9. Buchan wrote many best-selling thrillers trying to make sense of a world where British empire was constantly being challenged by mysterious forces (the Huns, the natives, the Bolsheviks). The plot often reveals a conspiracy led by evil plutocrats, sometimes (((plutocrats)))
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10. Buchan's fingerprints are all over spy fiction: his 39 Steps (which featured a Jewish conspiracy) not only filmed by Hitchcock but also basis for classic Hitchcock narrative: the man unknowingly caught in plot he doesn't understand and going on the run to escape
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11. Beyond giving Hitchcock his basic plot, Buchan's books also created the James Bond villain as we known them: the plutocrat who seeks world destruction: Goldfinger, Blofeld etc are descended from Buchan's plutocrats -- who, in his fiction often explicitly Jewish.
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12. After World War II, James Buchan fell out of fashion because his books were incredibly antisemitic and racist (lots of stuff about how childlike Natives need strong British hand to rule). His recuperation came, strangely, from Gertrude Himmelfarb, doyen of neoconservatism
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13. In 1961, writing in Encounter (then covertly funded by the CIA & edited by her husband Irving Kristol) Himmelfarb wrote a long essay arguing for the value of Buchan's work & saying his novels about global Jewish conspiracies were not so bad (just "casual" antisemitism)pic.twitter.com/KL1x9dazYm
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14. Himmelfarb's essay (as Christopher Ricks noted long ago) only makes sense in light of Encounter's cold war mission. Encounter was trying to win over British literary & aristocratic culture to American empire. Hence Himmelfarb, a distinguished US historian, celebrating Buchan
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15. Himmelfarb's whole point is that Buchan's clubby antisemitism and belief in white racial superiority were in context of orderly traditional society so not like the bad antisemitism & racism of vulgarians like Hitler.pic.twitter.com/5gBEDx5X0c
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16. Himmelfarb's celebration of Buchan is symptomatic of how & why he remains a formative culture figure (despite rampant bigotry in his work): he's the great bard of Empire & its anxieties: celebrating the daring do of a ruling class beset by hidden enemies.
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17. Himmelfarb wasn't only right-wing on right to see Buchan as an essential bulwark of traditionalism. Recently an alt-right body building journal has started serializing The 39 Steps.pic.twitter.com/zDRLAQrvoQ
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Replying to @HeerJeet
you're aware, are you, of the name of Niall Ferguson's consulting company?https://www.gmantle.com/people
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Ah, very on brand. I should have added to thread.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @dsquareddigest
Have you read Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household? I found it on my older brother's bookshelf as a kid in the late 60's, and it made my hair stand on end.
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Oh man, that book is wild!
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