Sohrab Ahmari

Sohrab Ahmari is an Iranian-born American conservative commentator.My Family’s Iranian Revolution Ahmari is married to architect Ting Li, with whom he has a son and a daughter. He is most famous for his introduction of illiberal thought on the American right, specifically through criticizing those who present a "live and let live" style of thinking, such as telling his audience in 2018 that "There's no polite, David French-ian third way around the cultural civil war. The only way is through.""If you can't see why children belong nowhere near drag, with its currents of transvestic fetishism, we have nothing to say to each other. We are irreconcilably opposed. There's no polite, David French-ian third way around the cultural civil war. The only way is through." by @SohrabAhmari, 5/26/2019 The call out of conservative lawyer David French eventually led Ahmari to write an article criticizing what he called "David French-ism" which he basically used to mean conservatives who aren't as willing to use authoritarian measures as he is,AGAINST DAVID FRENCH-ISM eventually resulting in French writing a response to these criticismsWhat Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong and a debate between the two in September 2019.CULTURAL CONSERVATIVES: TWO VISIONS RESPONDING TO THE POST-LIBERAL LEFT
==Feud with French==
According to Ahmari, one of the bigger issues with French and his ideology is the refusal to allow the government to intervene in what he sees as the ills of civilization, writing:
The request to change tactics and move away from the "small government" one conservatives had been using for decades, put together with the sly shot at the notion of politics being downstream from culture, one associated with conservative idol Andrew Breitbart,The right loves to say "politics is downstream from culture," but on the right the opposite is true resulted in Ahmari's essay being incredibly controversial, with several right-wing authors expanding on or criticizing his ideas.The Ahmari/French debate: A reading list
The question of what it was going to be replaced with was where things got especially worrisome. Charles C. W. Cooke, writing in the National Review, specifically criticized Ahmari for not actually explaining what he wants and how he intends to get it.Okay, Sohrab Ahmari, but Why Did You ‘Snap’? John Zmirak, although he does go after French in his article on the topic, still called what Ahmari wanted "a mongrelized mix of theocratic socialism, Catholic authoritarianism, and despair or contempt for our country."The Iran-Iraq War Among Conservatives Meanwhile, Damon Linker argued in The Week that Ahmari's demand for those in the religious right to have power despite the country not agreeing with them was actually an attack on the idea of democracy itself.How the intellectual right is talking itself into tearing down American democracy
==From neoconservative to whatever he is now==
James Kirchick, a neoconservative writer who has been with Ahmari since the start of his career as a commentator, documented exactly what his time in the spotlight has been like in a 2022 article for the website Tablet. In it, he noted how Ahmari began as a relatively standard neoconservative himself, and somebody who was particularly concerned about the illiberalism on the right after events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump (calling it "the worldwide crisis" in an article for Commentary from 2016Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis and the arguing this was a "terrible American turn" the following yearThe Terrible American Turn Toward Illiberalism), only for Ahmari to himself become one of the biggest cheerleaders for what he once fought against.When the Pope Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That’s Ahmari
Kirchick specifically noted that this shift occurred after Ahmari moved away from The Wall Street Journal and Commentary and becoming the editor of the op-ed pages for the New York Post in 2018 as the thing which caused a shift in Ahmari's perspective. From this point forward, the rest is history:
From this point forward, Ahmari has spent the majority of his career doing little more than defending foreign authoritarians, regardless of how much their actions actually align with his values, funnily enough. One particularly infamous tweet saw him declaring that he's "at peace with a Chinese-led 21st century." However, one is forced to wonder why Ahmari, a practicing Catholic who bases his political views off of his theology, would be fine with a world led by a state atheist nationIs China a religious country or not? It’s a tricky question to answer where Christianity is either persecuted or state-controlled.4. Christianity
==What does he actually believe?==
Best as anybody can tell, nothing. Back in 2021, Shannon Last, a Catholic speechwriter, made an entire Twitter thread noting various contradictions in what Sohrab used to say and what he says now.Although it has since been deleted, an archive can be found hereand here
When this is brought up, Ahmari will usually frame this not as him changing his views for the sake of grifting, but instead merely him changing his mind as a result of new information. Responding to the various attacks on him for his change in worldview, he wrote:
However, the issue is not merely that he changed his mind on certain subjects, it is that he did so suddenly and out of nowhere. If this were the Ahmari we arrived at after, say, a decade of him having new experiences and learning more about the world, even if his positions would still be disagreeable, few would have the complaints they do today. However, Ahmari's overnight transformation from a defender of liberal democracy to one of its loudest critics reeks to many as throwing away his old beliefs for the sake of becoming more popular in the Trump-era intellectual right. This is the man who once famously said, "There is no returning to the pre-Trump conservative consensus that collapsed in 2016."AGAINST THE DEAD CONSENSUS It very much seems like he came to that conclusion and wondered what views would get him the most support in this new landscape, not that he changed his mind because he finds these ideas worthwhile.
The fact that his pick for a right-wing target was David French, somebody whom Trump supporters infamously harassed on Twitter during the 2016 Presidential ElectionHarassed On Twitter: 'People Need To Know The Reality Of What It's Like Out There' (and whose dislike for Trump is so strong he even considered running for President himself just to give anti-Trump conservatives somebody to vote forDavid French came ‘really close’ to running for president), further backs up this notion. Jonathan Last specifically noted while writing in The Bulwark that, although Ahmari could have picked many conservatives to target as several fit the mold of the kind of right-winger he wanted to criticize, it seemed that he picked French specifically because of his opposition to Trump.Sohrab Ahmari’s ‘Culture War’ Is Really Just About Donald Trump 
This is especially notable because, as both Last and French note, Ahmari's description of "David French-ism" has almost nothing to do with the man, and his constant referring to Trump as somebody who brought back the religious conservative movement bears little reference to Trump. The man who couldn't name his favorite Bible verseTrump says Bible is his favorite book, but declines to share favorite verse and screwed up a Biblical citation at Liberty UniversityDonald Trump Mistakes Biblical Citation at Liberty University Event is far from a dedicated Christian. He infamously rarely attends church servicesRepublicans see Trump as a more of ‘person of faith’ than Biden, Pence, every 2024 GOP candidate and is someone who most Americans don't even see as Christian.Most Americans don’t see Trump as religious; fewer than half say they think he’s Christian Yet he, and not the self-identified evangelical Christian David French,David French, Sohrab Ahmari, and the Battle for the Future of Conservatism is the one on the side of the religious in the culture war.
==See also==
*Mezionism — religious authoritarianism with a veil of democracy
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Atheists
Category:Authoritarianism
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Category:Catholics
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Category:Leftists who turned right with age
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