Know Your Enemy - In Search of Anti-Semitism (w/ John Ganz)

John Ganz returns to discuss William F. Buckley's 1992 book "In Search of Anti-Semitism."

Duration: 1h 12m
Broadcast on: 13 Oct 2023
Audio Format: other

In a 1991, William F. Buckley, Jr. dedicated almost an entire issue of National Review to an essay entitled "In Search of Anti-Semitism." In its pages, Buckley attempted to adjudicate a conflict that was then roiling America's right wing intelligentsia — over whether two of its leading lights, Pat Buchanan and Joseph Sobran, were guilty of antisemitism in their syndicated columns and speeches. (Never one to miss an opportunity to antagonize an enemy or blame the left, Buckley threw in Gore Vidal for good measure.) The article, despite its meandering prose and fuzzy-headed conclusions, sparked an enormous response from NR's readership, some of whom felt Buckley was too hard on Pat and Joe, others who thought he was not hard enough.

The following year, Buckley combined the essay, several of the responses, and a few new thoughts of his own... and sold it as a "book." And thirty-one years later, we read that book — carefully — and recorded a podcast about it with our friend John Ganz, author of the forthcoming book, When the Clock Broke, about the derangement of American politics in the 1990s. (You can pre-order it here. It's sure to be excellent).

Unfortunately for us all, In Search of Anti-Semitism is not a good book; it's hardly a book at all. But it is a fascinating artifact of a fleeting post-Cold War moment in which conservatives furtively faced their own demons — before turning right back around.

For those interested, here is the link mentioned in the episode's introduction for tickets to Dissent's 70th anniversary event later this month.

Sources:

William F. Buckley Jr., In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992)

John Ganz, "The Year the Clock Broke," The Baffler, Nov 2018

Joshua Muravchik, "Pat Buchanan and the Jews," Commentary, Jan 1991

Matthew Sitman, "There Will Be No Buckley Revival," Commonweal, July 2015

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

All right. Welcome listeners to episode 80 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sippman, your podcast co-host. And I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam Otherbell. Hey, Sam. Hi, Matt. I'm not gonna ask how you're doing because it's been a lousy few days. Really, truly has. We're recording this intro Tuesday, October 10th for an episode we recorded on Sunday, Sunday evening with our great friend, John Gans, who will say more about in a moment. And it was an episode we'd actually had planned for weeks about a pretty lousy 1992 book published by William of Buckley Jr. called In Search of Antisemitism. It was occasioned by the antisemitic comments and writing of a senior editor at National Review, Joe Sobren, Pat Buchanan's also in this book. It's basically one of the sort of signal moments of Buckley supposedly playing his role as the kind of arbiter of conservative polite politics. The hygiene of the conservative movement. Yeah, right. The establishing of guard rails. Though what you find when you read the book is that he really does an awful job of wrestling with the question of antisemitism and the neocons and Israel, which is what he set out to do in the book. But to have that conversation about that book and about that episode of the 1990s, we had our great friend, John Gans, back on the podcast. That's right. He's been on some bonus episodes more recently. But way back near the start of the podcast, we had John on to talk about some of the paleo cons who, you know, are in the mix in this episode too. And John has a sub-stack unpopular front that I love. We'll have the link in the show notes. But for our purposes too, his book about 1992 based on his Baffler essay of 2018, The Year the Clock Broke. That book, it'll be out next year. And you're able to preorder it now. So we will have a link to that book in the show notes. And we were really glad John came on the podcast to talk about this because he was a great guest for this particular topic. Nobody knows the fine-grained intra-conservative debates of the early '90s better than John Gans now. So he was perfect for this. And because we recorded this on Sunday and because it was about a particular text from 30 years ago now, we did not take up what's happening in Israel and Palestine right now. But listeners, you can draw some of your own conclusions about its relevance. Yeah. I wanted to say that we sort of talked about whether it would make sense to try to connect what this episode was about and what we intended for it to be about in the early '90s to what's happening now. But we just decided not to because it's too complicated and the situations are different. But I did want to say that there may be future episodes where we talk about how the American right is responding to the crisis, both the attack on Israel, by Hamas, but also the war that Israel's now waging. My timeline is full of pretty awful things that the American right is saying, vicious, dehumanizing, war-mongering things. And I think it will be worth talking about that as this conflict continues. But I did have a few simple things to say just because this has been the thing that so many people on the left have been talking about for the past few days, not surprisingly. And maybe these will be helpful for listeners and maybe they won't be. But I just wanted to say that I really do think that the war that Israel's government is now waging in Gaza is not going to bring peace. Only the end of apartheid and occupation can do that. But saying so is not an apology for Hamas's horrific attack on civilians. And I think probably very few of our listeners need to hear this. But for those of them who do, I want to say that you're not required to be a good leftist or to be a good Jew to harden your heart to the suffering of innocent people. You know, whether they're Israeli or Palestinian, I actually think your humanity requires the opposite thing. I certainly agree with that, Sam. And I don't have anything to add. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone who's suffering there right now. Yeah, me too. Housekeeping. Housekeeping. As always, we're grateful to our partners at Descent. They sponsor the podcast. And one thing they do for us is if you subscribe to Know Your Enemy on our Patreon, patreon.com/ Know Your Enemy. For $10 a month, you get a free digital subscription to Descent. And of course, for $5 a month, you get access to all of our bonus episodes. And we've had some good ones lately, I must say. And in particular, since I mentioned Descent, I wanted to say, some of you will remember I'm on Descent's editorial board. And the magazine is having an important anniversary this year. It's the 70th anniversary of Descent this month in Washington DC, October 25th.

Transcription truncated.

John Ganz returns to discuss William F. Buckley's 1992 book "In Search of Anti-Semitism."