J Oliver Conroy

J Oliver Conroy is a political culture reporter and feature writer at the Guardian US, specialising in long-form reported features, profiles and criticism. His work centres on the American right, ideologues and intellectuals, extremist movements, culture wars, true crime and strange events, often with an eye on how these forces play out in media and entertainment. Alongside his reporting for the Guardian, he writes reviews of books, films and television and contributes essays and criticism to outlets including the Washington Examiner, New York Magazine, The New Criterion and other publications.

American right and political culture

Conroy’s defining focus is the contemporary American right and the political culture surrounding it, particularly people and ideas that sit outside the liberal mainstream.

At the Guardian US he covers the US right, people, ideologies, trends and everyday life beyond the standard political establishment, approaching these subjects through narrative features rather than daily spot news. His reporting style is immersive and source-driven: for example, he spent months reporting on Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk’s legacy, speaking to dozens of people inside the organisation and the broader MAGA movement to understand how grief, conspiracy and martyrdom were reshaping the group after Kirk’s killing. He has also written on internal conflict among College Republicans and how factional infighting can open space for harder-right groups to gain influence, treating campus politics as a window into broader dynamics on the American right.

In another piece, he analysed how Elon Musk’s stewardship of X turned the platform into a supercharged front page for the global right, linking product decisions and moderation choices to ideological currents. His coverage of younger Americans’ sense of “national decline,” framed around housing costs and economic pressures, similarly uses reported conversations and data to connect lived experience with shifts in political mood. Across these stories, Conroy treats the right as a cultural ecosystem - mixing organisational narratives, media environments and personal ideology rather than focusing solely on electoral outcomes.

Extremist movements, conspiracy and fringe belief

Beyond mainstream political players, Conroy consistently follows extremist movements, conspiratorial subcultures and fringe communities. He has written about a Texan vigilante who tries to solve his daughter’s murder, examining how grief, distrust of institutions and a taste for true-crime narratives can blur the line between citizen investigation and private crusade.

He has covered conspiracy theorists who harass or attack police, focusing on the collision between online radicalisation and real-world violence. Other work traces the trajectories of an American missionary killed while attempting to convert an isolated island tribe, the Attica prison uprising, an environmentalist who burned himself to death in protest at climate change and the Jonestown commune.

Taken together, these subjects show a sustained interest in the extreme edge of belief and action - where ideology, faith or grievance push people toward irrevocable decisions.

Conroy also follows newer or more obscure online communities, such as the “Zizians,” treating them as part of the same continuum of fringe belief and internet-era radicalisation. His reporting in this area treats these groups not as curiosities but as environments that shape participants’ identities, ethics and political choices.

The through-line is close attention to people on the margins of accepted discourse and the narratives they build to explain or justify their actions.

Profiles and narrative features

Conroy specialises in reported features and profiles, often built around extended interviews and contextual research. He has profiled or interviewed figures including former police officer Michael Fanone, financial broadcaster Dave Ramsey, conservative commentator Ann Coulter and political theorist Mark Lilla. These subjects sit at the intersection of law enforcement, personal finance, conservative media and political ideas, giving him access to how ideology and identity operate across different spheres of public life. His features typically situate these individuals within a larger story - whether that is the evolution of the American right, the mechanics of conservative media or the intellectual debates around liberalism and its critics.

His professional materials describe him as a journalist who specialises in features and profiles, reinforcing that his primary format is long-form narrative rather than short news updates. He previously worked on US opinion editing at the Guardian while also writing staff features, which informs his ability to frame reported stories within broader debates without turning them into opinion pieces. Across profiles and features, he favours detailed reporting, clear structure and a focus on how personal histories intersect with larger ideological movements.

Film, television and cultural criticism

Alongside political and extremism reporting, Conroy maintains a substantial body of entertainment and culture writing. He reviews and critiques books, films and television, often choosing works that illuminate contemporary politics or cultural conflict.

For the Washington Examiner, he has written about Netflix’s “Squid Game,” treating it as both one of the most viscerally upsetting recent series and one of the strongest, and unpacking its commentary on inequality and spectacle. On his own site he highlights a Guardian review of the book “Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind,” indicating a continued interest in conservative media personalities and their audiences.

He has also written for the Guardian about why Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” is his feelgood film, using the movie as a way to explore character, tone and nostalgia.

Across these pieces, Conroy links entertainment to ideology: television and film become routes into questions about class, power, conservatism and taste, rather than being treated as isolated cultural products. His newsletter further collects recent work and offers writing advice drawn from his experience as a reporter and editor, underscoring his dual role as practitioner and critic of narrative craft.

He does not handle op-ed pitches and concentrates on reported features, profiles and criticism, making his work most relevant for stories that benefit from deep reporting and clear thematic connections between politics, culture and entertainment.