The Future of The American Conservative, and the Future of American Conservatism

Is The American Conservative magazine finished, and if so, what does that bode for the future of American conservatism?

Over the past month, multiple well-placed sources in and close to The American Conservative (TAC) have variously informed me that: TAC is shutting down imminently; TAC’s bosses are sending out mixed signals, and will shut down soon, if their present fevered search for “angels” is unsuccessful; and TAC will shut down in the fall, at the latest. (“Angels” – my word, not theirs – is Broadway slang for backers.)

When I called TAC for a comment, a staffer went to confer with one of the bosses I sought to speak with, before coming back and telling me, “I’m sorry, there’s no one here who can help you at the moment.” I opined that I would think that his bosses would want to comment on such an important story. The staffer replied, cooly, “Well, thanks for calling.”

In trying to get answers to my questions, I e-mailed two of TAC’s co-founder/editors.

I asked Greek-born editor/gossip columnist/shipping and textiles heir, Taki Theodoracopulos, whether the report I had heard that he has so far pumped $3 million of his own money into TAC since its founding four years ago is correct, too low, or too high. Since the magazine is presently in dire financial straits, I asked him if he had cut his support of the magazine entirely, reduced it, or whether he is presently subsidizing it at the same or a higher rate than in the past, but that the publication had somehow incurred higher operating expenses, rendering his subsidy insufficient. I also asked Theodoracopulos to respond to reports that he is presently subsidizing the British publication, Right Now!, and if so, at what level. And if he is subsidizing RN, why would he pump money into a second periodical, while the periodical he helped found and for which he still writes, is in imminent danger of going under? Theodoracopulos did not respond.

I also sent an e-mail to co-founder/editor Pat Buchanan, who in March traded in the title of editor for “editor emeritus,” while founding executive editor Scott McConnell became editor-publisher. (The anonymous author of the Wikipedia entry for TAC claims that Buchanan stepped down in response to outrage among the staff over his column in support of Pres. Bush’s re-election. I have not, however, been able to determine whether there is any truth to that claim.) Buchanan artfully dodged my request, saying he was, among other things, too busy plugging his new immigration book, State of Emergency, to give me an interview on TAC. (Buchanan was very generous with his time in early 2005, when I was writing a story on the paleocon-neocon wars, specifically the censoring of paleocons at freerepublic.com, lucianne.com, and townhall.com. At the time, he sent me a comment for publication by e-mail, and then surprised me with a lengthy telephone call, during which it wasn’t always clear who was interviewing whom!)

(Note to my MND readers: my review copy of State of Emergency arrived last week. I will review this intellectual Molotov cocktail for you presently.)

* * *

It would be a shame if TAC failed, because:

It was the first major conservative magazine since National Review (NR) in 1955, which was founded not to curry favor with the powerful, but to criticize them, and seek to change their minds. Unfortunately, NR had long since turned largely into a coven of neocon court propagandists. And though TAC’s troubles might suggest otherwise, there is a healthy market for a semi-weekly magazine showcasing highbrow conservative intellectual and political writing and journalism;

2. I have a number of friends and acquaintances there, who are among America’s greatest intellectuals, and who in the face of a shutdown would have to seek elsewhere after work; and

3. I never got to sell an article there, and go through the cycle of freelancing for the magazine, enthusiastically promoting it, getting stiffed by the editor, and becoming embittered towards the rag, that I have gone through with so many other media outlets where I lacked (or lost) a “rabbi,” and so was seen by the editor as “of use” for a time, before being eventually tossed aside.

* * *

TAC (it calls itself “AMCONMAG,” but that sounds too much like “ECOMCON,” the clandestine military unit poised to take over the country in a coupe d’etat, in the movie Seven Days in May), could have been successful, by the admittedly modest standards of political magazines. It had star-power (editor-writer Pat Buchanan), a few million bucks behind it (courtesy of Taki Theodoracopulos), and a stable of brilliant writers.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans, most of them white, have been mad as hell for years about what passes for “conservative” journalism and political debate in this country. Their legions variously read, post, and send letters to hundreds of Web sites such as World Net Daily, VDARE, Free Republic, American Renaissance, Liberty Forum and Pipe Bomb News, and hundreds of blogs.

* * *

But no matter how sophisticated paper-free media have become, there’s something special about a magazine. A few magazines have sought, with mixed results, to replace National Review, as it was originally conceived.

(By the standards of the contemporary mainstream media-education complex, NR was until the late 1970s or early 1980s, a white supremacist rag. As James Lubinskas has recounted, it supported segregation and apartheid, opposed the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Civil Rights Act, and mass immigration, and routinely talked about racial differences in intelligence.)

Chronicles magazine could have served NR’s audience, but it has long been run by classicist Thomas Fleming, who while a brilliant writer and thinker (at least he was, prior to the lapse of my subscription in early 2000), is an incompetent and vindictive editor.

Under Fleming’s leadership, during the period in which I wrote for Chronicles (1992-1999), its readership shrunk from over 20,000 to just over 5,000.

(And abusing editors and stiffing writers is also no way to go through life. In 1999, managing editor Ted Pappas left Chronicles after carrying Fleming for ten years. Rather than publicly thanking Ted for his yeoman-like efforts, Fleming coldly noted in a box that Ted had left Chronicles. No thanks, no nothing.

By the way, Fleming still owes yours truly $150, for a 2,200-word, “Letter from New York” on Rudy Giuliani that he commissioned in 1999 but never ran, never formally killed, and for which he never paid me a kill fee. I managed eventually to chop up the manuscript and sell the scraps, but that has no bearing on Fleming’s obligation to me.

As best I could figure, Fleming’s stiffing of me just after Ted Pappas gave notice was a perverse form of revenge-by-proxy, like a story I once heard of a tenured academic slugging a rival’s graduate student. I guess Ted was my “rabbi” at Chronicles. You’d think the knowledge of just how vengeful writers can be would have restrained Fleming’s baser instincts.)

Middle American News, which is devoted to immigration reform but has published some work on race (i.e., mine), has over 100,000 readers, but has never had the financial backing necessary to make a big splash, and has failed to exploit the Internet.

American Renaissance (AR) has ably exploited the Internet, with a Web site that is read daily by tens of thousands of conservatives unhappy with the GOP. It is also read by conservative writers who would never admit to perusing it; yet, many of the articles they discuss or link to, clearly came from AR’s invaluable daily roundup.
And AR’s revised report, The Color of Crime, was the biggest event in American criminology last year. The MSM and academia both responded with the silence of the graveyard.

However, AR’s strength is also its weakness: It’s about race, period. It is also not, to my knowledge, lavishly funded.

* * *

Political magazines rarely turn a profit, and there is always less money for conservative than for socialist magazines. What about the Weekly Standard, you say? The Standard isn’t a conservative magazine. In any event, its $3 million-per-year subsidy (according to Steve Sailer, who writes for TAC) from Rupert Murdoch is singular, to my knowledge, in the history of political magazines.

One source tells me that TAC has only had $3 million of Taki Theodoracopulos’ money for its entire, four-year run. Conversely, editor Tina Brown ran through $70 million-$80 million of S.I. Newhouse and Harvey Weinstein’s money, respectively, in mismanaging, successively, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines, without ever being considered a failure in the slick/pc/puff magazine world.

TAC might have prospered, or at least limited its losses, had it given its readers straight talk about race, and that “humbler” approach to foreign affairs that George W. Bush had promised the electorate in 2000, and which was characteristic of the Old Right, whose spirit TAC sought to evoke. An isolationist or neo-isolationist approach would have been respected, had it been intelligently argued. Instead, TAC caved in on race, without even putting up a fight, and its foreign affairs position, rather than offering intelligent isolationism or neo-isolationism, often has amounted to little more than “Die Juden, er, neocons, sind unser Unglück!”

That’s one connection to the Old Right that is not only morally repugnant, but politically and commercially misbegotten, as well.

The attacks on the, ahem, neocons, were to give TAC’s editors the illusion that they were fearless. Straight talk on race would have replaced such illusions with real courage.

And then there is the mischief factor. As veteran journalist Tom Roeser showed on July 19, in a series of criticisms eviscerating virtually an entire issue, TAC is in the habit of taking positions matching those of the hard-left, seemingly only to pique the GOP, rather than based on any principle.

Should “angels” arrive bearing gold, their character will likely determine whether TAC continues along the editorial path it has so far trod, turns in a direction such as that which I have suggested for it, or goes yet a third way. However, should TAC be done, the legacy of its so far less than four-year run will reside in what its most talented writers go on to do. That includes whether they manage to found another conservative magazine, and if so, whether they avoid repeating the mistakes they made this time around, or give in even more to paranoid obsessions about Jews – e.g., as having done in the magazine – cowardice on race, and a penchant for mischief for mischief’s sake.

Whatever the fate of The American Conservative should be, either some enterprising, courageous, conservative editor is going to put out a mass circulation magazine providing a forum for high-brow, honest talk about America’s problems, including race, or the talk will be low-brow, and the mass media will find itself even farther distanced from one of the largest audiences of people who buy and read serious political magazines. If the media write off the Right, so too will the GOP. And the Right will likewise write off the GOP.

* * *

Yet another option beckons, however. Some thoughtful Jews who are American patriots, unapologetic supporters of Israel, and unafraid of straight talk on race and on immigration, but whom most political observers would describe as either paleoconservative or white nationalist (or worse, if that’s possible), are fed up with having to choose between the current conservative “Plan A” and “Plan B.” “Plan A” is a pro-Israel neoconservatism dominated by people who support open borders, and who in spite of their actual beliefs, are in public cowards regarding race. “Plan B” is a paleoconservatism that supports immigration restriction, but too many of whose leading lights are hostile or worse towards Judaism, and who in spite of their actual beliefs, are in public cowards regarding race.

You may be wondering how Jews can be “white nationalists,” when according to the majority of white nationalists, they aren’t even white. Beats me. But then, as a white Jew, unlike racial nationalists (white and black alike), I don’t confuse my race with a religion, or mistake my religion for a race. Maybe America’s conservative Jews will have to bail out her conservative gentiles!