In the article, I review the political theory of Samuel T. Francis who is one of the paleoconservatives in the late twentieth century. Although he was widely regarded as an editor and controversial columnist, he elaborated a distinctive theory about political strategies for the right-wing populism. My argument is that he has tried to formulate a concept of class formation and alliance in the contemporary America, which is closely associated with “race” and whiteness.
In the first section, I introduce how the American paleoconservatism was formed in the late I970s and 1980s. The conservative movement was elaborated in the sharp conflict with neoconservatism in the 1980s through the 2000s. I introduce as one example of the conflict how Reagan administration nominated William Bennett as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities rather than M.E. Bradford, a major paleocon. I also show that Patrick J. Buchanan, a staunch paleocon regarded Trump’s followers as the Middle American Radicals of whom his “friend” Sam Francis wrote when he posted an article to understand why Trump won in November 2016.
I analyze in the second section how Francis conceived the Middle American Radicals, MARs. He followed James Burnham, a former Trotskyist, and political theorist when he thought about what the contemporary state is and who rules it. According to him, the managerial class retains power in both the public sector and the private sector including mass media and universities. The federal bureaucrats have extended their ruling power over people and parts of the country when they expand public welfare programs in particular for the underclass. Francis pointed out that managerial elites have formed a class alliance with the underclass to eliminate the old bourgeois and the middle class.
He called this alliance the “sandwich strategy.” He, therefore actively asked the declining Middle Americans to raise a radical consciousness to struggle against the alliance and the managerial state.
I argue in the third section why Francis vehemently opposed mass immigration in America. I pick up the two examples in the 1980s and 1990s - Sanctuary Movement and Proposition 187 - about which he wrote many articles. His analysis was that immigrants could provide a stream into a new underclass that keeps bureaucrats in power and hegemony.
His outrage at the issue of immigration was so stern that people might feel a little confusing to understand why he unleashed his frustration on the issue. In the last section, I try to understand a theoretical relationship between the concept of MARs and that of race in his political theory. According to Francis, MARs are not a racially diverse people at all. To put it simply, they are whites. He thought that non-white immigrants were forming a race bloc to get political power and cultural hegemony over the white people. He accordingly required these white people to form their bloc to recover the white supremacy. He called it the “reconquest” of the United States. Thus his theory combined both the class consciousness and the racial consciousness in the concept of MARs.
抄録全体を表示