I don’t want to overvalue the contribution of intellectuals, and while the book is about how this certain period of time was conceived, it begins not with what these two were saying, or even Buchanan, but the social conditions at the time, what with Reagan’s hollowing out of the middle class. And then, of course, Rothbard and Francis had a certain interpretation of these conditions, and a certain politics of racialized anger and attacks on elites meant to take advantage of them. I wanted to go back and forth between both the intellectual and sociohistorical histories.
CL: I was thinking about this the other night, when I watched the PBS documentary on William Buckley. It trots out what to me was always a hoary and misleading narrative of Buckley as the grown-up in the room tamping down the animal spirits of the fringe. Even if you accept that premise, the evidence is now quite clear that he lost. Pat Buchanan has emerged as both the political victor and what I guess I would call the leading para-intellectual of the age: someone who understands ideas as political instruments primarily, and who literally invents the culture war.
JG: Exactly. Buchanan’s contribution of the culture war has been a mixed blessing for Republicans, just as their adoption of right-wing populism has been. On the one hand, those developments do excite a base and mobilize voters. On the other hand, they elicit a big countermobilization, as we’ve seen, and there’s a limit to its popularity. This populist rhetoric was not likely to ever become hegemonic discourses because they’re too alienating.
Instead, they get the mob going. The mob never really is a mass phenomenon. It just appears and tries to intimidate people by its strength and rowdiness. That’s what Trump is basically: he’s a phenomenon of the mob. That mob, God forbid, does not command majorities, but it gives the impression of popularity, or the impression of strength, through its bluntness and its bluster. Still, there is an intrinsic limit to its appeal. I’ve received criticism from people saying, “Oh, you think that this stuff always wins in the end, that even when it’s out of power it’s only gaining strength.” That’s not true at all. This kind of politics can do a lot of harm, but I believe that this stuff is actually unpopular and has as many intrinsic weaknesses as strengths. I have no argument with the people who say Trump was a weak president, in part because of his reliance on the mob. And I don’t think if he says something racist, everyone’s going to turn racist overnight. But it’s not like I believe it’s good to have a mainstream politician using these tactics and methods and seeing some success with them.