What the Left Gets Wrong About the Right

The story the left tells itself about the right’s success is wrong—and limits our ability to connect with people who can be won to liberatory politics

In this timely and incisive book, Daniel Martínez HoSang challenges many of the dominant frameworks through which progressives have interpreted right-wing movements. Drawing on more than a decade of original research and on-the-ground reporting at conferences held by Turning Point USA and other conservative groups, HoSang shows how prevailing assumptions on the left often overlook the conditions that are reshaping political life. Across the United States, experiences of institutional failure, dislocation, and isolation are leading many people to withdraw from collective projects and disengage from public life, creating new openings for right-wing appeal.

Rather than relying on older models of conservative mobilization, the contemporary right has learned to navigate this terrain in distinct ways. It builds forms of belonging and political identity that resonate with those who feel unmoored, cultivating multiracial and socially diverse coalitions that often present themselves as welcoming and inclusive. This ecosystem extends far beyond Trump and MAGA, drawing in people who were once disengaged or even aligned with progressive causes.

Moving beyond familiar diagnoses, HoSang argues that only by understanding the emotional and structural forces driving the right’s appeal can we begin to imagine an effective response. The book ultimately asks what it would take to rebuild and reimagine collective democratic projects today, offering a framework for renewing public life and forging new pathways for shared purpose, participation, and liberation.

Daniel Martinez HoSang is Professor of American Studies at Yale University, with secondary appointments in the Department of Political Science and in the Yale School of Medicine’s Section of the History of Medicine. HoSang is the author or co-editor of eight books, including A Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone and, with Joseph Lowndes, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity. His analysis of the contemporary Right has been featured in the New York Times and other national publications.

ISBN: 9798888907283

Publication date: March 30, 2027

The Introduction: “What We Miss When We Laugh at MAGA” opens the book by focusing on progressives and their interpretations of right-wing politics that have prevailed since Trump's ascension into national politics a decade ago. These frameworks cannot explain the success of the Right today.

Chapter 1: “Onramps” describes the diverse ways that right-wing groups create points of entry for new constituents, often by laying claim to issues that have historically been the domain of the Left. This chapter explores the ways that organized groups on the right have sought to fashion such inroads, and why growing numbers of Americans have responded.

Chapter 2: “Affect” explores the ways that feeling, emotion, and desire operate on the contemporary Right. This chapter explores the affective appeals of the far right including political rallies and gatherings and media spaces, including many people that don’t necessarily identify as conservative.

Chapter 3: “Inclusive Nationalism” takes up a central paradox on the Right. How has the conservative movement grown increasingly multiracial and diverse even as they moved sharply to the right on a wide range of racialized policy issues, including affirmative action, voter rights, immigration, public safety, housing, and reproductive justice? 

Chapter 4: “The Globalization of Anti-Globalism” explores the increasingly fertile exchanges between right-wing formations outside the United States and the MAGA right today. 

Conclusion: “New Political Homes” considers how the Left and progressive organizations can and must fashion spaces and movements for the large sectors of populace who face growing experiences of material precarity and cynicism about the future and have turned away from the incrementalistic and technocratic vision of the Democratic Party and mainstream liberalism.