Consider the Cranks (w/ David Austin Walsh)

Know Your Enemy

Historian David Austin Walsh joins to discuss his excellent new book Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right — a fascinating re-description of the relationship between the far right and the American conservative movement from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War.

How did figures like William F. Buckley, Jr. relate to figures on the further right fringes of right-wing politics, people like Merwin K Hart, Revilo Oliver, Russel Maguire, and George Lincoln Rockwell? And how should we make sense of Buckley and others' furtive efforts to sanitize the right of its more explicitly racist, anti-semitic, and conspiratorial elements? In this conversation, Walsh makes the case for viewing the conservative coalition, from National Review to the John Birch Society to white power movements and neo-Nazis, as embodying a "popular front." That is to say — like the American left in the 1930s — these groups thought of themselves as part of a unified movement with a common enemy; and despite their differences over strategy, tactics, and rhetoric, they shared a fundamental worldview and vision of the good. What's more, as Walsh demonstrates, figures of the fringe and mainstream tended to maintain relationships and contact with one another, even if formal ties were severed.

Walsh's book is a major contribution to ongoing historiographic debates about 20th century American conservatism — of the sort we love to have on KYE — and he himself is a delightful source of detail and texture about the cranks and weirdos who make up a larger share of the right than many mainstream liberals and conservatives would like to believe.

Further Reading:

David Austin Walsh, Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, Yale U Press, April 2024.

John S. Huntington, Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism, Penn Press, Oct. 2021.

Edward Miller, A Conspiratorial Life: Robert Welch, the John Birch Society, and the Revolution of American Conservatism, U Chicago Press. Feb 2022.

Rick Perlstein, "I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrong." New York Times. April 11, 2017.

Peter Khiss, "KENNEDY TARGET OF BIRCH WRITER; Article Says He Was Killed for Fumbling Red Plot," New York Times, Feb 11, 1964.

Leo Ribuffo, "The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Depression to the Cold War," Temple U Press. 1983.

Sam Adler-Bell, "The Remnant and the Restless Crowd," Commonweal, Aug 1, 2018.

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