The Ghost Who Haunts the MAGA Revolt

Over the past half-decade, few intellectuals have undergone a renaissance like Christopher Lasch — and few renaissances have been quite as startlingly heterodox. After the 2016 election, Lasch’s posthumous 1994 book Revolt of the Elites was cited as a key influence on the Right-populist strategist Steve Bannon. Shortly after that, a new edition of the author’s 1979 bestseller The Culture of Narcissism appeared with an introduction by liberal pundit E.J. Dionne that applied Lasch’s ideas to the pathologies of Bannon’s erstwhile boss, then-president Donald Trump.