Stop Fawning: Buckley was a Racist and a Homophobe

Just some things to remember about William f. Buckley:

"Mr. Buckley worked as a freelance writer and lecturer and wrote a second book with his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell. Published in 1954, “McCarthy and His Enemies” was a sturdy defense of the senator from Wisconsin who was then at the height of his campaign against communists, liberals and the Democratic Party. The book made The New York Times best-seller list." (Emphasis mine.) - New York Times

The magazine that William F. Buckley started, The National Review, "[Lined] up squarely behind Southern segregationists, saying Southern whites had the right to impose their ideas on blacks who were as yet culturally and politically inferior to them. After some conservatives objected, Mr. Buckley suggested instead that both uneducated whites and blacks should be denied the vote." - New York Times


For a long time he approved of racial segregation, though later he seems to have come to understand that this would conflict with his stylish image. He continued to write with gross insensitivity about Africans. He was openly homophobic, and when Aids first appeared, he suggested that gay men should be tattooed on the buttocks. The Guardian