Contrary to the media’s gushing commentaries on William Buckley as the
architect of modern conservatism, he was an unapologetic racial bigot.
He likened Dr. Martin Luther King with the Nazi leader, George Lincoln
Rockwell. In numerous articles in his National
Review he vigorously supported white supremacy arguing in a 1957 editorial,
“Why the South Must Prevail.” Unmoved by the lynch mob mentality of the
South, Buckley argued there exists, “a median cultural superiority of White
over Negro ... that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and
anthropologists.”
He was a vehement supporter of apartheid in South Africa, opposing
Mandela’s release from years of incarceration, famously commenting in 1985. “Where Mandela belongs, in his current frame of mind,
is precisely where he is: in jail.” He
railed on gays during his public exchanges with author, Gore Vidal. In 1986 he advocated tattooing HIV positive men, starkly
reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich with its pink triangles. He repeated this
monstrous proposal in 2005. He displayed monumental disdain for women’s
liberation describing the literature as “so stupefying awful.” Buckley was an ardent supporter of the dirty war against
Vietnam that killed millions. He described Spanish fascist dictator Franco “a
national hero.” Like his nemesis, Henry Kissinger, Buckley supported the
merchant of death merchant, Pinochet in Chile and the Argentine generals who
tortured and “disappeared” thousands.
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