At a recent dinner, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts toasted Paul Gottfried, the editor of a magazine that has published writers accused of espousing white supremacism.
In his remarks, he spoke against “heritage Americans … [repudiating] their heritage.” He referred to Gottfried as having been “exiled” from conservatism but now being part of an “ascendant” movement.
Gottfried is a historian and a self-described paleoconservative who has criticized the mainstream conservative movement for what he says are failures to protect a traditionalist Judeo-Christian view of American life and stop the rise of multiculturalism. Paleoconservatism is a right-wing ideology that seeks to combat internationalism and multiculturalism.
He may be most famous for coining the term “alternative right” in a 2008 speech, in which he castigated conservatives who had “become so terrified by those on their left that they pretend not to notice the stark fact of human cognitive disparities.”
“The fact that not everyone enjoys the same genetic precondition for learning is irrelevant for this politically motivated experiment in wishful thinking,” Gottfried said at the time.
In his remarks at a recent dinner in honor of Gottfried’s magazine, Chronicles, Roberts praised Gottfried for criticizing “the antidiscrimination regime” and called him “one of the sages of our age.”
In 2021, Gottfried took over as editor of Chronicles, a monthly magazine with a stated mission of “defending the traditions and history of America and the West.” The magazine has published many far-right figures, including Sam Francis, a former adviser to Pat Buchanan who used the magazine to praise former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for defending “the American Way of Life,” and Thomas Fleming, a founding member of the neo-Confederate group the League of the South.
The Southern Poverty Law Center described Chronicles as a magazine with “strong neo-Confederate ties that caters to the more intellectual wing of the white nationalist movement.”
Roberts’s remarks were posted to social media late Friday night by a Chronicles editor. The Heritage Foundation, Roberts and Chronicles did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Roberts’s four-year tenure as president of the Heritage Foundation has been marked by controversy, much of it involving a continuing argument among conservatives over whether their movement and institutions should try to bar people accused of holding racist or antisemitic views.
He referred obliquely to those disputes in his remarks praising Gottfried, denouncing “gatekeeping” by conservatives as “stupid” and a “fool’s errand.”
In recent months Roberts’s stands have led to significant staff turnover within Heritage and internal criticism of putting politics over scholarship. In November, Roberts faced calls to resignby Heritage staff members after he refused to denounce Tucker Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and antisemite. Chronicles has praised Roberts’s leadership, publishing articles supporting him during the Carlson controversy and applauding him for pushing Heritage to live up to “its commitment to conserve our Western patrimony.”
Roberts, in turn, expressed strong support for Chronicles in his remarks Friday, promising that Heritage would help the magazine “expand your reach.”
“All of the institutions that are considered to be exiled from the Republican establishment, y’all are the best friends in town,” he said.
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