The Place of Anti-Semitism in Today’s Fractured Conservative Politics

With the emergence of the alt-right onto the American political scene, right-wing anti-Semitism has crawled back out from the shadows. In the 1950s, William F. Buckley, Jr. had made strenuous efforts to drive anti-Semitism out of the pages of National Review and out of the ranks of the new conservative movement that he was hoping to shape. He renewed these efforts in the 1990s, as his erstwhile colleagues Joseph Sobran and Patrick J. Buchanan became increasingly vocal about their hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. The experience resulted in a book, In Search of Anti-Semitism. In conversation with Jonathan Silver, Matthew Continetti discusses Buckley’s book and the issue of right-wing anti-Semitism then and now. (Audio, 46 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)