I’ve argued for a long time that David French is willfully obtuse, intellectually lazy, and a profound moral narcissist. His column this weekend appears to have gone farther than all that, trespassing into simple lying. And something else truly remarkable, but let’s save a surprise for the end.French is talking about an old and private conversation, a 2021 group chat on the Clubhouse app, so it’s hard to prove deliberate misrepresentation. But it’s not impossible. It happened in his December 14 column, a description of this years-ago encounter in which he became aware that a group of young right-populist MAGA bros were having a discussion in a group chat under the heading, “David French: Based or cringe.” Finding himself the topic of a discussion, he parachuted in, introducing himself and inviting conversation. And then, miracle of miracles, all the MAGA kids started confessing to him:The conversation was enlightening. While we talked about a number of issues, one theme was dominant — I refused to recognize that America was in a death spiral. The country was in crisis, and I needed to open my eyes, steel my spine and take the necessary, sometimes authoritarian, steps to pull it from the brink.So a group of ideological adversaries is having a chat about how much they don’t like David French, but then David French shows up and they all instantly start sieg-heiling and telling him how much they can’t wait to invade Poland. Oh, Mister French, we’re all just desperate to crush America under the boot of a dictator! What he says they said is that they told him they want to take authoritarian steps to bring America out of a death spiral.Remember this description: They said they want authoritarianism. The first thing you notice — about anything French ever writes, but about this one especially — is his vagueness in painting the picture. Good writers show, bad writers tell, and David French vaguely cartoon pantomimes. There are no names, and only the vaguest characterization of the group and the common identity that brought them into conversation, and there are no direct quotes. That last part is the tell: A bunch of Trump supporters confessed to their authoritarianism, but French can’t bring himself to provide any examples from the thing he tells you was a flood of damning statements. He’s like a homicide detective who won’t tell you the actual content of the murderer’s confession.I’ve sent David French two email messages about this column, asking him (among other things) if the people he was talking to actually used the words “authoritarian” or “authoritarianism,” and asking him to clarify if they explicitly said they sought authoritarian solutions to societal problems or if that’s only his interpretation of their comments. I’ll update this post if he replies, but I’ve sent him messages before without a response. Fortunately, other people who saw or participated in the discussion have written about it, and their characterization of it is significantly different than French’s. And by the way, among the people who have described this 2021 discussion before without mentioning all the naked panting for authoritarianism is a guy named…David French. But we’ll get to that.Start with the easiest example, a piece at Think Outside Politics that (amazingly!) French links to himself. Reminder that this discussion took place in March of 2021, when social media purges were normal and constant. Sample of their description of the conversation French represents as young MAGA dudes declaring their membership in Team Authoritarianism, and read this carefully:The young authoritarians keep pushing French on the question of cancel culture, trying to get him to agree that open discourse is worth defending. He won’t do it. The vicious MAGA right-wingers, yearning to be ruled by a dictator, keep defending free speech, while the bold anti-authoritarian David French keeps rejecting it. Remember how French characterized this discussion: “They told him I needed to open my eyes, steel my spine and take the necessary, sometimes authoritarian, steps to pull it from the brink.” He has a conversation in which a group of opponents keep pushing for freedom of conscience and expression, and then — without providing examples from the discussion — he types up a description in which he was arguing with some authoritarians.This man is a liar.One of the participants in that Clubhouse discussion was Ryan Girdusky, who wrote about it on Substack. I’ve sent him a message asking him to respond specifically to French’s column, and haven’t received a response. But again, you won’t find in Girdusky’s old description a group of young men who longed for authoritarianism, though the discussion in this account is closer to an argument about the use of federal power in a longrunning culture war. Girdusky wrote, back in 2021, that French argued for decentralization, because the right was winning that culture war:This is an astonishing point to have made in 2021, the height of social media purges and corporate cancel culture: “He insisted that the free market and the internet have delivered the ability for more people to speak freely about subjects and have their opinion heard by millions of people.” But again, the argument across the virtual table from French was not that we need authoritarianism; rather, he was arguing with people who wanted to use federal authority against the closing of the culture, reopening conversations that were being throttled, including by government. Reminder:French was arguing for a decentralization of power, yes, but against a setting in which left-captured power was closing the culture and the David French-right thought that no fight was underway. He argued like a visitor from 1990, seeing none of the context of the moment.Argument: The left is using centralized power to dominate the culture and erode freedom, so we need to capture federal authority to prevent them from doing that.David French: Oh no, they’re saying they want to seize centralized power!Finally, let us turn to the truly extraordinary spectacle of David French describing the conversation that David French describes. Here’s the surprise at the end: French’s Dec. 14, 2025 column in the New York Times is French’s March 12, 2021 column in the Dispatch, paragraph for paragraph, in the same order, but with the paragraphs somewhat reworded. A New York Times columnist is just recycling his greatest hits, emailing his editors the text of his four-year-old members-only stuff from Substack. (I paid a dollar to buy a trial membership at the Dispatch to read this, by the way, and I feel dirty about sending them money.) But even this becomes quite interesting, as French changes his description of the argument that he heard from the other side. Again, French in the New York Times this week:The conversation was enlightening. While we talked about a number of issues, one theme was dominant — I refused to recognize that America was in a death spiral. The country was in crisis, and I needed to open my eyes, steel my spine and take the necessary, sometimes authoritarian, steps to pull it from the brink.Same paragraph, David French at the Dispatch in 2021:If I had to summarize their argument, it would go something like this: America is in a cultural death spiral. Not only did traditional conservatism and classical liberalism do nothing to stop America’s decline, their emphasis on individual liberty is also partly responsible for the decline. In other words, conservatives like me are the problem. Thus, to save America we have to take the gloves off, abandon decorum, and exert maximum political power to redirect American culture.In 2021, MAGA populists talking to David French said that the country was in a death spiral, so the right needs to “abandon decorum” and “exert maximum political power” to turn the culture around. In 2025, the same conversation is that MAGA populists told David French they want to seize power with steel spines and rule as authoritarians. He’s lazy, recycling his own old work, but his own old work becomes more cartoonish and extreme as he recycles. It’s like David French hired Ernst Jünger to massage his old copy. In four more years we can read it again, and the then the next version of the same column will have them dressed in black leather and stormtrooper hats.There’s more to say about this, and the version of the old column that shows up again in the New York Times this week is full of dimwitted strawmanning that I might bother to parse at another moment. But let’s not muddy the central claim: David French is lying, reusing old columns and changing his description of events he has described before. See also his description of the same event, without mention of any demands for authoritarianism, starting at 39:30 in this video:I’ll post an update if I hear from David French.
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