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Sohrab Ahmari

Iranian-American conservative writer and postliberal intellectual who argues that liberal proceduralism must be replaced by substantive moral authority.

Sohrab Ahmari (born 1985) is an Iranian-American conservative writer and one of the most visible advocates of postliberalism in American public discourse. A convert to Catholicism, Ahmari argues that liberal neutrality — the framework in which the state does not take sides on substantive questions of the good — has failed, and that political institutions must be redirected toward explicitly moral ends.

Core ideas

  • Against David French-ism: Ahmari’s 2019 essay of this title catalyzed the postliberal turn in American conservatism by arguing that conservative commitment to procedural liberalism (free speech, neutral institutions, the marketplace of ideas) is a losing strategy against a progressive left that already treats institutions as instruments of substantive moral transformation. If the left uses institutions to advance its vision of the good, conservatives must do the same.
  • Civilizational rhetoric: Ahmari frames the conflict as civilizational rather than merely political — not a policy disagreement but a struggle over the meaning of human life, truth, and social order. This framing draws on Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction while replacing Schmitt’s secular political theology with Catholic social teaching.

Significance for this research

In emsenn’s analysis of fascist grammar, Ahmari represents the postliberal deployment of the six-step sequence (crisis → pure community → corrupt enemy → sacrifice → destiny → inevitability) in explicitly civilizational vocabulary. His rhetoric performs the same structural function as fascist grammar while operating in a register that appears legitimate within mainstream conservative discourse.

Notable works

  • “Against David French-ism” (First Things, 2019)
  • The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (2021)

Relations

Date created

Cite

@misc{emsenn2026-sohrab-ahmari,
  author    = {emsenn},
  title     = {Sohrab Ahmari},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Iranian-American conservative writer and postliberal intellectual who argues that liberal proceduralism must be replaced by substantive moral authority.},
  url       = {https://emsenn.net/library/general/domains/people/sohrab-ahmari/},
  publisher = {emsenn.net},
  license   = {CC BY-SA 4.0}
}