Patrick J. Buchanan and the Death of the West

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and work of Patrick J. Buchanan, who served in three US administrations before making quixotic bids for the US presidency. He was the principal standard-bearer for paleoconservatism, and he popularized a form of politics structured around the white working-class that anticipated the 2016 Trump campaign. Buchanan’s campaigns challenged long-established elites and stressed faith in an American nation based upon a distinct white, northern European heritage. Seen thus, the nation has primacy over the market and is based upon a shared ethnicity rather than on universal principles. This starting point led Buchanan toward the white identitarianism that underpinned The Death of the West in which he contended that the nation was threatened by mass nonwhite immigration. Nonetheless, Buchanan’s efforts to popularize paleoconservative claims were out of step with political time. It took Trump’s campaign to bring the ideas associated with paleoconservatism to the forefront of politics.