New Discourses

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 196

Today in America, we face a confusing "Christian Nationalist" (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/04/two-wolves-of-christian-nationalism/) movement that is reaching into many legitimate complaints and anxieties of American Christians and turning them to its project. While the term can mean many things, at least some of the meanings of "Christian Nationalism" are undeniably a kind of political movement (https://newdiscourses.com/2024/12/the-hoax-that-broke-the-conservative-internet/) posing as a theological movement. In fact, the most movement-ish strains (https://newdiscourses.com/2023/08/wtf-is-christian-nationalism/) of that line of thinking are precisely that. Something like this has happened before. When Hitler and his National Socialists were establishing the Third Reich, they had a huge cultural problem to overcome: nearly all Germans were Christians, not National Socialists. Their solution was an ambiguous term called "Positive Christianity" that increasingly got used as a bridge faith to turn believing German Christians into Nazis. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay continues his Nazi Experiment series (https://newdiscourses.com/?s=nazi+experimentto) explore the justifications for Nazi "Positive Christianity," revealing concerning echoes from the past. Join him to hear about the Third Reich's unique "Christian Nationalism" movement in their own words.

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New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 146

The essence of a critical theory is a philosophical stance we can and should call "negative idealism," and this negative idealism explains why "critical" movements like Communism, Fascism, and Woke of all types trend toward violence. Setting the stage against the recent sprees of "transgender" violence as an important backdrop, host James Lindsay explains the psychological destruction of holding a negative idealist worldview in this cutting-edge episode of New Discourses Bullets. Join him to understand these troubling phenomena in a deep and important way.

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The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 195

When we face the question of what makes us who we are, different people have different answers. Some see ourselves as receptacles of tradition. Others see us as a self to be discovered in the world. Still others see us as blank slates who can become whatever we can dream. In some sense, these dispositions are in all of us, and that's healthy. They also define broad political orientations and movements. Importantly, they can also all go bad. Some months ago, James Lindsay, host of the New Discourses Podcast, wrote an essay for New Discourses called "Man with Three Faces" (https://newdiscourses.com/2025/04/man-with-three-faces-politics-pathology-and-the-modern-selves/) discussing this idea, and in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, he talks through it casually, explaining its meaning and relevance for a wider audience. Join him for a deep exploration into what it means to be ourselves and what it can teach us about our politics.

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New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 145

Carl Schmitt captured the essence of totalitarian politics in his book The Concept of the Political (1932) (https://amzn.to/4sf2Rpk). It is the distinction between friend and enemy. The poison of this kind of thinking is in the ugly fact that the declared enemy must be treated as the declared enemy once a political faction has declared one, and anyone who doesn't go along with that declaration declares himself one of the enemy. That is, it's not just the us-versus-them nature of the declaration of friend and enemy that poisons politics and societies; it's the logic of the friend-enemy political program entirely. Host James Lindsay explains this dangerous logic in this new episode of New Discourses Bullets. Join him to understand.

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The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 194

James Lindsay's second trip to Israel was very different from his first (https://newdiscourses.com/2025/11/am-yisrael-chai/). On this trip, he got what he calls his "Real Jerusalem Experience," and he did a wide variety of things, not so much a coherent, organized tour. In the process, he was introduced to Israeli and Jewish life in a new way, which has offered him insights on what it means to be American and why America is the way that it is. Perhaps most poignantly, while visiting Kibbutz Nir Oz with Seth Dillon, Rob McCoy, Karys Rhea, and others, he heard directly how the heartbeat of life, strength, and endurance in the face of tremendous evil and adversity can be summarized in two simple words: "Jewish values." Join James on this new episode of the New Discourses Podcast and travel with him through Israel for a second time.

Latest from New Discourses Press! The Queering of the American Child: https://queeringbook.com/

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