MAGA-Lite: What “Bari Weiss Conservatism” Is, and Why It’s Dangerous

Enter a new brand of conservatism. Weiss and her allies don’t generally identify as conservative or Republican. (She has described herself as “politically homeless.”) They aren’t conservative Christians opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and immigration. In fact, Weiss is married to a woman. So they are to the left of where the average Trump voter is. Therefore, their views on social issues are palatable in the urban, coastal, elite settings where many of them live. At the same time, unlike the Romney Republicans, they do have an agenda that is both distinct from the rest of the party and more adapted to the 2020s. The Free Press, the publication Weiss founded, is obsessed with left-wing students and professors at elite colleges, diversity initiatives, pro-Palestinian activism, “cancel culture,” and other causes and people that they put under the frame of wokeness.

It’s not that prior Republicans and conservatives didn’t care about these issues. But it’s unique having an outlet so focused on, say, the comments of the interim president of Columbia University, as the Free Press was earlier this year. Weiss correctly recognized that many of the people in institutions geographically located in Blue America (elite universities, foundations, major news organizations) don’t love Trump’s personality but probably agree with him on policy, especially on these hot-button cultural issues, more than the progressive activists who’ve gained growing power within the Democratic Party. So Weiss has been a central figure in legitimizing and spreading this kind of conservatism.

And it’s everywhere now. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos reportedly became a fan of Weiss and the Free Press before he decided to shift his paper’s opinion pages to the right. Bill Maher casts the Democratic left wing as almost as radical as Trump. Elon Musk and others in tech and Silicon Valley who have either distanced themselves from the Democratic Party or embraced Trump often sound like Weiss, highlighting alleged abuses by Democrats that they claim have forced them to align with the right.