Inside the Dissident Fringe

These ideas used to be at the fringiest fringe of a worldview that sees our basic political battle lines shifting from left-right divisions toward a rebellion against globalization, against the notion that the massive market- and tech-driven change that we’ve been living through really represents progress. But this dissident-fringe view has rapidly become mainstream on the right, in part through the dire warnings of a disintegrating global system shared almost nightly on Tucker Carlson Tonight, and—significantly—through coded signifiers broadcast by Republican politicians trying to capitalize on the populist ferment, most obviously Ron DeSantis, who gave a speech titled “Florida vs. Davos” to the National Conservatism Conference in September. “The United States is a nation that has an economy, not the other way around,” he said. “And our economy should be geared toward helping our own people.”