Author: Paul Gottfried (Paul Gottfried)

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Monuments Matter
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Monuments Matter

The impending removal of Moses Ezekiel’s magnificent monument from Arlington National Cemetery follows well-laid out guidelines for obliterating the non-woke past everywhere in the culturally revolutionized West.

Electoral Franchise Blues
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Electoral Franchise Blues

If you want to create and preserve a constitutional republic, you must be careful about who gets to vote. Once this sacred right is granted, it can never be withdrawn.

The Democrats’ Stay-at-Home Campaign Strategy
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The Democrats’ Stay-at-Home Campaign Strategy

For the Democrats, it is no longer even necessary to produce sentient candidates. Our media will invent made-to-order “progressives” and, if necessary, carry them across the electoral finish line, while their opponents are belittled or kept from public view.

Equality’s Rising Flood
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Equality’s Rising Flood

The obsession with equality or "equity," transgenderism, racial politics and the rest of Western social wreckage since the 1950s was foreshadowed by the events of the French Revolution.

Blacks on Abortion
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Blacks on Abortion

The U.S. black population has been disproportionately devastated by the practice of abortion, yet many black leaders have been cajoled into dutifully mouthing the abortion politics of their white leftist overlords.

Are Conservatives Fair Game?
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Are Conservatives Fair Game?

Should members of the political right criticize one another for their faults, or band together out of solidarity against the left? Is it fair to consider a conservative public figure’s personal life when judging his moral pronouncements? I attempt to answer these questions in response to a critic.

Faux Conservatism at Fox News
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Faux Conservatism at Fox News

Fox News talking heads like Pete Hegseth are engaging in blatant hypocrisy when they blast the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxists as moral radicals. In many cases they are just as bad, or worse, than the people they criticize.

Media Windbags
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Media Windbags

Emotional outbursts and misleading rhetoric from our political class and TV opinionators leave Americans confused about everything from Putin's motives to Caitlyn Jenner's degeneracy.

No Capitulation: A Call to Southern Conservatives
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No Capitulation: A Call to Southern Conservatives

The following speech critical of the conservative establishment is one that I did not give at The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, S.C., whither I was invited by its organizer Gene d’Agostino, as a speaker for the evening of April 14. After espying copies of my book on antifascism for sale on a table in the...

Radosh’s Rant Against the Old Right
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Radosh’s Rant Against the Old Right

A recent posting on neocon-lite website, Quillette, by its go-to authority on foreign affairs, Ronald Radosh, makes unkind references to Pat Buchanan, Pedro Gonzalez, and me: The current issue of Chronicles, meanwhile, includes an article by Pat Buchanan condemning President Biden’s “vilification” of Putin, while in another, Paul Gottfried cries “Long Live Orbán!” and elsewhere...

Long Live Orbán!
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Long Live Orbán!

When Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP alliance swept to victory on Sunday, thereby guaranteeing the Hungarian premier a fourth term with a large parliamentary majority, it proved that a national conservative could win in a Western country. It is the greatest victory of national democracy that we may see in our lifetimes and a deserved...

How Neocons Turn “Democracy” Into Grotesque Ideological Imperialism
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How Neocons Turn “Democracy” Into Grotesque Ideological Imperialism

Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent comments about wishing to see someone assassinate Putin, just as he wished Hitler had been taken out, reminded me of why I would never want neoconservatives like Graham running American foreign policy. And I don’t regard Graham’s remarks as an isolated opinion. I’ve heard numerous Republicans and Fox News celebrities seconding...

Let’s Not Forget Our Racist Past!
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Let’s Not Forget Our Racist Past!

My reaction to crazy, infuriating things that woke leftists do is often softened and even evaporates when I notice how the conservative establishment responds to the same situations. I am certainly no fan of Jussie Smollett and was as offended as most non-woke Americans by his shenanigans in Chicago in 2019, when he pretended that...

Germany, Harbinger of the Abyss
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Germany, Harbinger of the Abyss

Finis Germania is a posthumous collection of melancholy writing by German ecologist and sometime academic Rolf Peter Sieferle, who took his own life in despair in 2016. Sieferle regreted the disappearance of a recognizably Western civilization and deplored the likely ecological effects of a European continent thrown open to almost unrestricted Third World immigration.   ...

Books in Brief: 3/1/2022
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Books in Brief: 3/1/2022

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape, by Cal Flyn (Viking; 384 pp., $27.00). In our era of ecological angst, many are desperately seeking strategies to mitigate human damage, but Scottish writer Cal Flyn suggests a holistic new way—one that is simultaneously haunted and hopeful—of seeing these problems. She writes often in sorrow, sometimes in righteous...

Call It What It Is—an Invasion
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Call It What It Is—an Invasion

With all due respect for a distinction that Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic and some diplomats in America and Europe have tried to make, I can’t see how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s marching of armies into Donetsk and Lugansk earlier this week does not constitute a good old-fashioned invasion. Although Russian armies, in a...

The Right Falls Again for the Left’s Salami Tactics
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The Right Falls Again for the Left’s Salami Tactics

The furor over contentious symbols is rising again, the latest case occurring in connection with Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates in Ottawa. The frightening hate symbols found among the truckers were described thus by Al Jazeera: The convoy was organised by known far-right figures, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reported in detail. Confederate flags and...

The Misguided System Without Historical Precedent
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The Misguided System Without Historical Precedent

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has pushed neoconservative party lines on foreign policy for decades; the last time I read a dissenting view on that subject in the Journal was when I wrote an editorial for it in 1989. Although my caustic remarks on a global democratic foreign policy were published on the editorial...

Books in Brief: February 2022
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Books in Brief: February 2022

Christianity and Social Justice, by Jon Harris (Reformation Zion Publishing; 160 pp., $14.99). In this slim discussion of social justice and its relationship, or non-relationship, to Christianity, Jon Harris, a Protestant theologian and Baptist minister, addresses the topic long after he observed the “incursion made by the social justice movement” into the Baptist seminary where he...

Burnham Remains Relevant to the Right
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Burnham Remains Relevant to the Right

Professor Levine writes knowledgeably about Burnham’s abilities to analyze America during the Cold War and his predications about the American future. Burnham has remained fashionable within the independent American right. The part of Burnham’s oeuvre valued by this segment of the right are his analysis of managerialism as an historical phenomenon and his clear-headed look...

Biden Voters’ Remorse
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Biden Voters’ Remorse

There seems to be a widespread belief that Joe Biden has exceeded the mandate for which he was elected. It seems we’re supposed to believe that those who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket craved moderation after Trump’s troubled and unsettling presidency. Writer and commentator Scott Jennings repeats this familiar narrative in a recent interview with...

Driving Miss Racial Activist
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Driving Miss Racial Activist

At first blush, the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy seems innocuous. Its plot centers around the relationship of an aging Jewish matron, Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), and her black chauffeur Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman). Yet a recent rewatch caused me to notice irksome elements of the plot I missed the first time around. This has...

Stop Calling These People ‘Conservative’
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Stop Calling These People ‘Conservative’

Two years ago, Gracy Olmstead, a journalist who writes on farming and farming communities, partnered with Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) to compose a list of those whom she and the Institute view as “conservatives.” Of the now deceased figures who appear on Olmstead’s list, very few of them have any connection to anything identifiably conservative....

Feminism Left and Right Drove America’s Permissive Abortion Laws
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Feminism Left and Right Drove America’s Permissive Abortion Laws

Although the U.S. seems to be as woke and post-biblical as any other transformed Western country, our abortion laws since Roe v. Wade (1973) have been wildly out of line with those of the rest of the West. Betsy Clarke, writing in Chronicles’s sister publication, Intellectual Takeout, offers this well-considered observation on the subject:  ...

Paid to Hate Putin
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Paid to Hate Putin

It seems that National Review Editor Rich Lowry never tires of carrying water for the sponsors of his magazine, whether it’s the high-tech giants who help pay his gargantuan salary, or his neoconservative donors, whom he also faithfully serves. Most recently he honored his patrons with a dutiful denunciation of Russian President Vladmir Putin entitled...

Leftist Critics Are Misreading Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade
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Leftist Critics Are Misreading Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade

Authoring a book comes with its usual praise and criticism and my latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, is no exception. One of my critics is the Canadian journalist and columnist at The Nation, Jeet Heer. His review leaves me wondering whether he has actually read my work, which charts the historical roots of the modern antifascist movement....

Leftist Critics Are Misreading Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade
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Leftist Critics Are Misreading Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade

Authoring a book comes with its usual praise and criticism and my latest book, Antifascism: Course of a Crusade, is no exception. One of my critics is the Canadian journalist and columnist at The Nation, Jeet Heer. His review leaves me wondering whether he has actually read my work, which charts the historical roots of the modern antifascist movement....

Fleeing Fox, Hayes and Goldberg Demonstrate the Iron Law of Con Inc.
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Fleeing Fox, Hayes and Goldberg Demonstrate the Iron Law of Con Inc.

I was recently delighted with receiving a gift for my 80th birthday in the form of vindication, when my iron law of Conservative Inc. behavior was fully confirmed. This happened when Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg decided to dissociate themselves from Fox News because of the network’s association with Tucker Carlson, who has maintained—with ample...

In Memory of Gerald Russello
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In Memory of Gerald Russello

Gerald Russello, an author and editor often associated with Russell Kirk’s life and work, passed away on Nov. 7, 2021. He was 50 years old. Russello’s death took me by surprise, as I wasn’t aware until recently that he was fatally ill and being treated for brain cancer. Since he was around the same age...

The Soul of the Claremont School
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The Soul of the Claremont School

The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America by Glenn Ellmers Encounter Books 408 pp., $31.99 Glenn Ellmers, a former student of Harry V. Jaffa associated with the conservative Claremont school of thought, has produced an exhaustive study of his mentor. Ellmers has pored over Jaffa’s available writings, including a dozen...

From High Noon to Django Unchained
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From High Noon to Django Unchained

Our new issue of Chronicles contains several essays that assess films that can be classified in some sense as “conservative,” or at least dealing with themes of interest to the political right. Several of those who participated in making these movies and whom we discuss in this issue, such as Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, American...

Taking the Booster
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Taking the Booster

I dutifully took the Moderna COVID vaccine booster on Nov. 5 at the advice of my younger brother, who practices medicine. Two hours after this ordeal, I began to feel chills and suffer from a very upset stomach. These symptoms vanished two days later, and I resumed my normal routine, which includes jogging. However, a...

Youngkin Won by Campaigning on Cultural Issues
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Youngkin Won by Campaigning on Cultural Issues

There are a number of lessons for those of us on the real right—not the GOP establishment—to learn from Tuesday’s election in Virginia. First, Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory came not so much from bringing the races and parties together, as the usual suspects on Fox News declared, but rather because he won Republican counties in...

In Defense of Sam Francis
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In Defense of Sam Francis

Open season has been declared on the late and longtime Chronicles columnist Samuel Francis. Evidence for this can be found in, among other places, a diatribe recently published by political journalist Michael Lind in Tablet, “The Importance of James Burnham.” Lind started his essay by analyzing Burnham but then segued into unkind remarks about Burnham’s...

The Red Butcher
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The Red Butcher

Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II by Sean McMeekin Basic Books 864 pp., $40.00 This massive tome is more than a new history of World War II. It is above all a depressing confirmation that the crimes against humanity committed by Stalin’s regime, including during the war, were comparable to those of...

In Memory of Thomas F. Bertonneau
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In Memory of Thomas F. Bertonneau

Although Thomas F. Bertonneau published only once in Chronicles, on science fiction in 1997, this recently deceased professor of comparative literature was a contributor to whom we should have paid closer attention.   Tom, who died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease on Sept. 21 in Oswego, New York, at the age of 66 was a versatile...

Overlooking Mass Killers—If They’re on the Totalitarian Left
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Overlooking Mass Killers—If They’re on the Totalitarian Left

Imgard Furchner, a 96-year-old resident of a special care facility in Germany, is being investigated as a war criminal. She will appear in court in a wheelchair, which is now her customary way of moving about, the Swiss magazine DieWeltwoche reports. She did try to escape from her accusers in a taxi but was apprehended...

The Trap That Was Laid at Charlottesville
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The Trap That Was Laid at Charlottesville

Although we didn’t know it at the time, the incidents in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 12, 2017 would soon develop into a narrative for the left to repeat and then recycle in the summer riots of 2020 and eventually the events at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. Anne Wilson Smith unpacks this narrative in...

Books in Brief: Homo Americanus
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Books in Brief: Homo Americanus

Homo Americanus, by Zbigniew Janowski (St. Augustine’s Press; 250 pp., $24.00). Polish American political thinker Zbigniew Janowski examines the reasons that modern American democracy has taken a totalitarian turn. Contrary to the happy talk coming from establishment conservatives about the need to spread America’s so-called liberal democratic values everywhere, Janowski paints a dark but compelling...

The Cowardice of ‘Patriotic Courage’
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The Cowardice of ‘Patriotic Courage’

That Donald Trump bothered to challenge the official outcome of the November 2020 election was an annoyance to a number of congressional Republicans, representatives and senators alike. Remarks issued on Jan. 6 by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as the Senate was about to confirm the election of Joe Biden reflect these views: We cannot...