Julius Krein

Julius Krein (born 1986) is an American conservative political writer and editor best known for founding the journal American Affairs.

Early life and education Krein was raised in Eureka, South Dakota, He is a 2008 graduate of Harvard College, where he studied political philosophy with Harvey Mansfield.

Career Krein went into a career in finance, working for Bank of America and the Blackstone Group. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he was employed at a hedge fund based in Boston while also contributing as a writer and site administrator for a pro-Trump blog. The blog, known as the Journal for American Greatness, was created supposedly to support Trump on the basis that his beliefs were politically sound. The blog's owners eventually took it offline, claiming it had begun as an inside joke and they were not prepared for such large readership. Six months later, however, Krein publicly withdrew his support for Trump in a piece published in The New York Times, expressing regret over his prior support of Trump as president.

The inaugural issue of American Affairs was released February 21, one month after Trump's inauguration, which Krein intended to be the first of four issues for 2017. In an interview before its release, Krein stated he planned to have several dozen contributors and for each issue to include about 10 essays. The first issue included features on "the failure of standard conservative ideology," nationalism, fusionism, and academic free market theory.

Political beliefs Krein stated that he identifies himself as a conservative and a nationalist, but absolutely not a white nationalist. He also explained that he was very disillusioned with the Republican Party leadership, and that he felt Reaganomics had been a failure:

"To go back to nationalism, the biggest problem is the Republican mindset, the Reaganite mindset that we are all just individuals and let everyone loose to acquire wealth. That hasn't worked. Not only do we have rising inequality, but the people who defend rising inequality say it will lead to more productivity and the pie is going to be bigger blah blah. That hasn't happened, and no one has been willing to look at the deeper problems behind that."