Know Your Enemy - MAGA’s Fight for Animal Rights (w/ Astra Taylor & Aaron Regunberg) [Teaser]

Matt and Sam talk about MAGA's surprising embrace of animal rights with Astra Taylor and Aaron Regunberg.

Duration: 3m
Broadcast on: 31 Aug 2026
Audio Format: other

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We talk to Astra Taylor and Aaron Regunberg about their recent New Republic article about MAGA's embrace of animal rights—which, like RFK Jr. and "Make America Healthy Again," has allowed them to make inroads with constituencies typically associated with the left. What actually is the Trumpist right's vision of animal rights, and how does it differ from the left's? What might the matter reveal about the curious, combustible politics of this moment? And what should the left learn from this, not just when it comes to animal rights but the opportunities they seem to keep giving conservatives to offer compelling alternatives to the left on key issues? We take up these questions and more.

Sources:

Astra Taylor & Aaron Regunberg, "How MAGA Stole Animal Rights from the Left," New Republic, Aug 17, 2026

— "Is Animal Rights the Next MAHA?" The Bemusement Tapes, Aug 17, 2026

Daniel Engber, "MAGA's Animal Nationalism," The Atlantic, Feb 22, 2026

Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (2002)

Jay Caspian Kang, "Why an Agnostic Animal-Rights Activist Went to Seminary," New Yorker, Jan 27, 2026

Pope Francis, Laudato si': On Care for Our Common Home (2015)

Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden , (2017)

Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor, “Our Animals, Ourselves,” Lux, Jan 2022.

Out in September: Astra Taylor & Naomi Klein, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World

I think this like conspiratorial aspect is probably important. You know, I mean, in particular, the scientific testing regime, the puppy mills, it summons this idea of like, you know, some evil Dr. Morot type figure who's principally responsible for cruelty toward animals. It has this dark conspiratorial vibe, which, you know, look, you can describe them totally straight forwardly and be morally revolted by it. It's awful. But sometimes the way this comes out on the right, it does rhyme a little bit with the way they talk about like QAnon pedophile rings, where the responsibility is primarily like liberal scientific elites who are doing these things in secret, motivated exclusively by malice or kind of like misplaced totalitarian benevolence, you know, the greater good. And there's a version of that that's just like, okay, that's just effective messaging to reach a certain kind of constituent. But on the other hand, just as with QAnon and other kinds of conspiratorial populism, there's a way in which that can like obscure the real forces creating the status quo. For example, I mean, it's a lot easier to imagine in these kind of simplistic conspiratorial stories that these things are being done to animals because there's just bad people with evil aims doing things in secret. And if we just expose them, then we'll be able to solve it. It's harder, for example, this is not the only reality principle version of this, but like it's a lot harder when the simple enemy is capitalism and the profit motive. Yeah. But this is the problem with the left, you know, not waging this battle, right? I mean, this is why anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. When there isn't a counter narrative there, then people start connecting dots in really weird ways. You know, and just to go back to the Save Our Bacon example, again, you know, it was hard to actually mess that up like the people trying to undermine democratic legislation in California, specifically. That was the pork industry. And so that was a potentially very powerful teachable moment, right? To say, hey, all you people on the right who are getting caught up in this, who think this is wrong, look who is trying to pass this legislation on your critical of, you know, look at the elected officials who are in their pockets, you know, this is something we see across areas, again, the danger of the vacuum and the vacuums will be filmed. That's what happened. You know, I think this is why even if you do not agree, if you are leftist and you don't like vegans and you don't like oat milk or whatever, it's like, there's actually real political stakes here. One more example on this on the sort of conspiratorial, like, there are real conspiracies. You know, one sort of big strain in animal rights movement has been attempts to take videos inside these industrial Holocaust slaughterhouses and just get the information out there because people don't understand just how horrific it is. And when people see this shit, right, they're like, oh, there's a problem here. And in response to that sort of movement tactic and strategy, there was a big push by the right and corporate interest to pass these ag gag laws to like basically make it a capital felony to take a video inside a slaughterhouse. And so again, like there's stuff that can feed conspiratorial thinking in real ways with the actual real enemies, you know, the corporate villains, but again, our folks are not stepping up to do it.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam talk about MAGA's surprising embrace of animal rights with Astra Taylor and Aaron Regunberg.