Post-Liberalism Has Helped to Reinvent Far-Right Global Politics
Since Trump was first elected president in 2016, the appalling spectacle of the current administration has hidden the rise of a less pronounced group of post-liberal intellectuals that aim to advance an American variant of fascism and an overall approach for the New Right. Hannah Gurman, who teaches American Studies and history at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, is the author of several books on politics and history, including her latest, The Opportunists: The Post-Liberals and Reinvention of Reactionary Politics (The New Press, 2026). Gurman “combines intellectual biography and political history” to unpack today’s reactionary forces. In this exclusive interview, for CounterPunch, she discusses her most recent work and what is meant by post-liberal. Gurman describes the politics of the New Right regarding religion, Zionism, feminism, and populism — and argues that the “broader crisis of liberalism had been mounting since the end of the Cold War.”
Daniel Falcone: Your new book traces the rise and influence of the “post-liberal” movement on the right and throughout the Trump era. What is post-liberalism? And who are the post-liberals?
Hannah Gurman: “Post-liberal” is the term that a group of conservative intellectuals who rose to prominence in the Trump era and established close ties with JD Vance and Marco Rubio use to describe their movement.
Pushing up against establishment politics in both the Democratic and Republican parties, post-liberals denounce liberal culture, liberal internationalism, and libertarian economics. Like Trump, they exploited a mounting crisis of liberalism that was fueled by the failed post-9/11 wars, the 2008 financial crisis, anxiety about the changing racial makeup of the nation, and the rise of progressive culture.
Unlike Donald Trump, whose presidency was marked by contradiction and corruption, they honed these ideas into a more coherent and respectable political vision for the New Right. Looking beyond Trump, they aim to shape conservative politics for the next generation.
My book takes a deep dive into the world of post-liberalism. It profiles the movement’s key figures—including Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Yoram Hazony, Erika Bachiochi, Oren Cass, and Sohrab Ahmari. It examines their core ideas—from integralism and new nationalism to reactionary feminism and pro-worker conservatism. It explores the appeal of the movement among liberals and leftists and traces its influence on the evolving ideological and institutional landscape of the New Right.
Post-liberals have failed to realize most of their ambitions. But they have succeeded in advancing the rise of authoritarian politics. The book argues that any effective counter to this movement must reckon with the crisis of liberalism that fueled and sustained it.
Daniel Falcone: The first chapter of the book explores the philosophy of “integralism.” What is integralism, and how does it relate to the main argument of the book? Why did you choose to start here?
Hannah Gurman: Integralism is a strand of Catholic political philosophy that rejects the modern separation of church and state. The movement developed in Europe in the late nineteenth century in reaction to the growing forces of liberalism and secularism. In subsequent decades, fascists invoked integralism to justify and sacralize their cause. The movement declined dramatically in the post-war era. In this period, both the Catholic church and conservative political parties accommodated themselves to religious pluralism and liberal democracy. After decades in oblivion, integralism experienced a dramatic revival in the Trump era, fueling controversy and concerns about the rise of theocratic politics.
The first chapter of the book situates the post-liberals within this context. Through profiles of Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule, it highlights how post-liberals used the Catholic idea of the “common good” to sacralize the New Right’s political war against liberalism.
Most post-liberals are not actually integralists. But they are staunch Catholics who use religion to justify their promotion of authoritarian politics. Many are recent converts. Vermeule, Ahmari, and Vance all converted to Catholicism after 2016. Post-liberals invoke the idea of the “common good” that runs from Aristotle to St. Thomas Aquinas but tilt it in reactionary and authoritarian directions.
The chapter traces the intellectual and political trajectories of Deneen and Vermeule alongside the broader decline of local democracy movements and the rise of executive power since the 1970s. It explores Deneen’s communitarian and Catholic roots, the influence of progressive mentors on his earlier ideas, and his growing entanglements with reactionary authoritarianism over the last decade. It also traces the connections between Vermeule’s bipartisan defense of unchecked executive power in the post-9/11 “War on Terror” and his promotion of right-wing authoritarianism in the Trump era. And it highlights the convergence of the two thinkers’ views in recent years.
I argue that warnings about integralism were misplaced. Post-liberals were not about to usher in a Catholic confessional state. But they did sanctify a more secular brand of reactionary authoritarianism on the New Right. This political theology was embraced by ascending politicians like Vance and Rubio who invoked the idea of the common good to sacralize their own personal and professional ambitions.
Daniel Falcone: You frame your chapter on neoconservative Zionism around the work of Yoram Hazony and his efforts to unite old guard liberals with nationalism to stave off the organized left. Can you break down this fascinating history briefly for readers?
Hannah Gurman: Yoram Hazony is an Israeli American political theorist and founder of National Conservatism. Since 2019, this organization has served as an important networking site and public relations platform for the New Right. Its annual conferences bring together intellectuals and politicians from different segments of this coalition. Hazony is Jewish and doesn’t usually identify as a post-liberal. However, he has aligned himself with post-liberals in a shared effort to purge liberal culture and libertarian economics from the conservative movement.
While most members of the New Right define their movement in opposition to neoconservatism, Hazony remains an unapologetic neoconservative. He is also a staunch Zionist. Since the 1990s, he has weaponized an explicitly anti-liberal brand of Zionism against the Israeli left. In the Trump era, he rose to prominence as a staunch advocate for nationalism in the United States, Europe, and around the world. His 2018 book, The Virtue of Nationalism, translated Trump’s racist war against immigrants into a more high-brow and respectable defense of ethno-states. Israel played a central role in this campaign. Using Israel as a model, Hazony rebuked critics who associated ethno-states with fascism. A state built by victims of fascism could not be fascist, he argued. By extension, ethnic nationalists in America and Europe were simply trying to preserve their own heritage.
Meanwhile, Hazony warned that “wokeness” posed an existential threat to the nation and called upon its opponents to do everything in their power to counter this movement. He encouraged conservatives and old guard liberals to come together in a shared alliance against the left. This message gained traction in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks and subsequent rise of pro-Palestine student activism. The authoritarian crackdowns on campus protesters around the nation would not have been possible without the liberal politicians who supported it and the university administrators who carried it out. However, the forces of post-liberal ethno-nationalism have since come back to haunt Hazony. Antisemitism, which was always part of the MAGA movement, continues to rise on the right.
The genocide in Gaza and the war in Iran have served as convenient pretexts for the ascent of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Hazony has vehemently denounced both men. But he has refused to acknowledge his own role in legitimizing their movement in the first place. Now, his coalition of nationalists and old guard liberals is on the defensive. Criticizing Israel while remaining loyal to Trump, Vance is trying to serve as a bridge between the different camps on the right. But it’s not clear how effective his efforts will be or how the deepening schisms over Israel will shape the Republican Party in the long run.
Daniel Falcone: Can you talk about Mary Harrington and Erika Bachiochi? How did the right directly (and the liberal political classes indirectly) embrace the ideas of the feminist movement as anti-progress and anti-woman?
Hannah Gurman: We tend to think of feminism as a liberal and progressive tradition oriented around campaigns for women’s rights. We also commonly associate conservative politics with opposition to feminism. The post-liberals deliberately scramble this logic. In 2023, a British journalist named Mary Harrington published Feminism Against Progress. The book embraces feminism but rejects the assumption that feminists must believe in progress and identify as liberals. Harrington calls herself a “reactionary feminist.” Arguing that liberal feminists put too much emphasis on freedom and individual rights, she advocates for a return to earlier forms of feminism rooted in the principles of care and dependency.
The third chapter of my book explores the world of reactionary feminism. It profiles Harrington and Erika Bachiochi, a legal scholar and author of The Rights of Women, a 2021 book that similarly advances a conservative politics of care. Both women are regularly platformed at post-liberal events and media outlets. They belong to the broader natalist movement that bemoans declining birth rates and promotes the act of having children. But while figures like Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson appeal to the misogynistic “bro” culture of the New Right, Harrington and Bachiochi appeal to suburban moms. They both moved from left to right over the course of their lives. And they draw from various traditions of feminism that complicate the boundaries between conservative and liberal politics.
The chapter traces the trajectory of their ideas within the rise of neoliberal feminism and reactions against it since the 1990s. Inspired by thinkers and activists from across the political spectrum, Bachiochi and Harrington highlight a mounting “crisis of care” in the twenty-first century. However, they use the language of care to promote authoritarian policies that do little to address this systemic problem. Bachiochi defended the Supreme Court’s destruction of abortion rights on the absurd hope that Republicans would increase economic support for low-income mothers and families. Harrington enlisted the rhetoric of care to vilify supporters of transgender rights whom she calls “meat lego gnostics.”
Post-liberal feminists have failed to achieve material gains for mothers and caregivers. But they have succeeded in accelerating the crackdown on abortion and trans rights. By wrapping these reactionary campaigns in the language of motherhood and protecting them from accusations of misogyny, they ultimately function as caregivers of the movement itself.
Daniel Falcone: In your chapter on populism and pro-worker conservatism, you write about the Democratic Party’s own inability to address the failures of neoliberalism. Since your initial research and writing on this topic, are Trump’s domestic and foreign policies impacting his base?
Hannah Gurman: Trump rose to power in 2016 by exploiting a broad sense that the system was “rigged” on behalf of wealthy elites. This fueled the rise of “pro-worker” conservatism on the right. From the beginning, the promises of this movement have been contradicted by the actual policies of Trump and the Republican Party. While Trump ran as a populist, he governed as a plutocrat. The 2017 tax cuts lined the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of working-class Americans. Trump’s obsession with tariffs constituted his one important departure from neoliberal economic orthodoxy. In true Trump fashion, however, tariffs served as miracle solutions to the nation’s economic woes.
The right’s lack of a real industrial policy and ongoing opposition to the interests of workers left the door open for Democrats to advance their own populist agenda in 2020. For all his faults, Biden made meaningful strides in this direction. The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the PRO Act constituted steps towards something like a progressive industrial and labor policy. Reflecting the emptiness of their own supposed populism, Vance, Hawley, and other “pro-worker” conservatives opposed these initiatives. Kamala Harris had an opportunity to amplify this populist agenda. In the early days of her campaign, she selected Tim Walz as her running mate and promised to stop price gouging in grocery markets. But wealthy Democratic donors freaked out and shifted the campaign in more neoliberal directions. During the debates, Harris bragged about Goldman Sachs’ support for her economic platform. As election day neared, billionaire Mark Cuban became her economic surrogate, assuring Wall Street and CEOs that Democrats would support their interests.
Once again, the populist lane was left open. And once again, Trump filled it with his reactionary war against immigrants and the promise that tariffs would “liberate” the nation from its dependence on foreign trade. This time, however, Trump over-reached. The ICE crackdown energized the MAGA base but fueled opposition from almost everyone else. The tariffs mobilized the Republican establishment to curb Trump’s power over trade. More than anything else, however, the war in Iran has undermined Trump’s street cred as a populist. While ordinary Americans struggled to pay for the price of gas, Trump declared, “I love the inflation.”
I finished writing the book in November 2025 and scrambled to account for some of these developments while correcting the proofs in the early days of the Iran War. So, yes, things have changed since I researched and wrote the book. But “pro-worker” conservatism has always been a ruse. And one should not underestimate the ability of Vance or Rubio to redirect legitimate economic grievances into reactionary cultural campaigns. There are limits to how much they can defy the economic realities on the ground. But whether we like it or not, this brand of populism is likely to survive well in the future.
Daniel Falcone: The last chapter of your book is entitled “We Are All Post-Liberals Now.” Could you elaborate on this title?
Hannah Gurman: That title comes from a lecture given by Patrick Deneen at the New College of Florida in February 2025. It is of course a play on Nixon’s famous line, “We Are All Keynesians Now.” Deneen used the occasion to reflect on the past, present, and future of the post-liberal movement. In the talk, he acknowledged the gap between the true post-liberal vision and the current reality of American politics. But he said nothing about the recent destruction and takeover of the New College, which had for decades served as a bastion of liberal arts education in Florida’s public university system. Deneen and other post-liberals played key roles in these developments. That night, he was literally speaking to right-wing politicians and activists who had been partners in the project.
This scene encapsulates the broader dynamics of post-liberalism I describe throughout the book. Portraying themselves as prophets of a post-liberal future yet to come, Deneen and others downplay the actual damage they have done. We are not all post-liberals yet. But there are lessons to be learned from the movement’s rise. To stem the tide of right-wing authoritarianism, liberals and the left must work together to revitalize a more democratic and egalitarian version of the common good.
Note: Please attend the book launch for The Opportunists, which will take place at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK) on October 8 at 5:30. The author will be in conversation with Matt Sitman. Here’s a link to the details and RSVP.
*Daniel Falcone is a historian, teacher and journalist. In addition to CounterPunch, he has written for The Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, The Nation, Jacobin, Truthout, Foreign Policy in Focus and Scalawag. He resides in New York City and is a member of The Democratic Socialists of America.