Genealogy and the Redefinition of the Political Order

Over the last fifteen years in the United States, a profound politico-intellectual transformation has emerged that extends far beyond the classic paradigms of Reaganism, post-9/11 neoconservatism, and even twentieth-century paleoconservatism. This “New Right” does not merely rephrase the Republican Party’s platform; it seeks to redefine the very principles of the political order: the concept of the common good, the modalities of legitimizing authority, the relationship between technology and transcendence, and the dialectic between metapolitics and governance. In this context, metapolitics functions as the factory of common sense, while governance becomes the institutional engineering that translates ideas into administrative practice.

The “New Right” structures itself around three poles that at times feed one another and at other times are in tension: a techno-sovereignism that places technological power at the foundation of sovereignty; a communitarian post-liberalism that rereads freedom in moral and communal terms; and a media metapolitics that turns publishing and digital platforms into instruments of cultural hegemony and elite selection. These components together form an articulated ecosystem, progressing from ideas to the training of political and administrative cadres, passing through entrepreneurs, legal theorists, cultural institutions, training hubs, think tanks, and the media.

Sociology of the New Right and the Trumpian Coalition

From a sociological standpoint, this new political configuration largely overlaps with the Trumpian coalition — a heterogeneous and conflictual reality that nonetheless finds cohesion in the leader’s charismatic force and in his ability to distribute partial victories to different interest groups. The Washington Post identifies six main factions within this coalition: MAGA populists, traditional Republicans, fiscal hawks, the religious Right, the tech Right, and the MAHA bloc of converted ex-Democrats.[1] The intersection between the ideological framework and the balance among factions is the fundamental key to understanding the “New Right,” both conceptually and through the analysis of the social groups and territories in which it operates.

The Six Factions of Trumpism

According to The Washington Post, the six main factions that comprise the Trumpian coalition are the result of a deliberate design to maintain broad and dynamic cohesion.

MAGA populists constitute the mobilizing core, with an “America First” agenda prioritizing migration restrictions, reshoring policies, and an anti-elite culture supported by parallel media ecosystems.

Traditional Republicans ensure financial resources and institutional continuity, maintaining a pro-market platform.

Fiscal Hawks focus on curbing public spending and limiting the powers of the federal state.

Religious Right defends moral values on issues such as education, gender, and family.

Technological Right contributes cognitive and infrastructural capital, promoting a vision of technological sovereignty.

The MAHA bloc, largely comprised of former Democrats, broadens the political base with health care themes and deregulatory initiatives.

The cohesion of this heterogeneous alliance depends on its ability to mediate divergences on crucial issues such as skilled immigration, tariffs, military aid, regulation of AI, biotechnology, and bioethical rights.

Historical and Ideological Roots

The “New Right” arises from the interweaving of at least four traditions: postwar classical conservatism, founded on market, family, religion, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism; neoconservatism, characterized by a universalist and interventionist vocation; Buchanan-style paleoconservatism, based on protectionism, migration restriction, and skepticism toward wars of choice; and West Coast libertarianism, oriented toward “exit” from the political-institutional order. Since the 1980s, the latter movement has elaborated strategies for exiting the political and institutional structures of the twentieth century: exit from the welfare state and managerialism via critiques of postwar institutions perceived as oppressive; territorial and legal exit through projects of competitive secession such as private cities, charter cities, and micronations; technological exit with the adoption of emerging technologies like cryptocurrencies and blockchain to circumvent institutions; existential exit, with transhumanist and Promethean visions aimed at overcoming the categories of citizenship and the state through space, AI, and biotechnologies.

From the 2008 financial crisis onward, wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and institutional wear-and-tear eroded the consensus behind globalist elites, while “endless wars” weakened their legitimacy. In this vacuum of power and trust, the “New Right” emerges as an attempt to respond systematically to the decline of liberalism, proposing a refounding of political and cultural bonds. Its genealogy aims to redefine the status of technology, the common good, and the role of institutions, organizing the field along three main axes: technocracy versus communitarianism, religion versus Prometheanism, metapolitics versus governance.

Theoretical Axes and Internal Tensions

The first theoretical axis pits communitarianism against technocracy. On the one hand, communitarian theorists propose rooting freedom in substantial forms of belonging — such as family, community, and nation — guided by a shared end (telos). On the other hand, proponents of technocracy — often entrepreneurs and investors — consider innovation and decision-making speed as moral criteria for a political order.

The second axis opposes religion to technological Prometheanism. Post-liberals believe transcendence should order politics and civic life, while techno-sovereignists secularize salvation in the conquest of the frontiers of space, artificial intelligence, and biotechnologies.

The third axis intersects metapolitics with governance. The “New Right” simultaneously acts on the production of common sense and on the conquest of administrative levers — as Project 2025 demonstrates — seeking to integrate vertically the path from ideas to cadre formation to policy definition.

These three fault lines are both the source of the movement’s creativity and energy, and the points of potential crisis and internal division.

Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Actors of the American New Right

The American “New Right” features a constellation of political entrepreneurs and intellectuals who shape both the movement’s imaginary and its strategies.

Among them stands Peter Thiel, known for having developed a vision of elitist libertarianism grounded in references to thinkers such as Girard, Strauss, and Schmitt. For Thiel, innovation and creation are not merely practical tools; they rise to the status of moral criteria and founding principles for selecting new founding elites.

Elon Musk, by contrast, is distinguished by a soteriological Prometheanism: space, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing are conceived as instruments of redemption for humanity. His techno-populist and anti-woke approach has enabled him to serve as a bridge between technological elites and digital masses.

Curtis Yarvin proposes a model of algorithmic neo-monarchism in which corporate governance becomes the paradigm for the state, basing legitimation on ownership and owners’ responsibility.

Nick Land, a philosopher of the Dark Enlightenment, advocates for the acceleration of techno-capitalism, promoting the reduction of welfare, the creation of city-companies, and the supremacy of techno-efficient elites, offering a radical and anti-democratic narrative.

Other relevant actors include Marc Andreessen, Palmer Luckey, and figures from the defense-software ecosystem, highlighting how sovereignty now plays out on the informational architecture of sensors, networks, critical supply chains, and proprietary stacks. This “Promethean family” imparts a “frontier” thrust to the New Right, without exhausting the movement’s heterogeneity.

The Communitarian and National-Conservative Front

In contrast to the Promethean and technological wing lies communitarian post-liberalism, which offers a solid theological and political counterweight.

Patrick Deneen interprets liberalism as the cause of the dissolution of the moral preconditions of individual freedom and proposes the construction of communities ordered teleologically.

Adrian Vermeule, with his “common good constitutionalism,” rejects the myth of a neutral interpretation of the Constitution, restoring the centrality of common goods in constitutional values.

Yoram Hazony reintegrates the Bible as a foundation of national politics and launches the concept of mutual loyalty and concentric circles. His program includes God and religion in public discourse, the family as a central institution, controlled borders and immigration, a free market tempered by national interest, and realism in foreign policy.

Kevin Roberts calls for a second American revolution of creationist stamp against the liberal elite. His goal is to rebuild executive power and “dismantle the administrative state” through a unified platform of policy and conservative personnel. He wants protected borders, stricter immigration policies, a revival of family and religion in public space, pro-reshoring industrial policy, and cuts and restructuring of federal agencies.

Michael Anton, with his apocalyptic narrative, aims to refound conservatism through the conquest of institutions and a national-populist vision: “It is urgent to seize the state to save its identity.”

Russell Vought proposes a centralized executive state and a “nation under God,” promoting a frontal clash with the federal bureaucracy.

J. D. Vance translates these ideas into an economic populism centered on labor and reindustrialization.

This set of positions provides a firm normative and moral anchor, enabling the New Right to engage effectively with the evangelical and conservative Catholic electorate, thereby balancing the secularism of the tech Right.

Cultural and Doctrinal-Training Infrastructures

The New Right stands out for a solid cultural and training infrastructure.

The Claremont Institute advances theories such as the “two constitutions,” criticizes rights granted to minority groups at the expense of everyone else, and reinterprets American politics through a decisionist lens to refound American conservatism.

Hillsdale College serves as an educational laboratory for training cadres and administrators, with a focus on defending civil and religious liberty.

The Heritage Foundation, in collaboration with Project 2025, designs a command center to reorganize the executive branch, select personnel, and translate doctrines into operational practice.

The University of Notre Dame, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Ethics & Public Policy Center, and other smaller institutions and organizations promote values of nation, civic virtue, order, family, and religion in public spaces, with varying emphases.

This process — moving from ideas to cadre formation to policy definition — allows the movement to consolidate and move beyond a purely movementist phase.

The Media Machine and Metapolitics

On the media and metapolitical plane, the New Right relies on a polycentric archipelago of platforms and figures.

Steve Bannon, with War Room, adopts a Gramscian strategy of counter-hegemony, pitting the people against the managerial class, emphasizing national sovereignty, defending borders, and advocating for a permanent state of political war.

Tucker Carlson represents a vector of anti-elite normalization in the mainstream, emphasizing freedom of expression and skepticism toward globalism and the “administrative state.” He converges with First Things and NatCon on themes such as nation, family, and religion in public space.

NatCon is the congressional and doctrinal infrastructure of national conservatism, bringing together religious tradition, nation, and political realism with a post-liberal economic agenda.

Alex Kaschuta, with Subversive, serves as a bridge between the New Right and post-liberal, reactionary, and the high-brow “manosphere”, a network of male communities against feminism and female emancipation (“Men Going Their Own Way,” “Pick-Up Artist,” and fathers’ rights groups).

Auron MacIntyre provides a doctrinal framework for anti-progressive militants, focusing on immigration, identity, and strategies of power within a context tinged with skepticism toward “administered democracy”.

Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova of Red Scare link the New Right to intellectual milieus, creationist currents, and even urban aesthetics. This is a cultural phenomenon convergent with the NRx on anti-woke themes, critique of cultural liberalism, and a young Catholic revival that has a strong impact on urban audiences and the creative class.

These protagonists, together with podcasters and influencers like Joe Rogan — a cross-cutting megaphone — ensure the dissemination of ideas and the creation of informational consumption styles and activism.

The conspiratorial media periphery serves as a shifting Overton window, forcing ideas once considered radical to become acceptable and mainstream. This “shift” is taking place over time through persuasion, repetition of arguments, and public conversation.

Finally, the editorial infrastructure, represented by Jonathan Keeperman and Passage Press, guarantees continuity and status to the intellectual ecosystem. The shared narrative — of corrupt elites, a betrayed people, internal and external threats such as China, globalism, and woke capitalism — allows the different factions to recognize themselves in a common story, thereby overcoming differences in detail.

The two dimensions — media and editorial — feed each other. This is not mere propaganda; it is the production of communities and rituals, as well as styles of informational consumption and activism. Authority is performative and networked; doctrinal coherence is secondary to narrative assemblage.

Religion, Political Theology, and the New Right

Religion is the foundational symbolic element that enables the “New Right” to transform mere individual preferences into collective duties, and political strategies into shared norms. For post-liberals of Catholic stamp and for the evangelical Religious Right, the legitimate political order must reflect a moral law considered non-negotiable. In this framework, the religious dimension is not only a source of values; it becomes an actual criterion for the admissibility of public choices.

First Things, an ecumenical magazine, and its editor, “Rusty” Reno, criticize secularization and liberal-progressive cultural hegemony and defend the normative role of the Church and faith in civic life. They serve as a resonance chamber for issues such as family, birth rates, bioethics, religious liberty, critique of cultural “managerialism,” skepticism toward globalism and technocracy, and the recovery of tradition and virtues as the foundation of the common good.

For national conservatives, the Bible serves as a reference code for defining national sovereignty and collective identity. By contrast, for techno-Prometheans, religious transcendence is replaced by a secular teleology in which science and technology guide and orient public policy. This polarity between religious transcendence and technology is indeed an internal contradiction, but it also constitutes the engine that allows the movement to spread its ideas and maintain a dynamic balance. Without religious reference, the “New Right” risks sliding into a value-less efficientism; without recourse to technology, it would lose its competitive edge globally.

The New Right and Republican Tradition: A Paradigm Shift

Compared to the Republican Party’s tradition, the “New Right” brings a significant transformation of references and strategies. In economic policy, the emphasis shifts from the global supply chain to an embryonic form of national capitalism, expressed through selective tariffs, targeted industrial policies, state shareholdings, and the strategic use of public demand and export-control restrictions. In foreign policy, neoconservative interventionism gives way to a selective defense of national interests, marked by concepts such as restraint and burden sharing among allies.

Regarding the State, libertarian minimalism is superseded in favor of a decisionism that aims to reduce the discretionary room of federal agencies, strengthening political accountability. On the media front, the mix of traditional think tanks and cable news gives way to a ramified and capillary digital system. In this scenario, the market is not abandoned; rather, it is subordinated to national sovereignty, social order, and cultural identity.

Figure 1 – The Complex Galaxy of the New Right

Institutional and Social Impact

The effects of these transformations are already observable on several levels.

First, there is a reorganization of the federal administration, aimed at creating a more vertical and politically accountable structure.

Second, industrial policies are being adopted that favor productive reshoring, the protection of strategic supply chains, the development of the defense industry, and the strengthening of technological sovereignty.

A third impact concerns education and the family, considered fundamental axes for re-legitimizing the social order through instruments such as school choice, vouchers, and pro-natal policies.

Finally, there is an electoral realignment that integrates the white working class and growing segments of culturally conservative minorities.

The Geopolitical Dimension

In the global confrontation — particularly with China — the “New Right” translates economic decoupling into a strategy of technological de-risking. Concretely, this means restrictions on the exports of dual-use technologies, controls on investments, domestic incentives for semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and biotechnologies, and a selective openness to highly skilled immigration. On this point, internal tensions are evident: for populists, skilled immigration retains an ambivalent value, while for techno-sovereignists it is a key competitive tool.

In relations with Russia, a realist approach prevails, aimed at containing costs and avoiding prolonged conflicts that offer scant strategic returns. In the Middle East, partnerships with Israel and deterrence toward Iran intersect with a functional view of the Abraham Accords, which are considered both security devices and economic-technological vectors. Toward Europe, the “New Right” demands more equitable burden sharing and displays distrust toward ESG policies and excessive regulation; the European Union is seen as a tactical partner, rather than a strategic pillar. In Latin America, the outlook is pragmatic and security-oriented, focusing on critical raw materials, managing migration flows, and containing Chinese influence.

This set of strategies gives rise to a grand strategy centered on technological sovereignty and the transactional reconfiguration of alliances.

Strengths and Fragilities of the New Right

In conclusion, the American New Right is not merely a collection of occasional groups, but an organic refounding project that integrates technology, religion, and metapolitics, transcending the liberal-globalist paradigm. Its strength lies in the vertical integration of ideas, cadre training, and policy definition, as well as in its capacity to aggregate a heterogeneous yet cohesive historical bloc.

Its principal fragilities manifest in the tensions between technocratic elites and the sovereignist base; between transcendent aspirations and Promethean-technological drive; between market priorities and political decisionism. The real challenge will be the transition from a “campaign model” based on the leader’s charisma to a stable, institutionalized “government model”. Should this process succeed, the New Right could consolidate a national order founded on technological sovereignty and national capitalism, with lasting global effects; otherwise, fragmentation could favor a moderate restoration or the emergence of new populist syntheses. In either scenario, twenty-first-century American politics will have to confront the triad of techno-sovereignism, post-liberalism, and metapolitics as the fundamental grammar of political contention.

Notes

Natalie Allison, “The six warring factions that make up Trump’s coalition,” The Washington Post, 2025.

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