stuart Schrader, "The White Man, Unburdened," The Baffler, July 2018 "Do you live in a bubble? A quiz." PBS Newshour, Mar 24, 2016. ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!