Illiberal roulette

New rule of this Republican primary: No overt Nazi symbols

It’s almost August, which means it’s (probably) my last chance to ask you to do two things:

1. Preorder the paperback edition of Gangsters of Capitalism (drops August 1) from your local bookstore or favorite online retailer.

2. Vote for Gangsters in the Library of Virginia’s 2023 People’s Choice Awards — voting ends July 31! Here’s a button from Smedley Butler’s 1932 Senate campaign as a little extra encouragement:

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You might have heard that Ron DeSantis’ middling presidential campaign fired a young speechwriter this week for making a video that featured a Nazi symbol. Well, it wasn’t just any speechwriter. Nate Hochman has spent the last several years being groomed as a leader of the next generation of conservatives. Hochman’s resume reads like a ChatGPT response to “make a CV for a promising 25-year-old right-wing intellectual”: staff writer at the National Review, Robert Novak Fellow at the Fund for American Studies, Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, American Enterprise Institute Summer Honors Academy, and so on. Hochman’s star has been further burnished by respectful coverage outside of the movement: He has been regularly interviewed by — and was given a guest essay spot last year in — the New York Times. Two years ago, he was profiled by Sam Adler-Bell in the New Republic as a “rising star” of the New Right; soon after was invited onto Know Your Enemy.

The sudden (and no doubt temporary) derailment of a would-be Zoomer Buckley has occasioned — well, not soul-searching exactly, but some renegotiation among reactionaries. Rod Dreher, taking a break from acting as a paid shill for Viktor Orbán (and publicly obsessing over a Black childhood friend’s penis), came haltingly to his younger co-ideologue’s defense:

Let’s get a few things quickly out of the way: First of all, it is extremely telling that Dreher finds it “very difficult to accept that someone of his generation who is as smart as he is” — and more on that in a moment — “really doesn’t know that very familiar Nazi image.” The image is a