Trumpism's Prophet

On Samuel Francis’ diabolical vision

Samuel Francis speaking on July 10, 1999 at a conference on “Multiculturalism and America’s Future” (Screenshot captured from a video posted at C-Span.)

I used to work on the intellectual right, so I’ve known the name of Samuel Francis for a long time. Back when I was an editor at First Things, I associated him with Chronicles magazine, where he published many of his essays. But I didn’t take him very seriously. First Things was founded in the wake of a rather dramatic clash with the circle of writers and funders behind Chronicles, so I viewed the magazine through the lens of that conflict. We were the good guys, defending American democratic universalism (in Catholic-Christian terms); they, by contrast, were racists, xenophobes, and anti-Semites.

This impression persisted for a long time—all the way down to the opening of the Trump era, when my conservative colleague at The Week, Michael Brendan Dougherty, wrote a powerful and illuminating column about Francis as a herald of the right-wing populism that seized control of the GOP in 2016 and went on to win the White House. I learned from the essay, but I didn’t follow up by diving deeply into Francis’ writings.

That finally changed over the past month or so, as I began preparing to teach the final segment of my course at Penn on Contemporary Political Theory. The final unit in the course would be devoted to “Right-Populist Reaction.” Though the students would read bits of Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Christopher Rufo, I wanted to start them off with some Francis. But what to assign?

I asked John Ganz, my favorite lefty Substacker, for some advice. Ganz’s excellent forthcoming book on the early 1990s refers to Francis at several points, so I asked for suggested readings. He gave me the name of two Chronicles essays: “Beautiful Losers” from 1991 and “Nationalism, Old and New” from 1992.

Reading and teaching them has been a revelation.

The Old Right Reborn