“Will the Jungle Take Over?”National Reviewand the Defense of Western Civilization in the Era of Civil Rights and African Decolonization

Abstract

During the 1950s and 1960s, conservative intellectuals in the United States described African decolonization and the civil rights movement as symptoms of a global threat to white, Western civilization. In the most influential conservative journal of the period, National Review, writers such as William F. Buckley grouped these events together as dangerous contributors to civilizational decline. In the crucible of transnational black revolt, some conservative intellectuals embraced scientific racism in the 1960s. These often-ignored features of conservative intellectual thought provided space for white supremacist ideals to continue to ferment on the American right into the twenty-first century.