What the Left Is Getting Wrong About the Right
A conversation with Daniel Martinez HoSang and Micah English
Organizers across the country are facing the growing threat of right-wing and authoritarian power—power that is increasingly deployed against the very organizations, communities, and constituencies they serve. In this moment, progressives are grappling with how best to understand what the right is, how it operates, and why it continues to gain ground even as its policy agenda remains broadly unpopular.
This paradox is not new. For more than fifty years, right-wing movements have pursued a consistent agenda. Yet the institutions, communities, and voters that once countered it now seem less able to mount an effective response. Why is this happening? What is changing in the political terrain that has allowed the right to expand its reach and influence?
This webinar recording features Daniel Martinez HoSang and Micah English, two scholar-activists who have been studying the formation of right-wing power through an organizing lens. Drawing from fieldwork at spaces such as Moms for Liberty, Turning Point USA, the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump rallies, and pro-life gatherings, they examine how right-wing actors are making inroads into new constituencies and issues—and what this means for organizers today.
Together, HoSang and English explore key questions:
What assumptions about the right have shaped the way we understand and respond to it?
Why are older frameworks—those drawn from past studies of European authoritarianism or 20th-century U.S. extremism—no longer adequate for the current landscape?
What can organizers learn from how the right has, in many cases, out-organized the left?
Watch the recording for a conversation that challenges familiar narratives and offers new insights into how we can more effectively meet the political conditions of our time.
This presentation was recorded in November 2025.
Presenters
Micah English is a PhD candidate at Yale University studying American politics, and an organizer with Unite Here Local 33. Micah researches Black politics, social movement engagement and mobilization, and their intersections with sexuality and gender.
Daniel Martinez HoSang is a professor of American Studies at Yale University and co-editor of the forthcoming volume, The Politics of the Multiracial Right. He is the author or co-editor of six other books on social movements and racial justice and a current Race and Democracy Fellow with the Roosevelt Institute.