![]() Molly Olmstead argued in Slate that the Times was irresponsible to publish a piece treating reactionary Catholicism as a fun, innocuous trend. This entire 'scene' is composed of maybe 2,000 people with *zero broader cultural relevance* and the media needs to stop falling for it." In response to Yost's claim that Dimes Square's turn toward Rome signals "a culture-wide shift," The Washington Post's Taylor Lorenz tweeted, "No, it literally doesn't and, in fact, it's the exact opposite. Goldberg also argued that the reactionary chic scene "doesn't have a coherent worldview" and is united by nothing more than anti-wokeness and "a desire to épater le bourgeois." There's no scene to be seen "Eventually, an avant-garde flirtation with reaction will collide with the brutish, philistine reality of conservative rule," she wrote. Just days after Pogue's profile dropped, New York Timesopinion columnist Michelle Goldberg published a piece headlined "The Awful Advent of Reactionary Chic." Goldberg doesn't address the connection between the New Right and Catholicism, but she does suggest that the entire fad will come to a screeching halt next time the right takes power nationally. Pogue observed that "New Right-ish" politics have become "quietly edgy and cool in new tech outposts like Miami and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan." In these hip enclaves, "signifiers like a demure cross necklace have become markers of a transgressive chic" and - as one of Pogue's friends told him - "casual sex is out." The New Right isn't exclusively Catholic, but Vance and Ahmari are both converts and Pogue writes that "eople are converting to Catholicism" in the Manhattan New Right scene. Vance, political theorist Curtis Yarvin, billionaire Peter Thiel, Trumpian film director Amanda Milius, and Compact founder Sohrab Ahmari. ![]() Yost's essay drew heavily on James Pogue's April profile of the "New Right." His far-ranging piece touched on an interconnected web of figures including Senate candidates Blake Masters and J.D. Christianity, he argued, offers a potent antidote for those "alienated from a society which manages to be at once both insistently libertine, and cruelly unforgiving." The rise of the New Right "We should probably not put too much stock in this supposed mini-revival," Gooch continued, noting that "full-blooded Catholicism is a demanding way of life, not merely a means of sticking up two fingers at a suffocating liberal consensus." Even so, Gooch remained cautiously optimistic. Niall Gooch, who converted to Catholicism in 2006, joked in UnHerdthat he had never been "at the cutting edge of fashion" before. Take, for example, the fashion label Praying - famous for its white string bikini that labels the goods "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit." Sherbert suggests that the trend has some of its roots in the "deviant Catholic schoolgirl" style of the 1990s, but that this "reads more like a salvaging of innocence than an iconoclastic subversion of it." Of course, there's still plenty of subversion going on. Appropriating Indigenous spirituality is out, but the Church of Rome won't mind if you borrow its look. In the realm of fashion, Catholic iconography and "trad" styles function as "reservoirs of the 'unproblematic exotic,'" Biz Sherbert wrote at i-D. Yost concedes that this trendy Catholicism "may be partly a pose" but insists that Dimes Square "is not the first social scene whose Catholicism was dismissed as insincere." If you think about it, they're not so different from Oscar Wilde and his fellow fin de siècle Decadents, many of whom crossed the Tiber. Another is Dasha Nekrasova, "a Catholic revert and actress with a recurring role on HBO's Succession, who co-hosts "the scene's most popular podcast, Red Scare."īut are these hip urbanite converts sincere? Are they just role-playing? Or are they so many layers deep in irony that they themselves aren't sure? Are the converts just posers? Levy "recently converted to Catholicism and lets you know when she has unconfessed mortal sins on her conscience," Yost writes. Key figures include Honor Levy, who hosts the podcast "Wet Brain" and whose fiction has been published in The New Yorker.
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