Key Thinkers of the Radical Right

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Key Thinkers of the Radical Right Page 23

by Mark Sedgwick (ed)


  established partisan loyalties, Buchanan abandoned the Republicans and

  sought the Reform Party nomination. However, the party then fractured

  between supporters of Buchanan, Donald Trump (who was toying with

  the possibility of running), and John Hagelin, a physicist with a back-

  ground in transcendental meditation. Legal battles ensued, and although

  Buchanan eventually secured the FEC funds, the party’s nomination for

  the election remained in doubt. In the end, individual states determined

  whether Buchanan or Hagelin should represent the Reform Party on the

  ballot. Buchanan was therefore listed as an Independent in a significant

  number of states and secured just 0.4 percent of the popular vote.

  After 2000, Buchanan continued to support The American Cause,

  which he had together with his sister established a base organiza-

  tion in 1993, and maintained his role as an author and columnist. His

  commentaries appeared regularly in journals such as the core paleocon-

  servative magazine Chronicles, published by the Rockford Institute, which

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  after a fractious split with neoconservatives became a principal point of

  reference for paleoconservatives, and The American Conservative, a journal

  that he cofounded in 2002. However, although still cited by the main-

  stream media, Buchanan lost his position as a commentator with MSNBC

  in 2012 as the racial and ethnic basis of his thinking became yet more

  pronounced.9

  Buchanan’s thinking

  How should Buchanan’s politics be understood? He was above all else a

  popularizer of paleoconservatism. In contrast with figures such as Paul

  Gottfried and Thomas Fleming, former editor of Chronicles, and other pa-

  leoconservative intellectuals, Buchanan had the ability to reach beyond

  the narrow confines of activists and translate relatively dense intellectual

  arguments into a form that could serve as a basis for political mobilization.

  Because he sought to popularize a broad tradition rather than the

  works of specific thinkers, Buchanan did not put forward a tightly struc-

  tured worldview. Indeed, he did not generally take sides when there were

  tensions between those within the paleo camp who leaned toward libertar-

  ianism but still saw hierarchies and nations as a necessary basis for social

  order, and those who sought more of a role for the state in structuring

  the polity. Instead, he simply depicted paleoconservatism as a return to

  “first principles,” and his commentaries often straddled the stresses and

  ambiguities in paleoconservative thought.10

  Buchanan’s paleoconservatism claimed to have inherited the mantle

  of those conservatives that had been largely banished or at least confined

  to the margins of the conservative movement after the defeat of Senator

  Robert Taft in the 1952 Republican presidential nomination battle. They

  had taken a stand against both the New Deal and the US’s growing global

  commitments but were beaten back by fears of Soviet expansionism and

  through the determination of William F. Buckley’s journal, National

  Review, to define and limit the conservative movement’s boundaries.

  National Review came to serve as a gatekeeper, distinguishing the legit-

  imate conservative movement, structured around the free market, tradi-

  tional moral conservatism, and the US’s role in the front line of the battle

  against global communism, from both older conservative strands, such

  as those that had backed the America First Committee and had opposed

  military intervention in Korea, and the Right that took shape in the 1950s

  and 1960s.11 This comprised organizations such as the John Birch Society,

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  the Liberty Lobby, and the Citizens’ Councils that were formed in the

  southern states. These campaigned against desegregation, took a stand

  against the United Nations, fanned fears of both communism and supra-

  nationalism, and at times edged toward conspiracism and anti- Semitism.

  Because of his role in defining the boundaries of legitimate conserva-

  tism and “excommunicating” dissident voices, Buckley was sometimes

  described as conservatism’s “pope.”

  The associations between the paleoconservatism that Buchanan

  embraced and the pre- 1950s Right tell only a small part of the story, how-

  ever. In practice, Buchanan’s paleoconservatism also rested upon the be-

  lief that there is an American nation structured around a white, European

  heritage. From this perspective, the US is defined by, and drawn from,

  national folkways and mores rather than abstract affirmations of principle

  such as the Declaration of Independence. At the same time, however,

  paleoconservatism distances itself from England and Englishness and

  instead celebrates the “white ethnic” communities drawn from Ireland,

  Scotland, and the countries of central Europe. In doing so, it not only

  expresses and conveys antipathy to racial and ethnic minorities but also

  to the WASP elites that seemed to represent Anglo- Saxon hegemony over

  those with a central and Southern European lineage.12

  Alongside this, there is also a stress upon localism, sectionalism, and

  regionalism. Indeed, Buchanan’s paleoconservatism adjoins and at times

  merges with neo- Confederate claims that not only assert the distinctive-

  ness of the South but also invoke the role that, at least mythically, the an-

  tebellum South gave to order, tradition, place, as well as what they regard

  as its rejection of materialism, and its anticapitalist ethos.

  Buchanan’s paleoconservatism also drew upon a critique of the “man-

  agerial class.” Although the concept is usually associated with James

  Burnham and neoconservatism, its significance in paleo thinking rests

  upon the ways in which it suggests that property- owning capitalism rooted

  in local communities and the regions has been displaced by a “placeless”

  class of managers, which is tied together with the political class and has

  globalist aspirations.

  Furthermore, although there are ambiguities in paleoconserva-

  tive perspectives, identity and place trump economics and the market.

  Indeed, in paleoconservative eyes, the economic nationalism that they

  championed rested upon the subordination of the market to the na-

  tion. For paleoconservatives (and at this point there was a divide with

  the paleolibertarians such as Murray Rothbard who, although seeking a

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  structured and ordered form of liberty, placed more stress on the market),

  there was thus a case for protectionism and the management of trade. In

  his 1998 book, The Great Betrayal, Buchanan sought to rehabilitate the

  control of imports as a core Republican tradition and tie it to the preserva-

  tion of nationhood.

  Buchanan’s paleoconservatism was also a conscious reaction

  against a relatively new breed within the conservative movement.

  Neoconservatives who had broken with the Democrats during Lyndon

/>   Johnson’s presidency stressed the principles upon which the US was

  founded and their universal relevance. They also argued that the US

  should use the “unipolar moment” brought about by the collapse of

  the USSR to reshape the globe to bring down dictatorships and spread

  liberal democracy and the market order. In contrast, Buchanan rejected

  the concept of a universal nation constructed around a “proposition.”

  He also called for a “new nationalism” which he directly counterposed

  to neoconservative globalism. While he staunchly defended American

  military might, he sought to rein in its ambitions. Indeed, he went

  so far as to call for the withdrawal of US troops from their overseas

  bases: “If Kim Il Sung attacks, why should Americans be the first to

  die?”13 The responses to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990

  highlighted some of the rifts within conservatism. While the war had

  many cheerleaders, Buchanan spoke out against it and took aim at the

  neoconservatives. The war, he asserted, was being fought at the behest

  of Israel and served no vital American interest. Democracy should not

  be forcibly exported or universalized. Indeed, democracy could take

  root only in certain conditions. As he posted in the wake of the “Arab

  Spring”: “When George W. Bush declared that the peoples of the Middle

  East should decide their future in democratic elections, Lebanon chose

  Hezbollah, the Palestinians chose Hamas, the Egyptians the Muslim

  Brotherhood.”14

  Nonetheless, although Buchanan’s paleoconservatism is structured

  around a broad critique of the contemporary US and its place in the world,

  the notion of an American nation based upon a distinctly white lineage

  and heritage remains pivotal as a starting point. A deeply felt sense of

  white dispossession is never far from the surface. Indeed, white identity

  and identitarianism tie the American future together with the fate of the

  West. Buchanan’s thoughts about the prospects for the native population

  across the continents were conveyed in their most developed form in his

  2001 book, The Death of the West.

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  The Death of the West

  Paradoxically, while eschewing the US’s global role as a standard- bearer

  for liberal- democratic values and speaking in terms that are often dubbed

  isolationist, The Death of the West not only invoked an American nation

  but, as the title suggests, also sought to address the history and future of

  the West much more broadly. Indeed, it portrayed the countries of Europe

  as well as the US as being in the front line of the assault.

  Europeans, by which Buchanan means whites, faced an unprece-

  dented threat. Fertility rates had, he noted, fallen dramatically. Enlarged

  state social provision and the hedonistic individualism of the countercul-

  ture embraced by the baby- boom generation had undermined the family

  and removed the need for children. Thus, by 2050, people of European

  ancestry will constitute just a tenth of the world’s population.15 It was a

  demographic process, Buchanan argued, comparable with effects of the

  Black Death.

  There were specific reasons why white European women kept “out of

  the maternity ward.”16 The new or postindustrial economy drew women

  toward careers and a college education. As real median wages declined,

  the “family wage,” whereby men earned sufficient to maintain a wife and

  children, had been eroded. The collapse of the established moral order

  and the spread of feminism reshaped popular culture: “millions are

  influenced by feminist ideology and its equation of marriage with prosti-

  tution and slavery, and that ideology has persuaded many to put off mar-

  riage and not to have children.”17

  Buchanan’s critique edges toward conspiracism at this point. Feminism

  and other forms of cultural assault on traditional Western institutions can,

  it was said, be traced back to deliberate and coordinated forms of action

  by those with Marxist goals. He cites Antonio Gramsci’s representations

  of counterhegemonic strategies and the writings of the Frankfurt School.

  In explaining the death of the West, the Frankfurt School was, Buchanan

  considered, “a prime suspect and principal accomplice.”18

  The fall of the birthrate went together with an unwillingness to assert

  the distinctiveness of Western values and a loss of national purpose: “But

  if Europeans are so uninterested in self- preservation that they refuse to

  have enough children to keep their nations alive, why should Americans

  defend Europe— and perhaps die for Europe?”19 In contrast, Islam had

  vigor and purpose. The decline of Christian church congregations in

  Europe has been matched by growing numbers attending mosques.

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  Similarly, the US faced the consequences of mass Hispanic migration.

  Contemporary migrants came for simple economic reward rather than

  allegiance to the American nation. And they share, Buchanan maintains,

  “a new ethnic chauvinism”: “Why should Mexican immigrants not have

  greater loyalty to their homeland than to a country they broke into simply

  to find work? Why should nationalistic and patriotic Mexicans not dream

  of reconquista?”20

  As in Europe, the demographic restructuring of the US has electoral

  consequences. Immigration had given the Democratic Party a renewed

  lease on life, insofar as immigrants lean heavily Democratic, and has also

  raised the possibility of separatism. California is “on its way to becoming

  a predominantly Third World state.”21

  Alongside all of this, mass immigration poses a direct challenge to

  established understandings of nationhood. Whereas the nation was tradi-

  tionally brought together and defined by a people with the same ancestors,

  speaking a common language, united by a religious faith, attached to the

  same principles of government, as well as sharing customs and mores,

  it is being reconfigured so that it simply rests upon principles of govern-

  ment.22 The rest has been discarded. This, however, provides a very weak

  and fragile basis for nationhood, particularly given low levels of engage-

  ment with the political process.

  Buchanan and the paleoconservative critique

  Buchanan established himself as by far the US’s most prominent popular-

  izer of paleoconservative claims. Alongside The Death of the West, he is the

  author of at least twelve other books and coauthor of many others. He has

  written innumerable commentaries.

  Many of these reproduced familiar paleoconservative themes. Buchanan

  echoes the ideas developed by fellow columnists and commentators. These

  included in particular Joe Sobran (who despite his paleoconservative

  leanings wrote for National Review until fired in 1993 amid accusations of

  anti- Semitism) and Samuel T. Francis. Francis put forward paleo thinking

  in its most rounded and conceptual form but also represented a bridge

  to openly white- identity groupings and interests such as those
within the

  orbit of American Renaissance.23

  While distancing himself from conspiracy theories, the paramilitarism

  that characterized the farther reaches of the American Right, and southern

  secessionism, Francis spoke of a white social revolution.24 He looked

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  toward those whom the sociologist Donald Warren had termed “Middle

  American Radicals” (MARs).25 The concept merged class and race to-

  gether insofar as MARs were drawn from whites on the lower, but not

  the lowest, rungs of the economic ladder. MARs, Francis asserted, were

  under threat from large- scale corporate capitalism, globalizing processes,

  and minority groups. Nonetheless, they had a role akin to that assigned

  to the proletariat in classical Marxist thinking. They were the only social

  force that could develop an authentically American counterculture and

  thus over time redeem the nation.26

  Buchanan did not, however, simply reproduce claims such as these,

  although they inform many of his commentaries. Perhaps because of

  the role that Roman Catholicism played in his life, or perhaps because

  he recognized that Protestant evangelicals were a core Republican con-

  stituency playing a pivotal role in some primary states, Buchanan gave

  much more weight to cultural issues than many others within the paleo

  camp. This brought him closer than many others within paleo circles

  to the organizations and networks that collectively constituted the

  Christian Right.27 He repeatedly returned to issues such as abortion, gay

  and lesbian rights, and other themes associated with what he considered

  moral decline. His 1992 Republican primary campaign included a tel-

  evision advertisement directed against the National Endowment for

  the Arts funding for work that “glorified homosexuality,” and in the

  mid- 1980s he described AIDS as retribution for “defying the natural

  order.” His 1992 address to the Republican national convention hailed

  “the Judeo- Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was

  built.” He lambasted abortion, same- sex marriage, efforts to restrict

  school prayer, and “radical feminism.” The address tied Bill and Hillary

  Clinton together:

  The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America— abortion

 

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