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The story goes like this: in 1962, the leading conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. used his magazine National Review to condemn the far-right John Birch Society. The denunciation isolated the Birchers and their wild conspiracy theories within America's conservative movement and led to their downfall.
The story is a myth, reliant on half-truths and omissions to make it convincing. Yet in articles and books, Buckley repeated it again and again. As the Republican Party grapples with QAnon believers and Trump loyalists, the myth that Buckley saved conservatism from extremists has been repeatedly cited as fact to explain how the party of Lincoln can save itself.
Reactionary extremists are a part of the conservative movement. Although membership in the Birch Society began to wane in the 1970s, that had nothing to do with Buckley. On the contrary, the Birchers' rhetoric and tactics were now central to the Republican Party. Other conservatives — Pat Buchanan, Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh, among many others — carried on and perfected the Bircher tradition of reactionary conspiracy theories.
Buckley never purged the extremist far right from American conservatism, largely because he could not possibly have done so. Reactionary paranoia is an organic component of the American right. Until Donald Trump, Republican leaders from George H.W. Bush to Mitch McConnell believed they could control the reactionaries. Yet it is a fantasy. Until conservatives accept this, they will continue to underestimate the extremists. And as we see clearly today, it is the extremists who control the party, not the refined intellectuals who convince themselves otherwise.
www.salon.com
The story is a myth, reliant on half-truths and omissions to make it convincing. Yet in articles and books, Buckley repeated it again and again. As the Republican Party grapples with QAnon believers and Trump loyalists, the myth that Buckley saved conservatism from extremists has been repeatedly cited as fact to explain how the party of Lincoln can save itself.
Reactionary extremists are a part of the conservative movement. Although membership in the Birch Society began to wane in the 1970s, that had nothing to do with Buckley. On the contrary, the Birchers' rhetoric and tactics were now central to the Republican Party. Other conservatives — Pat Buchanan, Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh, among many others — carried on and perfected the Bircher tradition of reactionary conspiracy theories.
Buckley never purged the extremist far right from American conservatism, largely because he could not possibly have done so. Reactionary paranoia is an organic component of the American right. Until Donald Trump, Republican leaders from George H.W. Bush to Mitch McConnell believed they could control the reactionaries. Yet it is a fantasy. Until conservatives accept this, they will continue to underestimate the extremists. And as we see clearly today, it is the extremists who control the party, not the refined intellectuals who convince themselves otherwise.
William F. Buckley and the Birchers: A myth, a history lesson and a moral
William F. Buckley claimed he had banished far-right paranoia from the conservative movement — but look at it now
www.salon.com