OUR JACOBINS:

"Conservatism in 2021 means radicalism," announced Nate Hochman, a 23-year-old writer at National Review. Describing the posture of his political milieu, Hochman spoke with urgency and without pretense, less eager to impress than to be understood. "We have to think of ourselves as counterrevolutionaries or restorationists who are overthrowing the regime." He doesn't mean by violence, necessarily. "But ... there's not a lot left to conserve in the contemporary state of things. There are things that need to be destroyed and rebuilt."

If you're scandalized by the language of "counterrevolution" or surprised to hear a conservative talk about "destroying" things and "overthrowing" regimes, you probably haven't spent much time around right-wing college grads of late. [...]

Hochman has thick brown hair, with a disobedient cowlick in front, and large brown eyes. He wears a trim beard and--whenever possible--jeans and a flannel shirt. He looks like the kind of kid who would offer you granola at a trailhead. (And he might. He grew up in Oregon and loves to camp and hike; an overlap, he notes, between the far right and the far left in the Pacific Northwest is a love of roughing it outdoors.)* [...]

Most New Right activists see the Trump presidency as a salutary development. At the very least, they view Trump's success as a symptomatic expression of the novel forces at work in American life. "I'm still lukewarm on Trump, the man," Hochman said. "I think he's a moronic boomer who tapped into something by accident." Saurabh Sharma, a 23-year-old New Right activist, told me that he got his start in politics watching the 2016 presidential campaign, listening to Bernie rallies and Trump rallies "and finding interesting things to like about both."

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