TY - JOUR
AU - Walsh, David, Austin
AB - The days when Alan Brinkley could call the study of American conservatism a historiographical problem are long over. Since the mid-1990s, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the American conservative movement. We now have a deep and incredibly diverse literature on post–World War II American conservatism from a multitude of different focuses and methodological aspects. At the same time, a smaller, albeit also robust, literature has been produced on what is variously described as the “lunatic fringe,” “radical,” or “extremist” wing of the American political Right. I use the term far Right throughout this article; its meaning is necessarily ambiguous, but for the purposes of this article when I refer to the far Right I am referring specifically to the anti-Semitic and/or conspiratorial element of the American Right. Studies of what I refer to as the far Right generally treat the far Right as distinct from American conservatism, although there are exceptions. Even within the context of literature on the relationship between the far Right and American conservatism, however, most of the emphasis has been placed on the relationship between conservatives and the John Birch Society in the 1960s, and, in particular, on the criticism of the Birchers by William F. Buckley Jr. and Senator Barry Goldwater before Goldwater's successful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. But this emphasis on the 1960s and on the setting of the boundaries between the “responsible” conservatism of Buckley and Goldwater and the far-right “fringe” of the Birchers has occluded the deep relationship between conservatives and the far Right in the 1950s. It has also obscured the issue of anti-Semitism and its importance on the far Right and in what would become the conservative movement after World War II.1 This article seeks to center these two concerns by examining the rise and fall of the American Mercury magazine and its owner, Russell Maguire, in the 1950s. Maguire has long been a footnote in the history of American conservatism. Under his ownership, the American Mercury descended into the fever swamps of far-right anti-Semitism, which prompted a public break in 1959 from Buckley and National Review that helped establish the boundaries of responsible conservatism. But that story is much more complicated, and tracing it reveals the outlines of what I call a “right-wing popular front,” predicated on shared opposition to communism, socialism, and New Deal liberalism, that slowly unraveled over the 1950s. The term popular front was generally not used by conservatives in the 1950s, but the idea—a united front of right-wingers who refrained from public criticism of each other to defeat liberals and communists—was widespread. National Review editor Revilo Oliver cheekily called it “One Big Union” of conservatives, riffing off the old Industrial Workers of the World slogan. Buckley, although he would be pivotal in splitting the right-wing popular front in the 1960s, was himself much a product of it. Within the framework of the popular front, anti-Semitism and other forms of conspiracy theory were tolerated as long as they did not become publicly damaging to the image of conservatism.2 The American Mercury enjoyed a long and prestigious history before Maguire acquired it in 1952. Founded by H. L. Mencken in the mid-1920s, the magazine changed hands a number of times in the subsequent decades. In 1950 the freelance reporter William Bradford Huie became the editor and took the magazine in an explicitly conservative political direction. In addition to Huie's own editorials (which called for college students to “join [him] in a revolt against the Democratic Party” and baldly declared in 1951 that “a Republican can't be a liberal”), he brought a stable of conservative writers and staffers to the magazine. Among the most prominent was the twenty-seven-year-old Buckley, who, after the success of his first book, God and Man at Yale, accepted a job with the American Mercury in early 1952. (Buckley lasted less than a year, finding it difficult to work under Huie.) The newly conservative American Mercury was perennially short of money, however. Opportunity struck later in 1952 in the form of an unlikely financial angel when the arms-manufacturer-turned-oil-and-gas-executive Russell Maguire decided to purchase the American Mercury. “I've done very well in America,” Maguire told a reporter, “and now I want to start putting something back.” Huie gushed, “Now it looks like the very sane and respectable people on our side are getting into the fight.”3 Maguire was an extraordinarily successful businessman. Born in Meridian, Connecticut, in 1897, he attended Worcester Academy and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Maguire became an investor on Wall Street, and by the mid-1930s owned several industrial businesses as well as a brokerage underwriting firm. But his real claim to fame was his acquisition in 1939 of the Auto-Ordnance Corporation, the patent holder and manufacturer of the Thompson submachine gun. Through his control of Auto-Ordnance, Maguire quickly built up substantial contacts within the political and military establishments of the United States and Great Britain. He poached the assistant to the president of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Frederic A. Willis, as Auto-Ordnance's new vice president in June 1940, in no small part because Willis was a former U.S. Army officer and Winston Churchill's cousin. Before the war started in Europe, Auto-Ordnance had been worth practically nothing and did not even have a manufacturing plant. Beginning in 1939, however, Maguire received so many orders for Thompsons from the British and U.S. governments that he had to contract out to other firms until a dedicated Auto-Ordnance factory could be built in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By early 1941, the company had a healthy $3 million contract with the U.S. government to produce Thompsons—the company would make nearly $16 million in net profit through 1944. (Auto-Ordnance was, however, modestly sized compared to other arms manufacturers in Connecticut; Winchester Repeating Arms Company in January 1941 alone held contracts worth $65 million.) No less than Drew Pearson praised Maguire in his syndicated column for his foresight in having “envisioned the sub-machine gun as one of the outstanding weapons of modern warfare” and for his patriotic business savvy.4 But Maguire had an ugly side. He weathered several high-profile business scandals in the 1930s and 1940s that brought forward (fair) accusations of his being a swindler. In 1940 the Securities and Exchange Commission (Sec) revoked Maguire's license to operate as a securities broker on the basis that he had illegally manipulated stock of a company in which he had interests. His acquisition of Auto-Ordnance was also the subject of a lawsuit—the estate of Marcellus Thompson took Maguire to court in New York State in December 1940, alleging “fraud, duress and coercion” in Maguire's take-over of the company. (The lawsuit was quietly settled out of court a few months later.) And in 1942 Auto-Ordnance—which was renamed Maguire Industries—was forced to reimburse the federal government some $7 million in excessive profits. His own attorney later told the Anti-Defamation League (Adl) that Maguire was a “thoroughly unscrupulous individual.” Even the charitable Russell Maguire Foundation, which netted Maguire favorable press coverage for his donations to war-relief efforts, was created primarily as a tax dodge.5 Despite his unsavory business practices, Maguire thrived socially and financially after the war. He parlayed his tidy, but still relatively modest, fortune from arms manufacturing into the oil and gas industries in Oklahoma and Texas. By the early 1950s, he was reputed to be worth nearly $100 million. Maguire and his family enjoyed the life of prominent socialites in New York City. A 1945 profile of Maguire described him as a “millionaire by intuition” and praised his philanthropic work through his foundation and patronage of the arts in Manhattan. Maguire's marriage in 1942 to Suzanne Saroukhanoff, the daughter of a wealthy Russian businessman who fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revolution, made the New York Times wedding announcements page; his daughter and stepdaughter's debutante ball at the Ritz-Carlton merited a column on the society page of the New York Herald Tribune. His stepdaughter Natasha Boissevain, whom Maguire would later appoint as the American Mercury's managing editor, even modeled for Vogue. Maguire cut, in sum, the figure of a wealthy, sophisticated New York businessman and socialite, a reputation that persisted even after his death. His obituary in the New York Times described him as an industrialist and financier, praised him for his charity work, and pointedly did not mention the American Mercury or his politics. To be sure, there was nothing incompatible with wealth or sophistication and far-right anti-Semitic views. The acclaimed poet Ezra Pound infamously embraced fascism in the 1930s, eventually collaborating with the Italian government during World War II. Col. Robert McCormick, the Yale University–educated owner of the Chicago Tribune, was known publicly for his right-wing politics, and he frequently disparaged Jews in private. And Albert Jay Nock, the prolific writer and social theorist who helped coin the term libertarian, was widely condemned in the American Jewish press for a 1941 article in the Atlantic Monthly where he described Jews as an “Oriental” influence on American life. Anti-Semitic attitudes in high places were common during the 1930s and 1940s in the United States.6 Although there is little evidence that Maguire was politically engaged before World War II, the Adl believed him to be influenced by Merwin K. Hart, the head of the National Economic Council (Nec), a Manhattan-based probusiness lobbying group founded by Hart in the early 1930s to oppose first the governorship and later the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Maguire and Hart had a brief business relationship at the end of the 1940s. Hart was a long-standing right-wing activist who bitterly opposed the New Deal in the 1930s on the grounds that it was communistic and controlled by a cabal of Jewish advisers surrounding Roosevelt. Hart was also a key player in right-wing political mobilization during the depression, helping organize popular right-wing resistance to labor action, including during the Little Steel strike of 1937. He was an admirer of Spanish fascist leader Francisco Franco and acted as an unofficial lobbyist in the United States for the Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War. (He frequently compared Franco's struggle against communism in Spain with the struggle against labor unions in the United States.) The connections he forged led to inroads with the Christian Front, a group of followers of the anti-Semitic radio priest Charles Coughlin. Formed in 1938 in response to Coughlin's call for a Christian counterforce to the left-wing popular front of communists, socialists, and liberals that supported the Roosevelt administration, the New York–based Christian Front attracted an array of activists and sympathizers. An article by Hart even appeared in Coughlin's Social Justice newsletter, and he helped organize a pro-Franco rally along with Christian Front supporters at the Seventh Regiment Armory in Manhattan in February 1939, which attracted nearly twelve thousand attendees. Hart also repeatedly campaigned against expanding refugee quotas during the war and relaxing the racial provisions of the 1924 Immigration Act, which was widely understood to be due to his anti-Jewish attitudes.7 Maguire and Hart developed a close relationship by 1947, with Hart inviting Maguire to join the National Economic Council. Hart by this time was widely understood by other far-right activists to be a conduit to “fat cats” with deep pockets such as Maguire. In July, Hart circulated a memo introducing Maguire to his Nec colleagues and stated that the businessman had committed to contributing as much as $10,000 to the group. Maguire attended a dinner in Hart's honor at the Union League Club in Manhattan along with other wealthy New York businessmen, and he appeared on a list of the Nec executive committee in a fund-raising letter authored by Hart in November 1947. The two men had a falling out, however, over Maguire's lack of commitment to the Nec's work. Hart, ever interested in the prospect of popular right-wing mobilization (he would later become the head of the New York chapter of the John Birch Society), outlined a vision of building nearly a dozen organizations to embark on a “plan of consolidated effort” to take America back from its (unnamed) enemies. This plan required money and organizational commitment, and Maguire filched on both—never delivering on his promises to serve on the Nec board or to donate $5,000. “Frankly, I have never quite understood your attitude towards us,” Hart wrote. “You became quite interested in the council at one time and agreed to come on the board and the executive committee. Then you withdrew.” Maguire's tightfistedness and unreliability as a business partner, already evident from his Sec ban, the lawsuit over his acquisition of Auto-Ordnance, and his tax-dodge charitable foundation, crippled his association with Hart. These toxic character traits continued to be common complaints by Maguire's erstwhile fellow travelers over the next decade.8 Hart was not the only far-right activist with whom Maguire was connected. The new owner of the American Mercury was also close to Allen Zoll, the former Christian Fronter who was, by the 1950s, the head of the National Council for American Education and had recently waged a successful campaign against “progressive” educators in Pasadena, California. Education was, by the 1950s, Zoll's bailiwick. He was essentially a “professional anticommunist” in the vein of Fred Schwarz, the head of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade and another occasional American Mercury contributor from 1953 through 1957. Zoll was the author of numerous pamphlets warning about communist subversion in American schools through liberal dupes and fellow travelers. One of his more popular pamphlets on the danger of direct federal aid to schools was entitled They Want Your Child! Unsurprisingly, Zoll was denounced by the National Education Association as a dangerous extremist. Zoll had a business relationship with the American Mercury during Maguire's early tenure at the magazine—he sold subscriptions for the magazine in 1952 and claimed to have influence over Maguire's editorial policy. Maguire's relationship with Zoll was confirmed by Huie in a conversation in 1953 with two New York Post reporters.9 These activists constituted a loose but interlocking network of far-right activists within a broader right-wing popular front in the 1950s that amplified the voices of their fellow travelers. Both Zoll and Maguire endorsed and distributed the work of John O. Beaty, a professor at Southern Methodist University, whose 1951 book, Iron Curtain over America, alleged a Jewish plot to subvert the American republic. Beaty was a former staff officer in World War II for army intelligence in Washington, D.C., a section with a long-standing reputation for anti-Semitism and far-right politics. After the war Beaty took a teaching position at Southern Methodist University, where he repeatedly clashed with other faculty and the administration over his political views. Iron Curtain over America was in part a typical catalog of right-wing complaints about U.S. policy since the Roosevelt administration: Fdr's recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933; the administration's maneuverings toward war with Germany in 1941; the harsh victor's peace over Germany in 1945; the loss of China; and the restrictions being placed on Douglas MacArthur in his efforts to win the then-raging Korean War. But Beaty also went further than other right-wing authors by insisting that “Judaized Khazars” were behind these policies as part of their “quadruple aims of international Communism, the seizure of power in Russia, Zionism, and continued migration to America.” Zoll recommended the book in his mailings for the National Council for American Education—Beaty was one of his vice presidents. Iron Curtain over America was endorsed by a number of prominent generals in MacArthur's clique in the military, including MacArthur's intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, and the former commanding general of the Far East Air Forces, Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer. William F. Buckley Sr. was a fan of Beaty as well, even convincing Henry Regnery, the publisher of his son's book God and Man at Yale, to assist Buckley with his attempts to get Iron Curtain over America into libraries across the country. Maguire, for his part, financed repeated printings of the book and helped circulate them around the country, particularly to churches. By 1954, the book, with Maguire's financial support, was on its ninth printing.10 The promotion of Iron Curtain over America by these various figures was all the more remarkable because it was published only six years after the end of World War II. The war had damaged the public reputations of many right-wing and anti-Semitic activists who had been prominent in the 1930s. Over thirty activists were indicted in 1942 for sedition by the U.S. government (although the case was eventually declared a mistrial after the death of the presiding judge). Despite these setbacks, though, the political influence of the Old Right continued well into the 1950s. Hart, Zoll, and the elder Buckley all built their political careers during the depression decade; the MacArthur clique in the army also had roots extending back to the general's tenure as army chief of staff from 1930–1935. Political anti-Semitism remained potent when tied to nativism and anticommunism even as structural anti-Semitism began to decline in the United States—employment discrimination against Jews, for instance, began to subside after World War II. Debates over admitting refugees into the United States after the war were heavily tinged with concerns over Jewish immigration. (Quotas that discriminated against Jewish refugees were not relaxed by Congress until 1952.) And while outspokenly vitriolic anti-Semitism was more problematic after World War II—Gerald L. K. Smith, whose newsletter The Cross and the Flag was one of the most unabashedly anti-Semitic publications of the time, was persona non grata by the turn of the decade—more muted forms of anti-Semitism were readily found in right-wing political culture even into the mid-1950s.11 As long as Maguire and his fellow travelers on the far Right were financially useful and their anti-Semitic views were not the subject of intense scrutiny from liberals and the Left, they were welcomed—albeit uneasily—within the broader right-wing popular front. William Bradford Huie resigned as editor of the American Mercury in December 1952, but only after Maguire's far-right connections were reported by the National Broadcasting Company and Time magazine. Huie admitted to Time that he “knew about Maguire's indiscretions and operations with the Christian Front crowd. But to me money is impersonal. If suddenly I heard Adolf Hitler was alive in South America and wanted to give a million dollars to the American Mercury, I would go down and get it.” This attitude persisted among conservative publishers well into the 1950s—William F. Buckley Jr. approached both Maguire and Beaty in 1955 (the latter on the advice of his father) for seed funding for National Review. But this closeness to the far Right came at a price. The younger Buckley was enraged by allegations and ad hominem attacks leveled at him for years that he harbored fascist sympathies (he famously threatened to punch Gore Vidal on live national television in 1968 for calling him a “crypto-Nazi”). Throughout the 1950s he regularly threatened to sue for libel critics who made such claims, even as his own personal and professional networks interlinked with widely recognized far-right activists and anti-Semites. Buckley attempted to balance these tensions through his early years as a right-wing activist. When an aging Merwin Hart appealed to him in 1954 to set up a meeting for Hart with Senator Joseph McCarthy, Buckley wrote to the senator's office forwarding the request but urged McCarthy to “plan the meeting in secret” and further advised him not to meet with Hart at all, given that “he is now almost universally regarded in Liberal circles as a pathological anti-Semite.” But even as Buckley advised McCarthy to keep his distance, he also insisted that “90% of what has been said about [Hart] is unjust.” Hart had been labeled a fascist sympathizer by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes in 1940. Hart also continued to convince prominent and respectable businessmen to serve on the board of directors of the Nec. Widespread public exposure of radical right-wing politics, not those politics as such, was the key to exclusion from the right-wing popular front in 1950s, and even then money and influence could insulate certain individuals from total banishment. Notably, in his letter to McCarthy, Buckley contrasted Hart with Gerald L. K. Smith, the head of the Christian Nationalist Crusade, who did not have either wealth or politically influential friends.12 In Russell Maguire's case, his exposure as an anti-Semite in 1952 crippled neither his political influence nor the American Mercury's fortunes. The magazine's best days under his ownership were still ahead. Maguire replaced Huie with John A. Clements, the public relations director for the Hearst Corporation, and promised Clements a free hand at the magazine. The first post-Huie edition had a print run of 150,000 copies, comparable to the runs under Huie. Clements brought in a whole stable of Hearst contributors and alumni to the magazine such as J. B. Matthews, Howard Rushmore, Victor Riesel (himself, ironically, Jewish), and Irene Corbally Kuhn. The political inclination of the magazine remained unchanged; the Clements-edited American Mercury remained militantly anticommunist and published frequent defenses of Senator McCarthy's red-baiting campaign. The magazine's influence peaked under Clements, and a number of prominent right-wing writers contributed to its pages—the 1953 issues of the publication featured articles and reviews from Matthews; Ralph de Toledano, a friend and confidant of Richard M. Nixon; Frank Meyer; China lobby bigwig Alfred Kohlberg; and even William F. Buckley Jr., who penned a broadside against “the intellectuals” in the June 1953 issue. The American Mercury under Clements remained a monthly edition of about 150 pages, and its style and format were similar to those of Reader's Digest, but with original (rather than syndicated) content.13 A glance at the July 1953 issue—one of the most controversial Clements published as editor because of an article (discussed below) written by J. B. Matthews—provides a good overview of the style and tone of the content. The bulk of the issue was dedicated in some way to anti–New Deal politics. One article blasted Roosevelt as a weak old man who gave away too much to the Soviets at Yalta; another declared the Sec a “good idea gone wrong” now dominated by bureaucrats “bent on putting a straight-jacket on the vital securities industry and sneaking over the New Deal program of socializing business”; still another article predicted that private enterprise would easily exceed the track record of socialism. Not every article was explicitly political or even intellectual. The issue also included cornpone missives on the lost art of kite flying, tongue-in-cheek remembrances of basic training in the army, and a dime-novel treatment of exotic espionage. The overall tone of the magazine was sentimental, maudlin, and culturally conservative in a middlebrow sense. At least some of Buckley's later contempt for the magazine stemmed not from its anti-Semitism, but from its petit-bourgeois appeal in contrast to his own intellectual project.14 For much of Maguire's ownership of the magazine, articles on racial issues were conspicuous by their absence. The attitude of Maguire and the stance of the American Mercury on this topic, however, can be gleaned from general-interest articles that touch on race, such as an essay from December 1954 that endorsed the idea that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa must have been built by pre-Dutch white colonizers. The civil rights movement was understood solely through the lens of communism, although the American Mercury generally eschewed race-baiting. The magazine took a somewhat more nuanced approach by amplifying the voices of anticommunist black journalists such as George Schulyer or Manning Johnson who criticized the radical sympathies of civil rights leaders without endorsing segregation. The American Mercury also published pro-apartheid pieces justifying the colonialist project in South Africa in racist and paternalistic terms—“‘Give the natives the vote!’ comes the cry from across the seas. How incongruous. One might just as well toss the franchise into the laps of seven-year-olds.”15 General-interest articles on other topics also incorporated right-wing—often far-right—analysis. Alice Widener penned an exposé on the Ford Foundation in June 1953 decrying how the foundation was dominated by former New Deal bureaucrats. This was a standard conservative line, but Widener also found space to minimize Henry Ford's record regarding his anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent. “The thought occurred to me,” Widener wrote, “that Henry Ford II (Ford's grandson who was a trustee of the Ford Foundation), misled by the Foundation brain trusters, is trying to atone for all the sins his grandfather never committed.” Contributors to the magazine generally conflated New Deal liberalism, socialism, and communism. Harold Lord Varney, who served as an associate editor for the American Mercury throughout the decade, labeled the moderate Americans for Democratic Action, “unquestionably the most influential political body now working for Socialist ends in America.” There were limits to these conflations. One article ripped Arthur Sulzberger at the New York Times for the tone of his paper's coverage of McCarthy, comparing the paper's objectivity regarding the senator unfavorably with the communist Daily Worker. But the article stopped short of stating outright that the New York Times had procommunist sympathies. The American Mercury's line on liberal opposition to McCarthyism was for all intents and purposes identical to that of Buckley and Brent Bozell in their 1954 book McCarthy and His Enemies. While Buckley and Bozell did take pains to distinguish between communists and liberals (something that Buckley did not always do in his personal correspondence), they still suggested that “atheistic, soft-headed anti-anti-Communist liberals” were ultimately little better than communists. The American Mercury, if anything, took a slightly softer stand on liberal opposition. It castigated liberals for being “contemptuous of the opinions of those who disagree with them” but argued that liberal opposition was due less to real ideological sympathy and more to their embarrassment from having been “taken in ridiculously by the Reds before and during World War II.”16 Congressional conservatives saw the American Mercury as an ally in the struggle against communism and liberalism. California Republican William F. Knowland, the widely acknowledged leader of the conservative faction in the Senate and Republican leader from 1953 to 1959, was friendly with a number of conservative publications while in Congress, including both National Review and the American Mercury. Knowland wrote an article in the debut issue of National Review in November 1955 that called on Republicans to recommit to rolling back communism in Eastern Europe. Only a month before, Knowland made the same substantive points in an extraordinarily friendly interview with the American Mercury, which lobbed such softball questions as, “was the diplomatic recognition of the Ussr in 1933 a blunder?” (His answer, unsurprisingly, was yes.)17 Ironically, considering that Maguire brought in Clements and the Hearst crowd to mute the controversy over his own anti-Semitic beliefs, it was Hearst stalwart J. B. Matthews who wrote one of the most controversial articles the American Mercury ever published—not about Jews, but about mainline Protestants. In the July 1953 issue, Matthews—who had just been named chief investigator for Senator Joseph McCarthy—alleged that the “largest single group supporting the Communist apparatus in the United States today is composed of Protestant clergymen.” The clergy, according to Matthews, even “outnumber professors two to one in supporting the Communist-front apparatus.” “Reds and Our Churches” led directly to Matthews's downfall and caused the first significant dent in McCarthy's armor. Matthews's claims led to widespread outrage and dominated headlines across the country. After a bitter—and public—battle, McCarthy was forced to fire Matthews, standing publicly bloodied. The condemnation from Protestant pulpits was not, however, universal. Fundamentalist preacher Carl McIntire, whose by-line would later appear in the American Mercury, was one of the few clergymen to publicly defend Matthews and McCarthy. This support was all the more remarkable because McIntire was an inveterate anti-Catholic as well as an anti-communist, and McCarthy was then the most prominent Catholic politician in America. McIntire never abandoned his anti-Catholicism, but he was more than willing to cooperate with conservative Catholics to oppose what he believed to be larger threats—communism and secular modernist theology, the major targets of Matthews's article. Even right-wing Jews could find themselves allied with anti-Semites in this ecumenical right-wing popular front. In July 1954 the American Mercury even ran an article by Rabbi Benjamin Schultz, head of the American Jewish League against Communism, complaining that liberals had unfairly weaponized the charge of anti-Semitism against the Right. The audacity of a rabbi publishing an article in a magazine owned by a widely recognized anti-Semite went unaddressed in Schultz's article.18 Maguire's religiosity was ambiguous. He was, on the one hand, an Episcopalian, but, on the other, his editorials for the American Mercury—which ran monthly beginning in 1954—frequently invoked fundamentalist language and themes, particularly as Maguire began publishing more openly anti-Semitic content. A passage from June 1956 is typical: “Christ meets the deepest needs of every soul … Evil forces within our borders have brainwashed us to turn to government … World Government is the Beast who will lead us to destruction. It will command that we bow down and worship the coming Anti-Christ!” Maguire's use of the term World Government was a coded reference to an international Jewish conspiracy, but his language was typical of eschatological Protestant fundamentalism. Carl McIntire had also ominously warned about the looming “World Dictator” and “World Government” that would herald the end times.19 Ironically, given his predilection for fundamentalist rhetoric, Maguire cultivated as a friend Billy Graham, the dashing, flaxen-haired, and moderate preacher who was already a national celebrity by 1950. Maguire had hosted Graham at his Palm Beach estate in the summer of 1952 and offered him financial support—“I want to subsidize you … Whatever it'll take, you tell me, and I'll finance it.” Graham politely declined Maguire's offer of support at that meeting, but a year later he tapped Maguire to lead fund-raising efforts for the Glen Eyrie Endowment Fund, an attempt to build a compound for Graham's ministry in Glen Eyrie, Colorado. Graham became another regular contributor to the American Mercury between 1954 and 1958—his debut essay was adapted from one of his sermons, an anticommunist polemic entitled “Satan's Religion.” Anticommunism formed the basis of the political alliance between Graham and Maguire. That a public figure of Graham's stature continued to publish in the American Mercury even after Maguire had been repeatedly and publicly criticized for anti-Semitic politics is a testament to the enduring strength of the right-wing popular front approach even into the late 1950s.20 The landscape of right-wing media began to shift in the latter half of the 1950s with the launch in 1955 of William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review. The new magazine was framed as both a disavowal of New Deal liberals and what Buckley called “the irresponsible Right,” with which Buckley wrote that he had a “considerable stock of experience.” (Buckley was being uncharacteristically modest, since he had approached Maguire earlier that year for funds for National Review and appeared as a guest in the mid-1950s on Answers for Americans, a television program funded by H. L. Hunt, whom Buckley would condemn years later as “[giving] capitalism a bad name.”) Buckley, the scion of an extremely wealthy family, was educated at the Millbrook School and Yale University, and was acclaimed for his erudition both as a speaker and a writer. (The most consistently thick files in Buckley's personal papers are concerned with his yacht.) Buckley's wit, wealth, and sophistication have made him an idol among conservatives on par with his friend and longtime political ally Barry Goldwater. His magazine was to be devoted to high-minded intellectual opposition to communism, socialism, and New Deal liberalism—National Review was an unapologetically elitist publication, unlike the American Mercury, which took mass-market cues from Reader's Digest. Buckley would return time and again to this theme in his subsequent writings—that National Review and his other conservative enterprises, by dint of their elitism and intellectualism, represented a respectable alternative to the crudity of right-wing politics found in places such as the American Mercury.21 Yet Buckley was not as distant from the “irresponsible Right” as he liked to portray. Buckley's father, William F. Buckley Sr., was—like Russell Maguire—an oilman. One biographer estimated his fortune in the mid-1950s to be around $20 million. “Billie,” as the younger Buckley was affectionately known by friends and family, was profoundly influenced by his father and the class position he had been born into. Both father and son firmly believed in hierarchy as the natural order of the world and considered the mass democratic nature of New Deal–era society to be coarse and vulgar. Buckley Jr. later in life wrote candidly of his father's attitudes—particularly his father's anti-Semitism—and this world view influenced him as a youth. Buckley wrote to his father during his army service in World War II complaining that his battalion captain, in charge of selecting recruits for Officer Candidate School, was a Jew, and was favoring Jews and other immigrants, whom the younger Buckley described as “repulsive looking creature[s].” He worried in another letter home that he had blown his own chances at a commission because during the interview the examining officer took issue with Billie's wealthy background. “For twenty minutes … he talked to me about various subjects of social relations … I brought out the point that financial status has nothing to do with a man's true worth … and whether you are born rich or poor is a freak of nature.” (Buckley added, “I don't think this is strictly true, because … if you are wealthy you have become wealthy by dint of hard work and intelligence.”) Buckley Sr. was a close friend of the writer Albert Jay Nock, an infamously antidemocratic and anti-Semitic man of letters who was later cited by Billie as a major political influence. When Buckley Jr. was searching for seed money to start National Review, he scoured the entire spectrum of the Right for financial angels. Robert Welch, the future founder of the John Birch Society and a person with whom Buckley would later have a prominent public feud in the 1960s, donated some $1,000 to the venture. Buckley also reached out to Maguire and, at his father's suggestion, John O. Beaty and former Texas representative Ed Gossett. Although the younger Buckley positioned his new magazine as the voice of the responsible Right and wrote of his distaste for the popular front approach to conservative politics during his later fights with the Birchers, Buckley and National Review were firmly embedded within this coalition during their formative years.22 By 1955, however, significant cracks had formed in the popular front. In September John A. Clements resigned from the American Mercury, and along with him went most of the American Mercury's regular contributors, including J. B. Matthews, Irene Kuhn, and Ralph de Toledano. The precise catalyst for Clements's departure is not clear, but Maguire's desire to take the magazine in a more explicitly anti-Semitic direction was certainly a spark. De Toledano, writing to William F. Buckley Jr. to inform him of his departure (“You don't need a book-and-record critic, do you?”), said that “indications of The American Mercury's future course are such that I could not, in any conscience, give it the tacit endorsement of further participation.” Kuhn similarly told the Associated Press that “I [couldn't] continue [at the American Mercury] in good conscience.” Maguire and the American Mercury suffered considerable damage from the departure of Clements and the Hearst crowd. Instead of finding another professional journalist to run the show, Maguire appointed his stepdaughter Natasha Boissevain managing editor despite her lack of journalism experience. Maguire's reputation, too, was publicly maligned. He skipped a ceremony a week after Clements resigned where he was to appear alongside Senator William Jenner to receive the Americanism Medal from the American Legion. The legion was embarrassed to be giving recognition to Maguire—a spokesperson told the press that the group had no knowledge of Maguire's anti-Semitism when it voted to award him the medal (despite public reporting about his views since 1952) and hastened to add that the legion was “honoring not Mr. Maguire personally but the magazine and the staff collectively.” But the magazine was facing an even more dire problem by the time Clements left: the American Mercury was becoming increasingly difficult to find on newsstands. The cause of the publication's declining influence came not from Clements's resignation or the disavowals of the magazine by many conservatives, but rather from an unofficial boycott of the American Mercury by the distribution companies that monopolized the publishing business.23 Starting in 1954, the major national distributor of magazines, the American News Company, refused to handle any more editions of the American Mercury. The boycott was a serious blow because the company and its subsidiaries effectively had a monopoly on the distribution of magazines in the United States. Not only did American News service 95,000 local news dealers across America in 1955 but the company also directly operated newsstands, restaurants, coffee shops, book shops, drugstores, and dozens of other retail outlets where books, newspapers, and magazines were sold. A study at the time found that American News sold more than half of the total value of magazines in the United States in 1954—a figure that did not take into account the market share of American News's subsidiaries. American News also owned the Union News Company, which owned and operated concessions in thirty-two states and had exclusive rights for sales and distribution in 170 different department stores, hotel chains, and transit hubs, including Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station in New York City. The power of American News was immense. National Review had almost been strangled by it shortly after the publication began because of the magazine's poor sales—Buckley had to personally prevail upon Roy Cohn, who included American News as a client, to intercede on his behalf.24 The American Mercury, however, could not count Cohn as an ally (for reasons that are unclear), and the American News boycott crippled the publication's circulation and revenue stream. Adding to its problems, management found that independent vendors too had little appetite for the American Mercury's content. William La Varre, a former roving correspondent in Latin America for a variety of American wire services whom Maguire hired as editor in chief for the American Mercury in the summer of 1957, recalled that during his initial interviews with Maguire he was told the magazine was foundering because of the New York–based Kable News Company. This small independent distributor, which had continued to vend the American Mercury after the American News boycott, decided to dump the magazine after its April 1957 issue thanks to “complaints from various Jewish organizations.” The catalyst for these complaints was the recurring column “Money Made Mysterious,” which trafficked in thinly disguised anti-Semitic language about an international financial conspiracy consisting of Jewish bankers Bernard Baruch, Henry Morgenthau, Sidney Weinberg, and Paul Warburg. The Adl described the article as “[using] language which to the bigot can have strong anti-Semitic meanings.” American Mercury sold fewer than 12,000 copies of the May issue.25 Nevertheless, American Mercury retained a loyal audience for its content. At this time, the only profitable component of the magazine was the Mercury Reprints series, a direct-mailing service to subscribers that reproduced individual articles, usually in a serial digest format, from the American Mercury's back catalog. (J. B. Matthews's articles were among the most popular.) Individual right-wing activists and “patriotic organizations” made most of the bulk purchases, often in lots of one thousand or five thousand. This had the benefit, as La Varre saw it, of amplifying the American Mercury's voice on the right, especially among “patriotic” grassroots activists. “A reader could obtain knowledge from an article in the Mercury and then get a hundred copies to mail to acquaintances who did not have the magazine each … month.” Even as the sales of the magazine plummeted due to its distribution problems, both the sales and income of Mercury Reprints were on the uptick. One reprint, entitled “FUNERAL OF THE CONSTITUTION,” sold nearly one hundred thousand copies. This did not mean that one hundred thousand individuals had bought reprints; the actual number was probably less than one hundred, considering that most reprint sales consisted of block orders. But it did reveal that the American Mercury still enjoyed the dedicated patronage of well-heeled right-wing activists.26 La Varre began his American Mercury editorship in July 1957, with his first issue as editor in chief appearing in September. His contract gave him the option to purchase the magazine after a year if he so desired, and it also contained a no-penalty escape clause should he choose to disassociate himself from the publication. His initial impressions of the magazine were mixed. The American Mercury had clearly suffered from the lack of experienced leadership ever since Clements's departure. On his first day, La Varre found a contract with a subscription vendor that stipulated the vendor could keep all of the money from his subscriptions himself (La Varre promptly voided the contract). Between these kinds of deals and the boycott by American News and its subsidiaries, it was no wonder the magazine was financially underwater. La Varre also understood that the magazine would never recover if distributors continued to boycott the American Mercury. Fortunately for him, the American News Company effectively dissolved its monopoly on national distribution in the spring of 1957, the victim of corporate maneuvers involving a take-over and liquidation of assets. This allowed local distributors who had been largely suppressed by American News to suddenly become major distributors in their own right. La Varre met that August with Kable New president George B. Davis in an attempt to revive their past relationship. Davis told La Varre that anti-Semitic content in new copies of the American Mercury, as well as in the direct-mail Mercury Reprints series, was unacceptable and would have to be discontinued for Kable News to consider redistributing the magazine. La Varre relayed Davis's conditions to Maguire, who went on a lengthy tirade in his office. “I am not in any form a racist or anti-Jew! I have many Jewish associates!” Maguire's protestations were undercut, however, when he also reminded La Varre that “the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia was the work of Jewish brains, of Jewish dissatisfactions, of Jewish planning, whose goal is to now create a new order in the world.” Maguire did slightly back down and eased up on coded anti-Semitism in the first half of 1957, but in August Maguire was back to declaring that “we must cut out the cancer of Communism, Socialism, and treason. They are financed and promoted by our only real threat—the enemy within.” Unsurprisingly, their distribution problems continued.27 Due to its anti-Semitic content, the American Mercury also experienced difficultly attracting advertisers and corporate support, with two significant exceptions. The U.S. Steel Corporation cut Maguire a $2,000 check in December 1957 in response to Maguire's entreaties for financial assistance “in distributing The American Mercury to school, college, and public libraries,” and the company gave Maguire an additional $2,000 three months later. Republic Steel, one of U.S. Steel's major competitors, was even more generous. Republic's president, Charles M. White, personally wrote Maguire a $1,500 check for the distribution of the American Mercury to libraries, and the company underwrote an additional $3,000 for the same effort. By 1958, Republic Steel was the only major corporation that continued to advertise in the print issues of the American Mercury. White's politics may have played the key role in Republic's continued support of the American Mercury, even as Maguire's editorials castigated the “Zionists-Socialists” and their attempts to “[manipulate] us and our various States into a Socialist Federal Autocracy.” White had been the vice president of operations for Republic Steel during the Committee of Industrial Organization's drive to organize Little Steel (the major steel companies in America that were not U.S. Steel) in the 1936–1937 period. He was infamous for his use of violence to repress labor organizing, drawing upon the so-called Mohawk Valley formula for strikebreaking that Merwin Hart helped develop (Hart even offered to assist organizing grassroots resistance to the strike). As president of Republic Steel during the 1950s, White advocated for national right-to-work laws and the repeal of the National Labor Relations Act. He also financed the distribution of literature on behalf of Senator William F. Knowland calling Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers union, a “cunning conspirator” and “evil genius.” The $8,500 from the two steel companies for the American Mercury was modest—not even enough to pay for a single issue of the magazine—but it was nevertheless significant. Their donations were part of a broad pattern of corporate-funded subsidies for right-wing causes in the postwar years—the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society, for example, owed its survival to the support of sympathetic businessmen. But the steel companies went further than most by continuing to support an open anti-Semite. Given Little Steel's past alliances with far-right activists such as Hart against labor unions two decades earlier, this revealed an important political continuity on the part of the steel industry's corporate management. Steel support provided a lifeline for the American Mercury. Maguire's anti-Semitic content in his editorials had already landed his publication on a distributors’ blacklist, but the support from the steel companies allowed the American Mercury to do a limited end run around the boycott.28 It also bought more probusiness content. The American Mercury had always been antilabor—a 1953 profile of Reuther by de Toledano portrayed him as a ruthless demagogue dedicated to “[bringing] the dictatorship of a corporate state to America.” But even more column space was dedicated to antilabor agitprop after the generous financial support of the steel companies. The March 1958 edition was dedicated to the “labor issue” and featured contributions from Senator Knowland and others urging a partial repeal of the National Labor Relations Act. An editorial insert from La Varre was kind enough to remind readers that the “notorious Wagner Act … was written for Senator Wagner … by Communists in Manhattan. Manhattan's Wagner was but the front for introducing this alien ideology and ‘law’ into the Congressional Record.” Even as the American Mercury continued to explicitly traffic in anti-Semitism in Maguire's editorials—and implicitly with the reference to “alien” ideologies in La Varre's inserts—it still garnered support from other elements of the right-wing popular front due to shared opposition to pillars of the New Deal state.29 This small surge in early 1958 would be the American Mercury's swan song. La Varre opted to leave the magazine that July, frustrated, according to his memoirs, by the continued distributors’ boycott and his constant battles with Jewish organizations over the American Mercury's content. With La Varre gone, the American Mercury once again no longer had a professional journalist running the day-to-day operations. At the same time, the political fortunes of the American Mercury's right-wing allies in Washington also waned. Ever since Joseph McCarthy's censure in 1954, the influence of the Right in Washington appeared to be in decline. Although McCarthy lingered in the Senate for two and a half more years until his death, he became a staggering alcoholic punchline and persona non grata at Republican campaign events. The results of the 1958 election brought the Right to a new low. Knowland, George Malone, and William Jenner were all defeated. (The one bright spot was Barry Goldwater's easy victory over his Democratic opponent in Arizona.) The conservative wing of the Republican party in the Senate lost many of its most outspoken leaders—of the twenty-two Republicans who had voted against McCarthy's censure in 1954, only ten were still serving by the end of 1959. Maguire had lost most of his allies on Capitol Hill.30 A major exception was Herman Talmadge, a southern Democrat and arch segregationist who was elected to the Senate in 1956. In a glowing front-page profile in the American Mercury in February 1958, Talmadge was praised for his commitment to states’ rights, his opposition to communism, and his steadfastness in the face of left-wing media smears. Despite the magazine's praise for conservative southern Democrats, the New York–based magazine remained a world apart from southern politics and letters during Maguire's tenure. Significantly, no prominent southern politicians had articles appear under their own by-lines in the American Mercury during his ownership.31 The political blows dealt to conservatism in 1958 became a catalyst for some to further radicalize to “save” America. Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society only a month after the 1958 election. Maguire began to abandon all pretense of restraint and ramped up the anti-Semitic rhetoric in the American Mercury. A column by Maguire in December 1958 entitled “Mercury Warned You” insinuated that a Jewish conspiracy was behind the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment establishing direct election of U.S. senators. In January 1959, with his stepdaughter Natasha again serving as managing editor, Maguire published an editorial declaring that a conspiracy of “International Zionists” were seeking to enslave the world and that “documents are available to prove [this],” alluding to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous ant-Semitic tract alleging a global Jewish conspiracy dedicated to world domination. The editorial was only slightly less blatant than the usual fare in Gerald L. K. Smith's newsletter.32 Maguire's column was the final catalyst that precipitated an open break between the American Mercury and National Review, the first great crack in the postwar right-wing popular front. Buckley had been expressing increasing misgivings about the American Mercury since 1957, when he wrote to Karl Hess, an occasional contributor to National Review who also appeared on the masthead of the American Mercury. He conveyed his “mounting alarm and horror” about the direction the American Mercury was going under Maguire and said that the board at National Review was debating whether National Review and the American Mercury “could … afford to have any regular personnel in common.” Buckley's major concern was that the American Mercury's growing anti-Semitism would open National Review's right flank to attack. “I am … astonished the left hasn't pounced,” he told Hess in April. “Was there ever so exposed a target as the incumbent Mercury?” But Buckley confided to Hess that National Review would “not … do anything of a public nature” about the American Mercury. So long as left-wing critics did not seize on Maguire's relationship with Buckley's faction on the right, Maguire's increasingly blatant anti-Semitism in his columns did not warrant an open attack. In any event, it was the American Mercury's apparent crudity that repelled Buckley as opposed to its anti-Semitism per se, because he made exceptions in his personal associations for refined and polished anti-Semites. He maintained a close friendship with Revilo Oliver, a classics professor at the University of Illinois, throughout the 1950s despite acknowledging to Brent Bozell that Oliver had demonstrably anti-Semitic views. Buckley even wrote to Senator Knowland in February 1958 asking him to pressure the president to pardon Ezra Pound for his collaboration with the Italian Fascist government during World War II, arguing that “Nobody takes Pound's anti-Semitism seriously.”33 Buckley also faced significant potential risks if he chose to publicly criticize fellow travelers on the right. Most National Review contributors had bylines in the Maguire-run American Mercury, and even Maguire's latest turn toward undisguised anti-Semitism had not triggered a right-wing backlash. Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby was on the American Mercury's masthead as well as that of National Review. Ralph de Toledano, who had resigned from the American Mercury's masthead in 1955 due to Maguire's anti-Semitism, continued to write for the magazine, publishing a feature on the dangers of communist subversion in April 1959 and a glowing front-page profile of Vice President Nixon in May. A public attack on Maguire and the American Mercury would expose National Review to charges of causing factionalism on the right and could provoke a backlash from National Review subscribers, many of whom also read the American Mercury. Buckley chose to hold to his moderate course. In April he circulated an internal memo to National Review contributors—over the objections of several of his editors and staffers, including Willoughby, William Rusher, and his public editor A. E. Bonbrake—stating that “National Review will not carry on its masthead the name of any person whose name also appears on the masthead of the American Mercury.” But he added that “we will not refuse to run material submitted by persons who continue to write for the American Mercury for the reason that to do so would be presumptuous.” This memo was not made public, nor was Maguire officially notified of National Review's new policy.34 Buckley's behind-the-scenes break with the American Mercury was only a small step beyond his private expression of misgivings in 1957. It was not the decisive blow that crippled Maguire and his magazine. Maguire had already tried to unload the magazine to La Varre the previous year because of the American Mercury's chronic circulation problems due to the unofficial boycott by the distributors. La Varre's departure then compounded these problems. It is exceedingly unlikely that Buckley's memo would have become public knowledge if Maguire had not made it so. General Willoughby—who shared Maguire's anti-Semitism, resented Buckley's “arbitrary posture,” and was one of a handful of National Review contributors who sided with Maguire—leaked the memo to the American Mercury owner. Maguire then took the dispute public in July by publishing the memo in an editorial. Maguire even bitterly noted that the American Mercury had been in the habit of referring writers to National Review when their pitches better suited the needs of a weekly: “We, in fact, have tried to help feed the mouth that now nibbles at us!”35 Although Buckley and his editors were concerned that Maguire's public attacks would cripple National Review by prompting subscription cancellations, they defended their new policy. They received scores of angry letters, mostly concerned about the opening of a breach in the right-wing popular front. One subscriber wrote, “I am a strong conservative, and an ardent anti-socialist and anti-communist. As such, I believe all conservatives should strive to pull together and ignore relatively minor differences.” Another letter writer wrote that she “deplored any conflict between the two leading conservative publications which might hurt our common cause.” Still another correspondent—a Catholic priest—wrote to Buckley bemoaning, “why can't we conservatives subordinate the secondary things to the first things?” “The common enemy is communism,” wrote yet another letter writer. “Let's get with it and stop the nonsense.” To his credit, Buckley stood firm in the face of intramovement criticism, but tried to emphasize the softness of his response. His standard reply to American Mercury–inspired hate mail was to affirm that the “insidious anti-Semitism that lurks in the corners of the American Mercury … has done considerable damage” to conservatism, but emphasized that National Review contributors were still free to write for the American Mercury—only the masthead was forbidden, since it implied sympathy with Maguire's “pathological insinuations against a religious minority.” This was apparently sufficient for many. Buckley later recalled that the damage to National Review's brand was minimal. Most conservative writers stuck with National Review over the American Mercury.36 The American Mercury affair was only the beginning of a bitter, protracted fight that led to the splintering of the right-wing popular front in the 1960s. The John Birch Society, founded in December 1958, was the zenith of the popular front approach. The founding members were a veritable who's who among right-wing businessmen and political activists of the period, including the group's founder and candy manufacturer Robert Welch, oil magnate Fred C. Koch, and University of Illinois classicist Revilo Oliver, a close friend of Buckley and a contributor to National Review. Welch, who had considerable power in the group, welcomed anticommunists of any political stripe and with any political baggage into the organization. Merwin K. Hart, Maguire's old associate from the 1940s, became the head of the New York City chapter of the society. While Maguire never became a Bircher—he largely abandoned public life after 1960—many of his former associates did join the society. Buckley's repudiation of the Birchers is a familiar story to historians of the American Right: unnerved by Welch's conspiracy theory–laden claims that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a dedicated communist, Buckley—partly at the behest of Senator Goldwater—penned a broadside on Welch in National Review in February 1962, consolidating the boundaries of “responsible conservatism.” There were important similarities between the Bircher repudiation and the American Mercury saga. Both Buckley and Goldwater were frequently assailed in the liberal press for far-right and even fascistic sympathies. Disavowing the Birchers was at least in part a political tactic to nullify those attacks as Goldwater began preparing his bid for the presidency in 1964. But both Buckley and Goldwater attempted as well to hold the Right together; Buckley repudiated the popular front approach in his letters to prominent Birchers while at the same time attempting to keep the public dispute confined to the person of Robert Welch, not the John Birch Society as a whole. For Buckley, there was also a personal element in this move. He attempted repeatedly in the early 1960s to mend his friendship with Revilo Oliver despite the latter's drift into explicit anti-Semitism. Unlike Maguire, Oliver was witty and erudite in his approach—Buckley called him “among my closest friends” and earned private praise from Buckley for a guardedly anti-Jewish column submitted to, but not published by, National Review on the Jewish journalist Harry Golden. Buckley's friendship with Oliver continued intact, albeit strained, through 1962. But Buckley's criticism in the pages of the National Review of Welch eventually drove a permanent wedge between them. Buckley's approach—specific criticism of certain leaders, as opposed to groups and organizations—was supported by Goldwater, who maintained that “you can't just [excommunicate the Birchers] in Arizona,” given the prominence of their supporters. Specifically targeting Welch as irresponsible helped soften the blow; Goldwater was able to maintain support from the Birchers and other elements of the far Right. He even had the support of one of the more prominent anti-Semites in the United States, Willis Carto, despite Goldwater's partial Jewish ancestry.37 Maguire, however, was on the sidelines during the 1964 campaign. By the mid-1960s, he had disappeared from the political scene. Embittered by Buckley's repudiation, he sold the American Mercury in 1960 to the Defenders of the Christian Faith. The magazine changed hands a number of times throughout the 1960s before Carto's Liberty Lobby acquired it and continued to publish the magazine until 1981. But in an unusual denouement to Maguire's story, he became something of an informant for the Adl and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Fbi). After selling the American Mercury, Maguire, using his old Hearst editor John Clements as an intermediary, began to supply information to the Adl on George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi party. Rockwell had briefly been a contributor to the American Mercury in 1957 but quickly broke with Maguire. Clements told an Adl investigator early in 1961 that Maguire had underwritten an “intensive investigation” of Rockwell and made the results available to the Fbi. These acts by Maguire were almost certainly motivated by the unflattering portrayal of him in Rockwell's 1961 autobiography, This Time the World, which depicted Maguire as a coward unwilling to embrace the swastika because it would destroy his family's reputation among Manhattan's social elite. Maguire actually began a reasonably warm correspondence with the leader of the Adl, Arnold Forster. He wrote to Maguire that his efforts against Rockwell “[contributed] to the cause of human decency and your participation in it is most heartening.” Forster also circulated an internal memo at the end of July in which he declared, “we consider the problem of Russell Maguire to be closed,” citing both Maguire's professed desire to break with his past political activity and his work countering Rockwell.38 Maguire's final dalliance with the Adl was the perfect coda to decades of duplicitous behavior. He ended his life despised by his former friends and allies in the growing conservative movement and by his contacts on the far right. The root cause of his unpopularity was not his politics, nor his bigotry and racism per se—those were common enough attitudes across the American Right in the 1950s and 1960s—but rather lay in his repeated untrustworthiness. Maguire made many empty promises of financial support to figures across the right-wing political spectrum, but he rarely delivered on them. He made (probably false) claims about his charitable giving to deflect attention from his repeated practice of backstabbing his business and political partners. Even his financing of the investigation into Rockwell's American Nazi party was motivated by petty revenge, since Maguire's correspondence with Forster suggests that he never abandoned his right-wing views. For all of Maguire's importance as the publisher of the major right-wing magazine of the 1950s, his organizational incompetence and his inability to work reliably with others prevented him from ever making the kind of outsized political impact that he so desperately desired. This was probably a factor in Maguire's distance from the John Birch Society; joining the Birchers would have meant subordinating himself to a larger organization. Merwin Hart, Maguire's former ally and himself an organizational entrepreneur through the National Economic Council, was able to make this leap; Maguire was not. He died in 1966. The legacy of the right-wing popular front on the American Right can be seen in two different ways. One is through the far Right's perception in the twenty-first century of William F. Buckley Jr. and his role in the unraveling of the popular front. Suffice to say, Buckley has few admirers on the contemporary far right. A 2015 essay collection edited by Paul E. Gottfried, a self-described “paleoconservative” political philosopher, and Richard Spencer, the far-right activist who coined the term alt-right and organized the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, blames Buckley for the “deformation of the American conservative movement” through his “purges” of heterodox right-wing intellectuals. The other way to view the legacy of the right-wing popular front is to note that Buckley's enforcement of the boundaries of responsible conservatism was not resolved in the 1960s. Two prominent examples stand out: the intertwined cases of Joseph Sobran and Patrick Buchanan. Sobran, a protégé of Buckley in the 1970s and 1980s, was fired from National Review in 1993 for anti-Jewish columns that Buckley eventually concluded were “contextually anti-Semitic.” At the same time, former Ronald Reagan White House communications director Buchanan made his controversial 1992 bid for the Republican nomination for president, garnering nearly 3 million votes only two years after he penned an op-ed that flirted with Holocaust denial. Buchanan ran again in 1996 and was widely condemned as a protofascist by conservative commentators, but he still won over 20 percent of the Republican primary vote. Buchanan himself has made the claim that Donald J. Trump's successful bid for the presidency in 2016 was modeled on his approach in the 1990s. National Review, for its part, has played a diminished role since the 2010s in a new right-wing coalition, intensely skeptical of President Trump but committed to a shared vision of antiliberal and antisocialist politics. The fate of the twenty-first-century right-wing popular front remains to be seen, but we do know that it is an outgrowth of anticommunist, antisocialist, and antiliberal coalition politics that helped birth the twentieth-century conservative movement.39 Notes Thank you to Julian Zelizer, Jennifer Burns, and Ellen Schrecker, among others, for their insightful comments on various versions of this paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers for the JAH. Thank you also to Kevin Kruse, Kimberly Philips-Fein, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Kathryn Olmsted, John Huntington, Michael Koncewicz, Lawrence Glickman, and Nicole Hemmer for their mentorship and commentary on other aspects of this project. And thanks, of course, to Kevin Marsh, Andrew Edward Clark, and Amy Ransford at the JAH for all their hard work in putting this into production, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic. Footnotes 1 Alan Brinkley, “The Problem of American Conservatism,” American Historical Review, 99 (April 1994), 409–29. The literature on postwar conservatism is immense and growing. Postwar studies of American conservatism that emphasize political geography include Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005); Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2006); Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia, 2013); and Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001). On conservatives and gender, see Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right (Princeton, 2012). On the media, see Nicole Hemmer, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics (Philadelphia, 2016); Mark Major, “Objective but Not Impartial: Human Events, Barry Goldwater, and the Development of the ‘Liberal Media’ in the Conservative Counter-Sphere,” New Political Science, 34 (Dec. 2012), 455–68; and David Greenberg, “The Idea of ‘the Liberal Media’ and Its Roots in the Civil Rights Movement,” Sixties, 1 (Dec. 2008), 167–88. On Christianity and postwar conservatism, see Daniel K. Williams, God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York, 2010); and Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York, 2015). Most of the literature on the far Right in the 1950s focuses on activists who began their careers during the Great Depression, including Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia, 1983); Glen Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War II (Chicago, 1996); and Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate (1988; Baton Rouge, 1997). Newer work that places the postwar far Right in conversation with the American conservative movement includes George Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, 2016); and Edward H. Miller, Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy (Chicago, 2015). A work that covers similar ground with respect to the religious right is Markku Ruotsila, Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism (New York, 2015). On American libertarianism and its relationship with other elements of the U.S. Right, see Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (New York, 2017); and Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (New York, 2009). On the John Birch Society, see D. J. Mulloy, The World of the John Birch Society: Conspiracy, Conservatism, and the Cold War (Nashville, 2014); and McGirr, Suburban Warriors. Recent work on Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr. includes Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York, 2001); Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, ed., Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape (Tucson, 2013); and Alvin S. Felzenberg, A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr. (New Haven, 2017). 2 Revilo P. Oliver to William F. Buckley Jr., June 29, 1959, box 9, William F. Buckley Jr. Papers, Ms 576, Series Part I (Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.). On the American Mercury in the literature on Buckley, see Felzenberg, Man and His Presidents, 51–53; Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (New York, 2011), 23–24; and John B. Judis, William F. Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York, 1988), 173–74. 3 “A Call for Revolt on the Campus,” American Mercury, 73 (Oct. 1951), 24–29. William Bradford Huie, “Why a Republican Can't Be a Liberal,” ibid., 73 (Dec. 1951), 55–61. William F. Buckley Jr., “The Colossal Flunk,” ibid., 73 (March 1952), 29–37; William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” (Washington, 1951); Judis, William F. Buckley Jr., 103–4; “Maguire of the Mercury,” Newsweek, Aug. 25, 1952, p. 49. 4 “Biographical Sketch,” n.d., Russell Maguire subject file, p. 6 (Anti-Defamation League archives, New York, N.Y.). The Anti-Defamation League retains microfilm copies of its subject files at its offices in Manhattan for internal use and was kind enough to allow the author permission to view them. Kaiden Kazanjian, “Willis Resigns from Cbs to Join Thompson Automatic Arms Corp.,” New York Times, June 18, 1940, p. 35. On Auto-Ordnance, see “Arms, Ammunition Plants Run at Full Speed Ahead,” Hartford Courant, Jan. 5, 1941, p. D14; and “More Defense Contracts Announced; Total $18,848,038,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 15, 1941, p. 3. On Russell Maguire, see “Biographical Sketch,” 6. Drew Pearson, “The Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Nov. 2, 1942, p. 7. 5 “Thompson Estate Fights Dividend,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 1940, p. 48; “Thompson Suit Dropped,” ibid., March 5, 1941, p. 31. “Biographical Sketch,” 4–10. 6 Robert Tompkins, “He's a Millionaire by Intuition,” Hartford Courant, Sept. 2, 1945, p. 4; “Miss Boissevain, Elizabeth Maguire Presented Together,” New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 24, 1950, p. 23; “The Young, in the Clouds,” Vogue, 116 (Dec. 1950), 93; “J. Russell Maguire, 67, Is Dead; An Industrialist and a Financier,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1966, p. 43. On Ezra Pound, see Harry Golden, “Ezra Pound and Anti-Semitism,” Carolina Quarterly, 12 (Winter 1959), 25–27. For an example of a comment from Robert McCormick, in which he worries that Marie Norton Harriman (the wife of recently named administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe W. Averell Harriman) is “a Jewess,” see Robert R. McCormick to Gen. C[harles] A. Willoughby, July 30, 1948, box 7, Ms-024: Papers of Major General Charles A. Willoughby (Special Collection and College Archives Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pa.). Albert Jay Nock, “The Jewish Problem in America,” Atlantic, 167 (June 1941), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1941/06/the-jewish-problem-in-america/306268/; “Expose of Nock,” American Israelite, Aug. 14, 1941, p. 4. 7 “Biographical Sketch,” 11. Joseph Fronczak, “The Fascist Game: Transnational Political Transmissions and the Genesis of the U.S. Modern Right,” Journal of American History, 105 (Dec. 2018), 563–88; Merwin K. Hart, America Look at Spain (New York, 1939); Gail Quentin Unruh, “Ultraconservative Distortion: Merwin K. Hart and the National Economic Council” (M.A. thesis, University of Oregon, 1981), 41. There is a robust historiographical debate about the origins of the Spanish Civil War and whether or not the Francisco Franco regime can be fairly characterized as fascist, but recent work on the Spanish Civil War has emphasized the fascist dimension. See Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London, 2012). On Merwin K. Hart's involvement with Charles Coughlin and the Christian Front, see Merwin Hart subject file (Anti-Defamation League archives); and “12,000 at Rally Demand Strict U.S. Neutrality,” New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 20, 1939, p. 2. On Coughlin and his political influence, see Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York, 1982); and Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, Father of Hate Radio (New York, 1996). On Hart and the 1924 Immigration Act, see Hart subject file. 8 Lawrence Dennis to Harry A. Jung, July 4, 1953, box 2, Lawrence Dennis Papers, 1921–1975 (Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.); U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee on Lobbying Activities, Hearings before the Select Committee on Lobbying Activities, 81 Cong., 2 sess., June 6, 20, 21, 28, 1950, pp. 257, 270, 299, 363; “Biographical Sketch,” 11. 9 Adam Laats, The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), 123–84. See Heather Hendershot, Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line (New York, 2016), 3–7. On Fred Schwarz's American Mercury output, see Fred Schwarz, “Five Basic Steps to Communism,” American Mercury, 84 (Feb. 1957), 143–46. William Bradford Huie to Irving Lieberman and Malcolm Logan, June 9, 1953, Maguire subject file. Allen A. Zoll, They Want Your Child! The Real Meaning of Federal “Aid” to Education (New York, 1949). 10 On military intelligence as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, see Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York, 2000). On John O. Beaty, see Paul F. Boller Jr., Memoirs of an Obscure Professor (Fort Worth, 1992), 1–9; “S.M.U. Professor Accused by Board of Anti-Semitism,” Harvard Crimson, June 17, 1954, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1954/6/17/smu-professor-accused-by-board-of/; and Harold Lord Varney, “Southern Methodist University Pampers Leftism,” American Mercury, 90 (Jan. 1960), 16–22. Douglas MacArthur used the term iron curtain over America to describe the “socialist” tendencies of the Truman administration. “MacArthur Cites Threat of ‘Creeping Sabotage,’” Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 14, 1951, p. 7; John O. Beaty, The Iron Curtain over America (Dallas, 1951), 18, 25; Henry Edward Schultz to Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, Oct. 4, 1955, box 2, Buckley Papers; Henry Regnery to William F. Buckley Sr., Dec. 30, 1952, box 2, Henry Regnery Papers (Hoover Institution Archives); Allen Lesser, “Cross Section U.S.A.: Foot-Noted Hate,” Jewish Advocate, Oct. 9, 1952, p. 14; Milton Friedman, “National Spotlight: Echoes of ‘Mein Kampf,’” ibid., April 24, 1952, p. 8. James Rorty, “The Native Anti-Semite's ‘New Look’: His Present ‘Line’ and His Prospects,” Commentary, 17 (Nov. 1954), 413–21. This Milton Friedman, a staff journalist for the Jewish Advocate, was unrelated to the economist of the same name. 11 On the wartime prosecutions of right-wing activists, see Ribuffo, Old Christian Right, 178–224. On the debates over displaced persons, see Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust: The Evolution of a United States Displaced Persons Policy, 1945–1950 (New York, 1982); and Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York, 1994), 150–74. 12 “Trouble for the Mercury,” Time, Dec. 8, 1952, p. 44; “Number Three for Mercury,” ibid., Dec. 15, 1952, p. 61; “Shakeup at Mercury Follows Exposé Story,” Exposé, 2 (Jan. 1953), 1; William F. Buckley Jr. to Dr. John O. Beaty, Dec. 17, 1954, box 1, Buckley Papers; William F. Buckley Jr. to Russell Maguire, July 13, 1955, box 3, ibid. On Gerald L. K. Smith, see Ralph McGill, “Gerald Smith Warbles Tune Familiar to South,” Atlanta Constitution, July 19, 1944, p. 10. William F. Buckley Jr. to Mrs. Mary Driscoll [a secretary to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy], Dec. 29, 1954, box 2, Buckley Papers; and “Col. Lindbergh on Ickes List of 5th Columnists,” New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 21, 1940, p. 24. 13 “Thunder on Both Sides,” Newsweek, Feb. 2, 1953, p. 76. 14 W. M. Lauderdale, “Fdr: Tragedy at Yalta,” American Mercury, 76 (July 1953), 30–34; Leslie Gould, “S.E.C.: A Good Idea Gone Wrong,” American Mercury, ibid., 51–56, esp. 52; James Andrew Mayer, “A Unique Challenge to Private Enterprise,” ibid., 107–10; Richard Rendell, “Bastion of the Orient,” ibid., 97–106; Victoria Suddard, “The Lost Art of Kite-Flying,” ibid., 95–96. 15 W. G. Lipsett, “The Mystery of Zimbabwe,” ibid., 79 (Dec. 1954), 111–15. Manning Johnson, “Negro Rebellion Is Still the Aim of Reds,” ibid., 80 (Feb. 1955), 97–102. A. Desmond Burridge, “Some Racial Truths about South Africa,” ibid., 83 (Dec. 1956), 5–14, esp. 8. 16 Alice Widener, “Who's Running the Ford Foundation?,” ibid., 76 (June 1953), 3–7, esp. 7; Harold Lord Varney, “Can a Socialist Be an Anti-Communist?,” ibid., 78 (March 1954), 89–94, esp. 89; Chesly Manly, “Sulzbergerism,” ibid., 79 (July 1954), 17–22; William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (Washington, 1954), 333. In private correspondence to others on the right, Buckley would occasionally lapse into rhetoric about the “Communist-Socialist-Liberal movement.” See William F. Buckley Jr. to Marcella M. DuPont, Nov. 17, 1954, box 2, Buckley Papers; and William F. Buckley Jr. to Walter E. Ditmars, Jan. 12, 1956, ibid. Robert E. Vahey, “Anti-Anti-Communism,” American Mercury, 79 (Aug. 1954), 103–6, esp. 105, 106. 17 Gayle B. Montgomery, One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland (Berkeley, 1998), 194; William F. Knowland, “Peace—with Honor,” National Review, 1 (Nov. 1955), 9–13. “Senator Knowland Answers Twenty Questions on Foreign Policy,” American Mercury, 81 (Oct. 1955), 5–11, esp. 7. 18 J. B. Matthews, “Reds and Our Churches,” American Mercury, 77 (July 1953), 3–14, esp. 3; Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (Lexington, Ky., 1970), 231; “J. B. Matthews Quits Post as Red Prober,” Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1953, pp. 1, 6; Williams, God's Own Party, 38–43; and Markku Ruotsila, “Carl McIntire and the Fundamentalist Origins of the Christian Right,” Church History, 81 (June 2012), 378–407. On the development of a common antisecular identity among Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants, see Neil J. Young, We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics (New York, 2016); and Benjamin Schultz, “Is Everybody Anti-Semitic?,” American Mercury, 79 (July 1954), 137–42. 19 Russell Maguire, “In the Mercury's Opinion: Come to the Cross,” American Mercury, 82 (June 1956), 97; Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, Mass., 2014), 207–31, 293–325. 20 Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (New York, 1979), 229–31; “Heads Graham Fund,” New York Herald Tribune, July 25, 1953, p. 20. Billy Graham, “Satan's Religion,” American Mercury, 79 (Aug. 1954), 41–46. Billy Graham's association with Maguire is all the more remarkable given that Graham cultivated a reputation as a moderate on racial integration, drawing a deliberate contrast with fundamentalist ministers such as Carl McIntire and Billy James Hargis. See Steven P. Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia, 2009); and Williams, God's Own Party. 21 “Publisher's Statement,” National Review, Nov. 19, 1955, p. 5; Heather Hendershot, What's Fair on the Air? Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest (Chicago, 2011), 26–28. 22 Bogus, Buckley, 61; William F. Buckley Jr., “In Search of Anti-Semitism,” National Review, Dec. 30, 1991, pp. 20–62; William F. Buckley Jr. to William F. Buckley Sr., n.d., box 118, Buckley Papers. Albert J. Nock was a frequent luncheon guest at the Buckley household in the early 1940s. Bogus, Buckley, 67–69; William F. Buckley Sr. to Albert J. Nock, May 15, 1941, box 118, Buckley Papers; William F. Buckley Jr. to Robert H. W. Welch Jr., July 4, 1955, box 2, ibid.; and William F. Buckley Jr. to Ed Gossett, Dec. 13, 1954, ibid. 23 Ralph de Toledano to William F. Buckley Jr., Sept. 19, 1955, box 2, Buckley Papers; “Blowup at the Mercury,” Time, Oct. 3, 1955, p. 72; “Jenner Sees Fight on Reds Flagging,” New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 24, 1955, p. 5; “Top Editors of Mercury Staff Quit in Reported Dispute over Policies,” Hartford Courant, Sept. 24, 1955, p. 7A. 24 “Memoirs of William La Varre as Editor-in-Chief of the American Mercury Magazine, 1957–1958,” 1977, p. 98, box 3, William La Varre Papers (Hoover Institution Archives); Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, 1956), 90–93; “New Distributors for Time, Inc., List,” New York Times, June 15, 1955, p. 50; William F. Buckley Jr. to Roy M. Cohn, Aug. 19, 1957, box 1, Buckley Papers. 25 Roy Cohn was Jewish, but, according to those in his orbit, he had no problem associating with anti-Semites. Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn (New York, 1988), 333, 369–70; “Charges American Mercury with Bias,” Jewish Advocate, June 13, 1957, p. 1; “Memoirs of William La Varre as Editor-in-Chief of the American Mercury Magazine,” 32. “Money Made Mysterious,” written by Paul Stevens (a likely pseudonym of Maguire's), first began appearing in the American Mercury in November 1956 and continued intermittently through 1958. 26 “Memoirs of William La Varre as Editor-in-Chief of the American Mercury Magazine,” 40–51, esp. 43. 27 Ibid., 101; Russell Maguire, “In the Mercury's Opinion: The Gravestones of 1913,” American Mercury, 85 (Aug. 1957), 103–4, esp. 104. Emphasis in original. 28 C. F. Hood to Maguire, Dec. 19, 1957, box 6, La Varre Papers; C. M. White to Maguire, Dec. 24, 1957, ibid.; E. S. Bowerfind to Maguire, Dec. 24, 1957, ibid.; E. E. Moore to Maguire, March 21, 1958, ibid.; Russell Maguire, “In the Mercury's Opinion,” American Mercury, 86 (Feb. 1958), 85–86; Fronczak, “Fascist Game,” 587; W. H. Lawrence, “Knowland Backers in East Pay for Anti-Reuther Tract,” New York Times, Sept. 14, 1958, p. 1. On Charles White, see Irving Bernstein, The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1940 (Boston, 1969), 516. On corporate support for the American Right, see Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2009), 26–53. Interestingly, Jasper Crane, a former vice president at DuPont and the major backer of the Mont Pelerin Society, initially expressed misgivings about backing the venture under the impression that founder Friedrich Hayek was Jewish. 29 Ralph de Toledano, “The Walter Reuther Story,” American Mercury, 76 (May 1953), 3–13, esp. 11; “Memoirs of William La Varre as Editor-in-Chief of the American Mercury Magazine,” 264–66; William F. Knowland, “Labor Should Be Free in Our Republic,” American Mercury, 86 (March 1958), 5–9, esp. 7. Emphasis in original. 30 “Memoirs of William La Varre as Editor-in-Chief of the American Mercury Magazine,” 366–67. 31 Harold Lord Varney, “Meet Senator Talmadge: The New Voice of the South,” American Mercury, 86 (Feb. 1958), 7–17. 32 “Mercury Warned You,” ibid., (Dec. 1958), 83–87. Russell Maguire, “In the Mercury's Opinion: The Forces of Darkness,” ibid., 88 (Jan. 1959), 110–11. 33 William F. Buckley Jr. to Karl Hess, Jan. 9, 1957, box 2, Buckley Papers; William F. Buckley Jr. to L. Brent Bozell, Dec. 15, 1959, box 9, ibid.; William F. Buckley Jr. to Senator William F. Knowland, Feb. 26, 1958, box 5, ibid. 34 Ralph de Toledano, “This We Face,” American Mercury, 88 (April 1959), 38–46. Ralph de Toledano, “Nixon: The Man and His Politics,” ibid., (May 1959), 5–16; William F. Buckley Jr., confidential memorandum to writers for National Review, April 1, 1959, box 7, Buckley Papers. 35 Willoughby to American Jewish Committee, Aug. 15, 1960, box 1, series 1, Rg-23: Papers of Major General Charles A. Willoughby, Usa, 1947–1973 (MacArthur Memorial Archives and Library, MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk, Va.). “The National Review Scolds MERCURY Writers,” American Mercury, 89 (July 1959), 151–52, esp. 152. 36 T. M. Morse to William F. Buckley Jr., June 5, 1959, box 7, Buckley Papers. Emphasis added. Ethel M. Morse to William F. Buckley Jr., June 7, 1959, ibid.; Father Thomas Murphy to William F. Buckley Jr., June 4, 1959, ibid.; John Hoar to William F. Buckley Jr., June 4, 1959, ibid.; Chain letter, ibid. 37 Mulloy, World of the John Birch Society, 8–9; Unruh, “Ultraconservative Distortion,” iv. On Buckley and Goldwater in the press, see “Republican Mayor Says Goldwater Is a ‘Fascist,’” New York Times, July 19, 1964, p. 57. William F. Buckley Jr. to Oliver, Feb. 10, 1960, box 11, Buckley Papers. William F. Buckley Jr., “The Question of Robert Welch,” National Review, Feb. 13, 1962, pp. 83–88. For Buckley's personal reminiscences on the l'affaire Bircher, see William F. Buckley Jr., “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me,” Commentary, March 2008, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/goldwater-the-john-birch-society-and-me; Perlstein, Before the Storm, 154–56, 476–77; and Felzenberg, Man and His Presidents, 131–55. 38 “American Mercury Is Sold to Texans,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 1962, p. 58. “Adl Reports Hatemongers Are with Wallace Campaign,” Jewish Advocate, Sept. 26, 1968, p. A16. George Lincoln Rockwell, This Time the World (New York, 1961), 102–7; Bernard Nath to Arnold Forster, July 11, 1961, Maguire subject file; and Forster to Maguire, July 5, 1961, ibid. 39 Paul E. Gottfried and Richard B. Spencer, eds., The Great Purge: The Deformation of the Conservative Movement (Arlington, 2015); Buckley, “In Search of Anti-Semitism,” 25. The full extent of the relationship between Joseph Sobran and Buckley is unclear, given that the files related to Sobran and anti-Semitism in Buckley's personal papers are restricted. On Patrick Buchanan, see Pat Buchanan, “Ivan the Terrible—More Doubts,” New York Post, March 17, 1990, p. 15; Richard Bernstein, “The Roots of a Populist Who Would Be President,” New York Times, March 24, 1996, p. 1; and Richard Lacayo, “The Case against Buchanan,” Time, March 4, 1996, pp. 25–29. © The Author 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The Right-Wing Popular Front: The Far Right and American Conservatism in the 1950s
JF - Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jaaa182
DA - 2020-09-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-right-wing-popular-front-the-far-right-and-american-conservatism-lA6F0Mojmc
SP - 411
EP - 432
VL - 107
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
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