Buckley on Sobran
21st March 2025
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Joe Sobran is arguably the first person hurled into the void in a process that eventually was called cancel culture. His primary sins were skepticism about Israel as our greatest ally and suspicions about the motivations of the neocons. It was the neocons who successfully campaigned to have Sobran branded a heretic and run out of the conservative movement.
Looking back four decades on, you see all the ingredients for what became a widespread form of domestic terrorism in the last decade. Interestingly, all of it is in what Bill Buckley thought was his best book. It is a collection of his essays on the topic of antisemitism, as well as his famous finking on friends like Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan at the request of his new benefactors.
Reading Buckley’s version of the Sobran affair, what comes through is that all politics in a democracy are theater. Buckley felt he had to debase himself, his friends and even his own family in order to remain on the stage. The reason for that is the stage managers had an agenda that agenda was anathema to the human spirit and traditions conservatism allegedly represented.
Buckley and his crew originated the current trend of what one might call ‘DavidFrenchism’ among purported conservatives in public media. The poster child for this trend is, of course, William Kristol, whose Kristol Krew at The Bulwark are among the best friends the ‘Invade the World Invite the World’ crowd ever had.