In Search of Anti-Semitism

by William F. Buckley Jr.

A thought-provoking extended essay first published in National Review--along with responses by distinguished commentators--on the the ways anti-Semitism reveals itself through the work of some of America's leading journalists and intellectuals. The reactions are varied and illuminating. Most hailed the essay as the most important document relating to modern anti-Semitism published in many years.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words.

Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan.

Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.

Reviews

[Steven]

Months ago, I read this pandemic horror story. The author had to make every little sentence cutesy in its own quirky way (think people who type XD/:3). Chinese food couldn't be Chinese food. It had to be "Chinese cuisine(!)" Etc. Buckley was kind of like that here and elsewhere, but he was better at obfuscating the special boy act. It's like how the lesser objectivists can't maintain the illusion of substance Rand could. But, regardless, he never could just write a sentence. It had to be about how special he was, and how you had to know it.

He managed to make conservatism somehow worse than he found it - if he ever did. Dabney was perfectly right when he said that conservatism never conserved anything, but you can't help but feel it'd fail a little more slowly if the polysyllabic obsession hadn't been adopted.

Having to listen to the pointless midwit IQ signaling from people who speak like impotent step-dads really benefits no one. Buckley played a key role in teeing up that disaster.

Anyways, if you want to see someone recount arguments between people at a point in time, you can flip through this book. You probably have better stuff to do.

[Tom Calvard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book of cultural and political reflections among mostly conservative US journalists and academics about anti-Semitism in the early 1990s. The leading essay by Buckley goes over in detail some cases of possible anti-Semitism, then a range of follow-up reactions, reflections, and commentaries in response to the essay are presented.

There are some potential insights into anti-Semitism in places, but ultimately, I would not recommend the book as it is quite narrow and more of a scrapbook of reflections, slightly dated and conservative, as opposed to a more bracing and informative piece of scholarship.

Nevertheless, anti-Semitism remains a nuanced and controversial issue in relation to Israel, geopolitics, US foreign policy, the Holocaust, religion, and race relations. In that sense, this book was appropriate for trying to take stock and sort through the complex possible prejudices at play. I'm just not sure it comes to many firm or helpful conclusions.

[Don Incognito · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book, written by the late William F. Buckley circa 1992, purports to evaluate whether the accusations of anti-Semitism against the conservative writers Pat Buchanan and the late Joe Sobran, and the conservative publication Dartmouth Review, are fair and true. It largely fails, because it provides very little insight into the personalities of Buchanan and Sobran, providing very little personal background on them and apparently assuming the reader is already very familiar with both of them. I'm reasonably familiar with Buchanan but not familiar with Sobran: he left National Review magazine some years before I started reading it, and all I know of him is that he was a paleoconservative. The book is also clearly aimed at people who probably read not only NR but the other political and current events magazines the book mentions (such as Commentary and New Republic).

So, the book tries to answer its question (whether the people in question are genuinely anti-Semitic) mostly by analyzing what happened (the alleged anti-Semitic statements they made and the responses from other writers) rather than analyzing the people and what they believe (which is what I expected). There would be much less to say if the book mainly analyzed the people, but the controversy is fairly boring and the answers are relatively simple. (Sobran, Buckley says, was often annoyed at Israel's lobbying influence on the United States, so is Buchanan, who also has a long history of making obnoxious anti-Semitic-sounding comments. But Buckley insists Sobran--his friend and colleague at NR--was no racist. And Buchanan? Buckley spends little time actually explaining Buchanan's beliefs except to call him "mischievious" and too insensitive to Jewish sensibilities. I was disappointed by that, as Buchanan has been ubiquitous in conservative media at least since I was a teenager and I did want to figure out whether he is a bigot of some sort. The answer one can tease out from Buckley's analysis seems to be "no," but he offers no more constructive explanation of Buchanan's somewhat puzzling opinions. Therefore, I don't recommend this book.

[Pat]

I was interested primarly in primarly becuase it explains Joe Sobran's and Pat Buchana's alleged "anti-semitism." While I disagree with Joe and Pat on much of their foreign policy opinions, I can't belive them to be anti-semites. Gore Vidal and Louis Farrakahn on the other are another story.