"Prospects for Paleoconservatism"

An in-depth review of two books on paleoconservatism – one edited by Joseph Scotchie in 1990 and another recently published in 2023 and edited by Paul Gottfried – serves as a platform from which the developing worldview of this little known cultural and political movement is outlined in detail. Contributors to both books are discussed in connection to a wide range of extrinsic material which is obtained from sympathetic authorities and other politically adjacent media, as well as some critical sources. This essay is broken down into sections that focus on paleoconservatism’s intellectual and historical antecedents, the primacy of cultural factors within its discourse, its involvement in the Culture Wars and political activism, its hostile treatment at the hands of the neoconservative establishment, and highlights some controversies associated with past outspoken members. Particularist and bio-social thought is explained in historical and sociological contexts. Also explored at length is the relationship of many of its leading advocates and apologists to libertarianism, which underscores the movement’s strong communitarian focus. The paleoconservative’s attitudes towards metaphysics and transcendence is discussed in the section that compares and contrasts the movement with traditionalist conservatism. The author questions paleoconservatism’s antipathy towards ideology, particularly among the younger generation of its exponents, given that the nature of the movements recommended praxis may inevitably give rise to the formation of a doctrine. However, it is noted that the contemporary paleoconservative milieu is heterodox in many respects and that the movement today is undergoing a process of re-constitution. The writer concludes by reflecting on the significance of paleoconservatism’s seemingly gradual revival in the United States, the potential for its appeal throughout the Anglosphere and the broader West, and the alternatives this may offer to both the elite and the general populace within European and diaspora nations.

Edwin Dyga is the editor of the Observer & Review. His background is in legal practice and government relations. In 2012 he founded the Sydney Traditionalist Forum prior to which he was briefly the Australian editor of the British Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in journals of opinion and cultural review in the United States, Europe and Australia. 

W. James Antle III, “The Paleocon Dilemma”, The American Conservative, Vol. 7 No. 1 (14 January 2008)

Lawrence Auster, “Sobran Dead”, View from the Right (30 September 2010) <amnation.com> (accessed 7 July 2023)

Richard Bernstein, “Magazine Dispute Reflects Rift in U.S. Right”, The New York Times (16 May 1989) p. A20 [per First Things No. 201 (March 2010)]

M. E. Bradford, The Reactionary Imperative: Essays Literary and Political (Peru, Illinois, USA; Sherwood Sugden & Company, 1990)

Mark Brennan, “‘Look at those idiots go’ – the Decline and Fall of American Conservatism”, Quarterly Review, Vol. 1 No. 4 (Winter, 2007)

Scott McConnell, “Among the Neocons”, The American Conservative, Vol. 2 No. 8 (21 April 2003)

Michael Warren Davis, “The Alt-Right Rumble: round three” Spectator Australia (online) (22 December 2016 at 9:47AM) <spectator.com.au> (accessed 12 April 2023)

F. Roger Devlin, Sexual Utopia in Power: the Feminist Revolt Against Civilisation (San Francisco, California, USA; Counter Currents, 2015)

Jean-François Drolet and Michael C. Williams, “America First: Paleoconservatism and the Ideological Struggle for the American Right” Journal of Political Ideologies (December 2019)

Jean-François Drolet and Michael C. Williams, “Radical Conservatism and Global Order: International Theory and the New Right”, International Theory, Vol. 10 Issue 3 (2018)

Jean-François Drolet and Michael C. Williams, “The View from MARS: US Paleoconservatism and Ideological Challenges to the Liberal World Order”, International Journal Vol. 74 Issue 1 (2019)

Thomas Fleming, “Forward”, Chronicles, Vol. 25 No. 11 (November 2001)

Thomas Fleming, “Further Reflections on Violence”, Chronicles, Vol. 14 No. 11 (November 1990)

Thomas Fleming, “Requiescat In Pace Domini”, Chronicles, Vol. 29 No. 4 (April 2005)

Thomas Fleming, “The Southern Cultural Genocide”, Address to the Abbeville Institute Conference, Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA (October 2015)

Sam Francis, Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism (Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 1993)

Sam Francis, Revolution from the Middle (Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Middle American Press, 1997)

↳ “Revolution from the Middle” (1991) reprinted ibid

↳ “This Land Ain’t Your Land” (1990) reprinted ibid

↳ Address to the American Cause Foundation, Washington DC (15 May 1993) reprinted ibid

Sam Francis, Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America’s Culture War (Vienna, Virginia, USA: Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, 2006)

↳ “A Conservative Movement that Doesn’t Move – A Paleo-con Renaissance in GOP Future?” (2004) reprinted ibid

↳ “Populism and the Future of American Politics” (1995, 1997) reprinted ibid

Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

David Frum, “Unpatriotic Conservatives”, National Review, Vol. 55 No. 6 (March 2003)

Sean Gabb, Introduction to Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, Alabama, USA; Mises Institute, 2018)

Paul Gottfried (ed.), A Paleoconservative Anthology: New Voices for an Old Tradition (Lanham, Maryland, USA: Lexington Books, 2023)

↳ Alexander Riley, “Human Nature: a Biosocial View”

↳ Wayne Allensworth, “Rethinking ‘National Security’”

↳ David Azerrad, “What Conservatives Could learn from Paleoconservatives”

↳ Mark G. Brennan, “How Conservatives Should Practice the Historian’s Craft”

↳ C. Jay Engel, “‘The Triumph of the Political’: Post-Libertarianism at the End of the American Ideology”

↳ Pedro Gonzalez, “Sam Francis: the Foundational Thinker of the Right”

↳ Grant Havers, “A Paleoconservative Dialectic”

↳ Carl S. Horowitz, “The Myth of the Reagan Revolution”

↳ Stephen B. Presser, “Paleoconservative Jurisprudence”

↳ Keith Preston, “Revisiting the Clash Between Neoconservatives and Paleoconservatives”

↳ Joseph Scotchie, “Richard Weaver and the South”

↳ William Watkins Jr. “Jeffersonian Constitutionalism: the Heart of Paleoconservative Legal Theory”

Paul Gottfried, Book Review of Patrick Buchanan’s "State of Emergency: the Third World Invasion and the Conquest of America" in National Observer, No. 70 (Spring 2006)

Paul Gottfried, Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers (Wilmington, Delaware, USA: ISI Books, 2009)

Paul Gottfried, “Horror in the Fjords”, Salisbury Review, Vol. 30 No. 1 (Autumn, 2001)

Paul Gottfried, “Lunging Leftward”, National Observer, No. 71 (Summer 2006/7)

Paul Gottfried, “Paleoconservatism: A Vanishing Traditional Right”, SydneyTrads – Weblog of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum (17 October 2015) <sydneytrads.com> (accessed 12 July 2023)

Paul Gottfried, “The Failure of Fusionism”, National Conservative Conference No. 3 (Miami, 13 September 2022)

Paul Gottfried, “The Influence of the Jewish Lobby”, Address to the 9th Annual Conference of the Property & Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (11-16 September 2014)

Paul Gottfried (ed.), The Vanishing Tradition: Prospects on American Conservatism (Ithaca, New York, USA: Northern Illinois University Press – Cornell University Press, 2020)

↳ Richard T. Marcy, “Why the Alt Right is Not Going Anywhere (Regardless of What We Call it)”

↳ Keith Preston, “The Significance of the M. E. Bradford Affair”

George Hawley, Right-wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, Kansas, USA; University Press of Kansas, 2016)

Mark C. Henrie, “Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism” in Peter Berkowitz (ed.), Varieties of Conservatism in America (1st print; Stanford University: Hoover Institution Press, 2004)

Gregory Hood, “The End of Libertarianism & the Rise of the Alt Right”, The Alternative Right Greg Johnson (ed.), (San Francisco, California, USA; Counter Currents, 2018)

Hans Hermann-Hoppe, “Libertarianism and the ‘Alt-Right’”, Presentation to the 12th Annual Conference of the Property & Freedom Society, Bodrum, Turkey (14-19 September 2017) [per Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, Alabama, USA; Mises Institute, 2018)]

Robert B. Horowitz, America’s Right: Antiestablishment Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013)

Jared Howe, “Regarding the Insidious Libertarian-to-Alt-Right Pipeline”, A Fair Hearing: the Alt-Right in the Words of its Members and Leaders (London, England, UK; Arktos, 2018)

Peter Kolozi, Conservatives Against Capitalism: From the Industrial Revolution to Globalisation (New York, New York, USA: Columbia University Press, 2017)

Irving Kristol, The Neoconservative Persuasion (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: Basic Books, 2011)

Grzegorz Kucharczyk, Russell Kirk (1918- 1994): Myśl Polityczna Amerikańskiego Konserwatysty (Warsaw, Poland: Prohibita, 2012)

Heather Long, “If We Avoid a Recession, We Can Thank Black and Hispanic Workers”, The Washington Post (online) (9 July 2023 @ 8:00am ETD) <washingtonpost.com> (accessed: 4 August 2023)

Brian Patrick Mitchell, 8 Ways to Run the Country: a New and Revealing Way to Look at Left and Right (Westport Connecticut, USA; Praeger, 2007)

Ashitha Nagesh, “Ethnic Minority Workers in Insecure Jobs up 132% Since 2011”, BBC (online) (14 August 2023) <bbc.com> (accessed 16 August 2023)

George Nash, Reappraising the Right: the Past & Future of American Conservatism (Wilmington, Delaware, USA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2009)

George Nash, The Conservative Movement in America Since 1945 (30th ann. ed.; Wilmington, Delaware, USA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006 [1976])

Andrew Marantz, Antisocial (London, England, UK; Picador, 2019)

Tom Piatak, “Cultural Revolutions”, Chronicles, Vol. 30 No. 9 (September, 2006)

Nathan Pinkoski, Interviewed by C. Jay Engel, “Spiritual Death of the West”, Episode 14, Chronicles Magazine (podcast) (22 May 2023)

Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: the Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (2nd ed.; Wilmington, Delaware, USA: ISI Books, 2008 [1993])

↳ Scott P. Richert, “The Old Right and the Traditionalist Antipathy to Ideology”

Joseph Scotchie, Revolt from the Heartland: the Struggle for an Authentic Conservatism (New York, New York, USA: Transaction, 2002)

Joseph Scotchie (ed.), The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right (New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA: Transaction Publishers, 1999)

Joseph Scotchie, Writing on the Southern Front: Authentic Conservatism for Our Times (New York, New York, USA: Routledge, 2018)

↳ Paul Gottfried, Introduction

Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (South Bend, Indiana, USA: St Augustin Press, 2002 [1980])

Joseph Sobran, “Pensées: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow”, National Review (31 December 1985)

Joseph Sobran, “Razing the Past” (1980) reprinted in: Single Issues (New York, New York, USA: The Human Life Press, 1983)

Joseph Sobran, “Censorship, Stereotypes, and Other Fine Things” (1978) reprinted in: The National Review Years: Articles from 1974 to 1991 (Vienna, Virginia, USA: Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, 2012)

Joseph Sobran, “The Reluctant Anarchist”, The Chesterton Review, Vol. 43 Issue 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2017)

Joseph Sobran, Interviewed by Brian Lamb, “Washington Journal: The Sobran Scandal” (C-SPAN, 14 July 1986)

Margaret Sutherlin, “Corporate America Promised to Hire a Lot More People of Color. It Actually Did”, Bloomberg (online) (26 September 2023) <bloomberg.com/graphics> (accessed, 1 October 2023)

R. J. Stove, “Middle American Radical: Samuel Francis (1947-2005)”, National Observer, No. 66 (Spring 2005)

Corey Tillerson, The Alt-Right: a Reference for the Far-Right Political Movement (n.p., n.d.)

Kevin D. Williamson, “The Father-Führer: Chaos in the Family, Chaos in the State”, National Review, Vol. 68 No. 5 (28 March 2016)

Lawrence Auster, Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism (Litchfield, Connecticut, USA; vDare Books, 2019)

Anne Coulter, ¡Adios America! (Washington DC, USA: Regnery Publishing, 2015)

Thomas Fleming, The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition (Columbia, Missouri, USA; University of Missouri Press, 2004)

Thomas Fleming, The Reign of Love: Properties of Blood (Rockford, Illinois, USA; Fleming Foundation, 2022)

Samuel Francis, Essential Writings on Race Jared Taylor (ed., intro.) (Oakton, Virginia, USA; New Century Books, 2007)

Paul Gottfried, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 1999)

Paul Gottfried, Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right (New York, New York, USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Paul Gottfried, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy (Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2002)

Paul Gottfried, The Conservative Movement (New York, New York, USA: Twayne Publishers, 1993)

Paul Gottfried, The Strange Death of Marxism: the European Left in the New Millennium (Columbia, Missouri, USA: University of Missouri Press, 2005)

Hans Hermann-Hoppe, Libertariens et alt-right: Différences et Stratégies Stéphane Geyres and Thierry Falissard (trans.) (n.p., n.d. [print: 17 November 2019])

Caleb Maupin, Breadtube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-socialism (New York, New York, USA: Centre for Political Innovation, 2018)

David Swift, A Left For Itself: Left-wing Hobbyists and Performative Radicalism (Winchester, UK: Zer0 Books, 2019)

Robert W. Whitaker (ed.), The New Right Papers: the Nature and Goals of the Movement, Explained by its Most Prominent Voices (New York, New York, USA: St Martin’s Press, 1982)