Thomas Fleming (political writer)

Thomas Fleming was awarded a doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing his dissertation on Attic lyric poetry, and until joining a series of conservative groups, taught Latin at a small, private middle school in South Carolina.[1] In addition to editing, Fleming writes on topics concerning the literature of pagan Greece as well as political issues.

Fleming was introduced to the paleoconservative public by Robert W. Whitaker of South Carolina in 1982. At that time, he was invited to contribute to Whitaker's book, The New Right Papers,[2] which put together ways whereby conservative populists could be elected to office through an alliance of people from both parties in the Republican Party. Whitaker later joined the Reagan administration as a junior member.

Now a recognized name in the conservative movement of the region where he lived, Fleming became a founding member and board member of the League of the South, from which he later resigned when controversy arose, as well as an affiliated scholar of its educational arm, the League of the South Institute.[3] He was the founding editor of the Southern Partisan magazine, started in 1979, until he left when controversy arose there as well. In 1985, after the death of author Leopold Tyrmand, Fleming became editor of Chronicles Magazine, and in 1988 co-wrote The Conservative Movement with Paul Gottfried.

As of June 2015, Thomas Fleming is retired as editor of Chronicles magazine.[4] As of the July 2015 issue of Chronicles, the magazine's former Senior Editor For Books, Chilton Williamson Jr., is currently editor for the publication.[5] Fleming continues to occasionally contribute articles to Chronicles.

Fleming has made several controversial statements regarded by some as racist in nature, although he denies that he and most paleoconservatives support racism. Examples of incendiary comments include the following statements taken from his columns in Chronicles:

• "In South Africa and Rhodesia, it is hard to understand the position taken by English liberals whose efforts on behalf of Africans reached entirely predictable conclusions. In the post War South, a very basic struggle was engaged between Whites and Blacks. The old Bourbons—who were hardly less racist than the populists who succeeded them—made some attempt to protect the interests of Black people, especially the small middle class and those whose families had been attached to them. There was also a sense of noblesse oblige. These honorable sentiments, however, seemed a bit antiquated in the midst of Reconstruction, and the ill effects of the Second Reconstruction, still being experienced in acute form in most of the USA, is a warning against social revolution."[11]
• "What is racial profiling, if not an acknowledgment that different racial and ethnic groups are statistically more likely than other groups to engage in different sorts of illegal behavior. The Irish, who have a genetic weakness for alcohol, are too prone to get into fights, while Sicilians and South Italians have demonstrated an amazing ability to organize extortion, protection, prostitution, and gambling rackets. When O.J. Simpson kills a white woman or engages in other violent acts, he is simply living up to a statistical stereotype that informs us that African Americans, who make up less than 15% of the population, commit roughly 50% of violent crimes. And, O.J. is as exemplary a representative of his group's criminality as Bernie Madoff, John Gotti, Mohammed Atta, and Joaquin 'El Chapo' Loera Guzman (a billionaire Mexican drug lord who made the exclusive Forbes list in 2009) are of theirs."[12]

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Fleming as a key intellectual in what it calls the "neo-Confederate" movement.[13] In a 2002 article on the paleoconservative trend in right wing politics, the SPLC stated: "While mainstream neo-conservatives are tight with the GOP, so-called paleocon intellectuals have carved a niche for themselves as staunch, old-right traditionalists who romanticize the pre-civil rights era South. Fleming, who is Chronicles' editor, has gone so far as to describe the 19th century Ku Klux Klan as a 'national liberation army.'"[14]

Fleming has strenuously denied these allegations, writing:

It is an easy trick of propaganda to portray all natural affections in the dark colors of prejudice. Why would anyone like the South if it were not for slavery and Jim Crow? Who but an antisemite objects to the slaughter of the (semitic) Palestinians? Only a communist or a Jew would oppose the Führer. . . .

The average American does have a conservative heart, but his mind has been so addled by bad teachers, bad books, and bad ideas that he often feels guilty if he prefers to limit his charity to his neighbors, if he resents the money squandered on public schools, if he does not share in the general glee over the massive immigration that is transforming the country of his fathers into something he cannot recognize. He is easily intimidated when the left condemns this vague, inchoate mixture of family loyalty and patriotism as the bigotry of the "extreme right." In fact, the ultraleft Southern Poverty Law Center is always railing against "right-wing extremism," by which they mean everyone to the right of The New Republic—up to and including Matthew Hale. . . .

Why should any conservative care if he is attacked by the leftists of the SPLC and ADL or those of the New York Times? These people have lies in their mouths, blood on their hands for the great genocides of the 20th century, and guilt on their consciences for the seduction of the innocent and the destruction of our civilization. Our task, as our late friend Mel Bradford put it, is to remember who we are and stop our ears against the siren songs of the revolutionists, which have proved to be not the anthems of a new dawn but a message of hate and filth that leads to destruction.[15]

• "Old Rights and New Right" in The New Right Papers, Robert W. Whitaker, Ed. (1982) ISBN 0-312-56927-0.
• The Conservative Movement (1988, with Paul Gottfried) ISBN 0-8057-9724-6.
• West Point: Blue and Grey (1988) ISBN 1-59687-356-6.
• The Politics of Human Nature (1993) ISBN 1-56000-693-5.
• Fleming, Thomas (2002). Montenegro: The Divided Land. Rockford, Illinois: Chronicles Press. ISBN 9780961936495.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition (2004) ISBN 0-8262-1509-2.
• Socialism (2007) ISBN 0-7614-2632-9.