The New Right’s Very Old Vision of Men

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 Bronze Age Pervert The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama “The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright” with Richard Reeves, The Ezra Klein Show “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” with Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat “The Great Feminization” by Helen Andrews “The Women Leaving the New Right” by Sam Adler-Bell Book Recommendations: Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford The Genius Factory by David Plotz Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Kyle Grandillo. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of N