The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men
6/5/20261 hr 43 min
A new masculinist movement has gone mainstream on the right.
The prominent voices in this movement yearn for an earlier time, when men were men and women were women. Sometimes that time seems to be the 1950s, like when Tucker Carlson extols a world where men go to work and women stay at home. But sometimes it goes way farther back. The pastor Doug Wilson advocates household voting, in which men vote for their wives. And Costin Vlad Alamariu, better known as Bronze Age Pervert, harks back to the Bronze Age — specifically the ancient Hittite and Mitanni Empires.
Helen Lewis wrote a recent cover story for The Atlantic about this new antifeminist backlash, which she calls “the single most important force holding together the American right.” So I wanted to have her on the show to talk about these ideas, the political program of this movement and how seriously we should take it.
Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights” and “The Genius Myth.”
This episode contains strong language.
Mentioned:
Difficult Women by Helen Lewis
“What Is the Longhouse?” by L0m3z
The Last Men by Charles Cornish-Dale
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert
The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
“The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright” with Richard Reeves, The Ezra Klein Show
“Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” with Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
“The Great Feminization” by Helen Andrews
“The Women Leaving the New Right” by Sam Adler-Bell
Book Recommendations:
Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson
Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford
The Genius Factory by David Plotz
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Kyle Grandillo. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsWinna Lu0:01
I'm Winna Lu. I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times Games, and I love horror movies. I love my dog, and I love trying to trick you.
Speaker 10:08
I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the Wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. A fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem.
Speaker 20:20
New York Times Games are made by people like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com/games to start playing today.
Ezra Klein· Host0:30
[gentle music] If you travel deep into the new Right, what you find at the moment is a constant yearning for something very old. Not just a time when America was great, but a time when men were great, when men were men. You hear it in Costin Vlad Alamariu, who's better known as the Bronze Age Pervert. You hear it in his longing for the Bronze Age.
Costin Vlad Alamariu· Soundbite1:22
I am here just to spread the political, uh, views of the ancient Hittite Empire or the ancient Mittani Empire.