New Books in Political Science The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and the MAGA New Right
Mar 7, 2026
Laura Field, political theorist and author of Furious Minds who studies American far-right thought, maps the MAGA New Right’s intellectual currents. She traces Straussian, Catholic integralist, manosphere, and populist strains. They use Plato’s Cave to explore why some return to the cave with prudence and others with authoritarian blueprints.
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Cave As Education Not Just Metaphor
- Plato's Cave is an image of education showing how inherited conventions present shadow realities rather than truth.
- Laura K. Field explains the cave represents media, religion, and cultural inheritance that must be questioned to escape false certainties.
Compulsion Explains Philosophical Awakening
- The moment of being compelled to turn toward light suggests an external or internal force driving philosophical awakening.
- Field and Eli Koretny debate whether the compulsion is the will to truth or a painful, radicalizing psychic break.
Personal Radicalization From Reading Plato
- Laura K. Field describes how discovering Plato radicalized her, making her feel intellectually superior and question parents and society.
- She links that experience to conservative fears about college radicalizing youth into dismissing their upbringing.