Beware the "History" Written by Continetti

 Since Matthew Continetti suffers from the severe handicap of being the son-in-law of Wm. Kristol, we should not be too hard on him.  Nonetheless, Continetti's book "The Right" is a seriously-flawed "history" which should be approached with the same caution one uses in examining the pronouncements of Anthony Fauci.

Paul Gottfried has a few examples which he draws from a WaPo review of the book.

....According to the Post, “Continetti tells a story of conservatism that has often been marked by an elite inability or unwillingness to police extremism, and at times an active embrace of it.” Moreover, “in Continetti’s telling, those events partly represented long-festering tendencies inside the movement and the GOP. When racist, white supremacist and alt-right elements sought to violently overturn democracy, he writes, ‘all of the unreason and hatred that had been slowly growing in the body of the Right burst into the open.’”...

Oh.  Well, that took a while!  Or did it?

...Supposedly these telltale tendencies did not first emerge in the last few years. Repeatedly falling prey to its own extremism, ”the right’s noninterventionist streak during the lead-up to World War II too easily collapsed into Charles Lindbergh’s antisemitism and flirtation with Nazism. The anti-communism of the 1950s too easily shaded into support for Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts.”...

Both those accusations are seriously fact-challenged, as we've come to expect from anyone close to Kristol and his claque.

 ...For example: Conservative anti-Communism did not collapse into “McCarthyite witch hunts.” Many of those whom the late Wisconsin senator accused of being Communist collaborators or unreliable government workers for security reasons, were exactly what McCarthy and congressmen of both parties stated they were. Not only the conservative researcher M. Stanton Evans but the more centrist historian Arthur Herman demonstrates that the investigations of McCarthy and his colleagues were usually something more than “witch hunts,” although these hearings were not always conducted as dispassionately as they might have been....

Continetti also smears the America First movement with asinine accusations about 'Nazi/anti-Semite ideology.  Well, then, John F Kennedy was anti-Semite?  Hamilton Fish?  

It's likely that Continetti's 'historical' knowledge about the entire America First movement was colored by the fact that PJ Buchanan ran an "America First" campaign--and PJ made it clear that a certain foreign country in the Middle East had an inordinate amount of influence on US foreign policy.  Kristol & Co. reacted with the most serious smear-and-destroy campaign in recent history--save that leveled against Donald Trump.  Is it just coincidence that Buchanan's campaign was also Populist--like Trump's--and that both figures are being figuratively assassinated by the NeoCons:  Kristol, Continetti, Sykes, Lowry, et. al.?

It is said that 'history is written by the winners.'  We think Continetti (et al) are premature in their writings insofar as they have not really "won"; in fact, their recent screeching tells the observant citizen that they know they're on the losing end of the Kulturkampf.

In brief:  Nice try, sonny.