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)

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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. 

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Before embarking on a spirited bout of rank punditry, we take a step back and talk about the Staple Singers, Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Zohran, and giving a damn about both your "fellow man" and democracy. Then, we walk you through the latest catalogue of horrors: Hegseth's lame TED talk in front of the generals, the menacing yet comically inept dimestore Gestapo that is ICE, the shutdown, and more!

Sources:

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, 1840)

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Jasper Craven, "Battle of the Sexes," The Baffler, Sept 2025

"Deafies for Zohran" (YouTube)

"Things Can Change" (X)

To try to understand both the power and strangeness of the Charlie Kirk memorial—one part evangelical worship service, one part MAGA rally—we turned, of course, to our friend Pat Blanchfield. All three of us stewed in the event's footage, which runs to over four and a half hours, then convened to discuss it. After laying out for listeners what happened at State Farm Stadium in Arizona just over a week ago, replete with clips, we tried to understand how the event aimed to turn death and grief into power by unpacking its imagery, symbols, references, and, of course, how it might play "out there" among Americans not already plugged into the menagerie of seen subcultures on stage. 

Sources:

Charlie Kirk Memorial at State Farm Stadium, Sept 21, 2025 (Fox News on YouTube)

— Transcript of President Donald Trump's speech at Kirk Memorial

— The story behind the hymn, "It is Well with My Soul" (link)

Jack Jenkins, "At Charlie Kirk's memorial, religion, politics and antagonism toward liberals combine," Religion News Service, Sept 22, 2025

Amber Phillips, "3 takeaways from the Charlie Kirk memorial," Wash Post, Sept 22, 2025

Elizabeth Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making, (2004)

Gabriel Winant, "On Mourning and Statehood: A Response to Joshua Leifer," Dissent, Oct 13, 2023

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The assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscape of American politics in an instant, inspiring a startlingly unanimous battlecry of vengeance from the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Trump White House. In this episode, Matt and Sam respond to this ominous moment, analyzing Kirk’s legacy, the politics of martyrdom, and the dangers that lurk ahead. 

Two notes: (1) This episode was recorded on Tuesday 9/16, before some of the administration's specific repressive efforts — e.g. the FCC intimidating ABC into suspending late night host Jimmy Kimmel — had taken place. (2) Matt's sound quality is diminished toward the end of episode because of a technical problem with his mic.

Since the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary voters to determine their country's fate in a complex world. From there, he levels a critique of the Constitution for its myriad democratic deficits, then details what refounding the United States to be genuinely democratic—politically and economically—would require of us.

Listen again: "The Wolfe in the White Suit" (w/ Osita Nwanevu), July 5, 2024

Sources:

Osita Nwanevu, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (2025)

— "Conservatism’s Baton Twirler," New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2025. 

Sheldon Wolin, Fugitive Democracy: And Other Essays (2016)

Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016)

Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)

Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)

Publius, Federalist 49 (February 1788)

Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023

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Roman Polanski's 2019 film about the Dreyfus affair, An Officer and a Spy, only recently made it's U.S. "premier," running for a few weeks in August at Film Forum in New York City. When it originally was released, it couldn't find an American distributor (and likewise was shunned by streaming services), a consequence of the MeToo moment meeting Polanski's criminal past—in 1978 he fled to Europe after being indicted for the rape of a 13 year-old girl in the United States. Polanski's past is particularly relevant for his film about the falsely accused Jewish officer in the French military, to whom, in publicity materials circulated when An Officer and a Spy came out in Europe in 2019, the director explicitly compared himself.

Of course, we couldn't possibly have had on any other guest than John Ganz to help us understand the politics of the Dreyfus affair, both in 1895 and 2025, and what to make of Polanski's cinematic rendering of it. Topics include: Polanski's life and crimes; Hannah Arendt's treatment of the Dreyfus affair in The Origins of Totalitarianism; anti-semitism in 19th and early 20th century France; the way Polanski largely ignores the political convulsions caused by the Dreyfus affair, instead handling it more as a crime procedural, and why he might have done so; and more.

Sources:

John Ganz, "Reading, Watching," Unpopular Front, Aug 10, 2025

— "Gramscians vs Sorelians," Unpopular Front, Jan 23, 2021

— "The Third Republic and Today," Unpopular Front, Jan 27, 2021

— "The Century of Rubbish," Unpopular Front, Feb 2, 2021

— "From Republic to Reaction," Unpopular Front, Feb 4, 2021

David Bell, "An Officer and a Spy," H-France, March 2021

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

Devoted Know Your Enemy listeners will recall that, in November 2021, we released a fairly dense, theory-driven episode on Frank Meyer, the Communist from New Jersey whose exploits on behalf of the Party in the UK got him kicked out of the country and back to the United States, where he eventually turned right and became a key figure in the post-war U.S. conservative movement, both as an editor at National Review and an architect of institutions like the American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, and the Conservative Party of New York. Of course, we had more to say about Meyer, and we're devoting another episode to him, this time focused on the details of his incredible life, thanks to the publication of an extraordinary new biography of Meyer, Daniel J. Flynn's The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer. Flynn discovered a trove of never-before-seen papers of Meyer's that range from personal documents (tax returns, Christmas cards from Joan Didion, his dance card from college) to his correspondence with nearly every conservative writer and intellectual of note in the 1950s and 60s. Armed with these files, Flynn offers a vivid portrait of a brilliant, eccentric political life and mind.

Listen again: "Frank Meyer: Father of Fusionism" (November 10, 2021)

Sources:

Daniel J. Flynn, The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer (2025)

Frank S. Meyer, In Defense of Freedom: A Conservative Credo (Regnery, 1962)

F.A. Hayek, "Why I am Not a Conservative," from The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (2011)

George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976)

Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative (Doubleday, 1979)

"Against the Dead Consensus," First Things, March 21, 2019

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This episode was first published in October 2024, and has been un-paywalled following the death this week, on August 21, of Focus on the Family founder and influential figure on the religious right, James Dobson, at age 89. Subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to hear more episodes just for subscribers.

In this episode, Matt is joined by journalist Talia Lavin to discuss her book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, one of the most fascinating and unique books published on the Christian right during the Trump-era. Lavin takes her subjects seriously, but not uncritically, and especially focuses on the wrecked and ruined lives left in the wake of conservative evangelicalism's more conspiratorial and authoritarian elements, from the Satanic Panic to James Dobson's parenting manual on how to discipline a "strong-willed child" into compliance. Along the way, they talk about the triumph of QAnon, End Times theology, the importance of the New Apostolic Reformation, and more—all with an eye toward how these religious views and practices help explain conservative evangelicals' overwhelming support for Donald Trump.

Sources:

Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (2024)

— Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy (2020)

— "The Sword and the Sandwich" (Talia's newsletter)

Listen again:

"The Prayers and Prophecies of Pat Robertson," Know Your Enemy, July 17, 2023

A major topic following Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election has been his gains with racial and ethnic minorities, a trend that's scrambled many people's assumptions about American politics, not least those of anti-racist liberals. Why have minority voters drifted toward Trump, despite his many comments and campaign pledges that demonize or disparage them? To try to understand this phenomenon, we talked to Daniel Martinez HoSang, who has studied the minorities entering the GOP coalition, not only but especially in the MAGA era, including extraordinarily rich interview with people of color on the right attending Turning Point USA conference, CPAC, Trump rallies, following right wing influencers, and more. 

Sources:

Daniel Martinez HoSang, "Inside the Rise of the Multiracial Right," New York Times, July 24, 2025

Daniel Martinez HoSang, Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone, (2023)

Stuart Hall, Selected Writings on Race and Difference, (2021)

Joseph E. Lowndes & Daniel Martinez HoSang, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (2019)

Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (2008)

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