The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men

The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men

From The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

June 5, 2026 · 1h 43m

About this episode

Helen Lewis discusses the rise of a new masculinist movement on the right and its implications for gender roles in society.

A new masculinist movement has gone mainstream on the right. The prominent voices in this movement yearn for an earlier time, when men were men and women were women. Sometimes that time seems to be the 1950s, like when Tucker Carlson extols a world where men go to work and women stay at home. But sometimes it goes way farther back. The pastor Doug Wilson advocates household voting, in which men vote for their wives. And Costin Vlad Alamariu, better known as Bronze Age Pervert, harks back to the Bronze Age — specifically the ancient Hittite and Mitanni Empires. Helen Lewis wrote a recent cover story for The Atlantic about this new antifeminist backlash, which she calls “the single most important force holding together the American right.” So I wanted to have her on the show to talk about these ideas, the political program of this movement and how seriously we should take it. Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of “Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights” and “The Genius Myth.” This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: Difficult Women by Helen Lewis “What Is the Longhouse?” by L0m3z The Last Men by Charles Cornish-Dale Bronze Age Mindset by…

People in this episode

Host: Ezra Klein

Guest: Helen Lewis

Topics covered

  • masculinism
  • antifeminism
  • political movements
  • American right
  • gender roles
  • historical perspectives

Keywords

  • masculinism
  • antifeminism
  • Tucker Carlson
  • Doug Wilson
  • Bronze Age Pervert
  • Helen Lewis
  • American right
  • gender roles

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Difficult Women, Bronze Age Mindset, The End of History and the Last Man, The Last Men, What Is the Longhouse?, The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright, Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?

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