Resistance to the COVID-era lockdowns occupies a central place in the political identity of the New Right—the eclectic group of national conservatives, postliberals, populists, and neoreactionaries at the ideological core of the MAGA coalition. Ironically, it was President Donald Trump who enabled lockdowns by proclaiming a national emergency in March 2020 and appointed Anthony Fauci to lead his administration's pandemic response efforts. And yet the New Right has opted to look past these contradictions.
It has become routine for New Right political figures to position themselves as leaders of a bold resistance against the COVID restrictions—vice president and self-described postliberal J.D. Vance launched his Senate campaign in 2021 with an attack on "Fauci's cabal"—even as they were largely absent as these events unfolded in 2020.
