Political scientist Laura K. Field researches the MAGA movement. In an interview with Handelsblatt, she explains the US right's love-hate relationship with Europe - and how much of it is business.
London. Laura K. Field wrote a book about anger. However, the American political scientist's work “Furious Minds,” which was published at the end of last year, is less about angry citizens than about angry minds.
This refers to those intellectuals of the New Right who provide US President Donald Trump's “Make America great again” movement (MAGA) with the intellectual superstructure for an ideology. The Trump administration is now exporting these to Europe with money and political pressure.
“The Trumpists see themselves as the true heirs of European civilization and want to educate Europeans about their own roots,” says Field in an interview with Handelsblatt.
Ms. Field, US President Donald Trump and his supporters claim that Europe is doomed. Why is the MAGA movement still interested in the Old Continent?
For the intellectuals of the MAGA movement, what matters most is the shared cultural heritage. Many of them have a nostalgic connection to European traditions and feel connected to European thinkers such as Leo Strauss or Martin Heidegger. However, their perspective is often ahistorical and selective: they refer to certain chapters of European history and ignore the catastrophes. At the same time, fears about Muslim immigration in Europe are accepted, even though the problems in the USA are completely different. A lot of it is staged, especially with politicians. Most Americans don't care that much about it.
CV Laura K. Field
Field studied political science in Alberta and Austin. She then taught as a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Since 2019, she has been a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Niskanen Center in Washington.
Her latest book, “Furious Minds,” was published in November 2025. In it, Field examines the emergence of the “MAGA New Right” movement, whose political leader is US President Donald Trump. Field focuses on the intellectual roots of this movement, which is closely based on the ideas of the German-American philosopher Leo Strauss.
In your book you distinguish between intellectuals who come from the arch-conservative think tank Claremont in California, so-called post-liberals and national conservatives. Where do evangelicals and tech figures like Peter Thiel or converted Catholics like J.D. fit in? Vance in?
If I were writing the book today, I would have devoted a separate chapter to the tech world because its importance to the New Right has grown rapidly. National conservatives are actively building global networks that overlap with post-liberal ideas from the Catholic world, but are more academic in nature. Perhaps most important to global connections is the evangelical charismatic movement. In Great Britain, the religious philosopher James Orr is a representative of the Catholic-charismatic world.
How important is the religious dimension?
Extremely important. The entire world of the New Right is exploiting a weakness of liberal democracy: liberalism offers no deep meaning, no salvation. However, many people are looking for answers to existential questions, and this movement provides big, simple answers - stories about religion, culture, sometimes from the so-called "manosphere". One can be skeptical about Vance's conversion story, I think it was completely opportunistic. But it would be foolish to ignore the deeper currents shaping this new world.
What holds the different strands of the MAGA movement together?
The fear of cultural and social change, of modernity and the desire to turn back the clock. There is a restorative, counter-revolutionary impulse that wants to restore hierarchical nationalisms - domestically through the exclusion of migrants and all those who do not belong to the “true heritage”. Internationally, this means dismantling the rules-based order in favor of transactional power politics.
The trail of money leads to the tech world
Are libertarian thinkers from the tech scene like Peter Thiel really about convictions or more about business?
Greed and money certainly play a big role and mix with real beliefs. Some concerns about freedom of expression are justified. There are real problems with this, especially in Europe. But the overall picture is not coherent and full of contradictions.
How much money goes into exporting the MAGA ideology to Europe?
Trump has virtually unlimited money, and with the tech world on board, the pots of money have grown even larger in his second term in office. At the same time, a lot of it is volatile - many billionaires are less ideological than you think and have just gone along with it. They would probably also come to terms with a Democrat as US President.
How did an intellectual movement become concrete politics - for example when US diplomats like Sarah Rogers from the State Department tour Europe and finance right-wing think tanks?
We generally underestimate how much planning goes into it - but at the same time it's true that a lot of things are improvised. I suspect they are looking at how institutions were built relatively quickly in Hungary under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban and trying to emulate that in the US. Now the Trumpists are pumping money wherever they hope to gain influence. I don’t think there’s a master plan – it’s more opportunistic. They build these networks whenever an opportunity arises.
Is there a comparable countermovement on the left in the USA, such as the resurgent Democratic Socialists?
Yes, that is definitely happening, although so far it has been much less aggressive than with the extreme right. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) receive a lot of criticism from the political center, but I think the politicians there focus on solutions rather than fearmongering. However, the media overestimates the political importance of the DSA. America is a huge country. The US Democrats will have very different degrees of success in the midterm elections in November. The real question is which leader can position himself as a credible challenger to the Republicans.
Ms. Field, thank you very much for the interview.
