| Editor and founder | Julius Krein |
|---|---|
| Assistant Editor | Gladden Pappin |
| Categories | Politics |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| First issue | February 2017; 8 years ago (2017) |
| Company | American Affairs Foundation Inc. |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Boston |
| Language | English |
| Website | americanaffairsjournal |
| ISSN | 2475-8809 |
American Affairs is a quarterly American political journal founded in February 2017 byJulius Krein.
Its project has been outlined inTablet as: "a dense, technically sophisticated form ofneo-Hamiltonianeconomic nationalism, pushed in various forms byMichael Lind,David P. Goldman, and Krein himself," based on the contention that "a short-sighted American elite has allowed the country’s manufacturing core—the key to both widespread domestic prosperity and national security in the face of amercantilistChina—to be hollowed out," just as "Production and technical expertise have shifted to China and Asia, domestic capital has flowed into unproductiveshare buybacks or tech schemes (Uber,WeWork), and America has become a country with a two-tiered service economy, with bankers, consultants, and software engineers at the top andWalmart greeters and Uber drivers at the bottom."[1]
Since its founding in 2017,American Affairs has become known for in-depth articles ontrade andindustrial policy,[2] criticisms offinancialization,[3] advocacy offamily childcare allowances[4] andinfrastructure spending,[5] as well as for bringing together right and left-wing critics ofneoliberalism.[6] Aside from public policy, it has also coveredpolitical theory andcultural criticism. It has been characterized in theNew Statesman as a "heterodox policy journal"[6] featuring, for instance, conservative arguments in favor of agreater role forthe state[7] alongside left-wing arguments againstidentity politics[8] andopen borders.[9] Notable articles include Krein's "The Real Class War" which "attracted attention from both left and right in November 2019 by upending the conversation over class in the Democratic primary," according toNew Statesman.[6]
A predecessor toAmerican Affairs is theJournal of American Greatness, a short-lived 2016 political blog best known for publishing "The Flight 93 Election," a widely read essay about the 2016 presidential election by the pseudonymous author Publius Decius Mus, later revealed to beMichael Anton.[10][11][12]
American Affairs was initially considered by some as a "pro-Trump journal."[13] On its launch, it was described by theNew York Times as "dedicated to giving intellectual heft and coherence to the amorphous ideology known, for lack of a better term, asTrumpism."[14] But in August 2017, afterthe "Unite the Right" rally atCharlottesvile, Virginia, Krein wrote an opinion article inThe New York Times publicly acknowledging his regret in voting for the candidate.[15] Jennifer Schuessler ofThe New York Times writes: "the magazine seeks to fill the void left by a conservative intellectual establishment more focused on opposing Mr. Trump than on grappling with the rejection of globalism and free-market dogma that propelled his victory."
According toThe Washington Post, the journal is read by Vice PresidentJD Vance.[16]
Contributors to the magazine include: Michael Anton,Robert D. Atkinson,Mehrsa Baradaran,Thierry Baudet,Daniel A. Bell,Fred Block,Dan Breznitz,Christopher Caldwell,Oren Cass,Angelo M. Codevilla,Colin Crouch,Patrick J. Deneen,Ronald W. Dworkin,Fredrik Erixon,Nancy Fraser,Amber A'Lee Frost,Frank Furedi,Maurice Glasman,James K. Galbraith, David P. Goldman,Allen C. Guelzo,Ofir Haivry,Shadi Hamid,James Hankins,Yoram Hazony,Joseph Heath,Arthur Herman,John B. Judis,Eric Kaufmann,Joel Kotkin,Ryszard Legutko,Michael Lind,Edward Luttwak,Bruno Maçães,Noel Malcolm,Pierre Manent,Lawrence M. Mead,Bill Mitchell,Angela Nagle,David Oks,Eric A. Posner,R.R. Reno,Ganesh Sitaraman,Anne-Marie Slaughter,Matthew Stoller,Wolfgang Streeck,Cass Sunstein,Ruy Teixiera,Nick Timothy,Roberto M. Unger,Adrian Vermeule,Henry Williams,L. Randall Wray, andSlavoj Zizek.[17]
