Another Conservative Breaks With The 'New Hysterical Extreme Right'

[Alcibiades]

30. Thanks

I've been thinking a lot about this in the last four years. Conservative intellectuals have aided and abetted the rise of the worst sorts of demagogues, despite the fact that the conservative intellectual tradition holds demagoguery in great disdain. We have seen this before, in the 1930's, when reactionary German intellectuals such as Carl Schmitt gave themselves over to National Socialism, only to find in the space of a few years, just as Schmitt did, that the political movement they had supported had no need, use or understanding of them once they assumed power. What's jarring is that conservative intellectuals today, much like Schmitt, now express shock, surprise and umbrage at this, even though their own marginalization is entirely predictable to them, using their own understanding of Gassett's "mass man."