On the Subject of Disavowal
For 75 Years, the Right Disavowed the Right. Now the Right is Disavowing Back.
Everywhere one looks nowadays, moderate right-wingers are actively disavowing far-right-wingers. Joel Berry has disavowed Nick Fuentes. Mark Levin has disavowed Tucker Carlson. Dinesh D’Souza, not to be outdone, has disavowed Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens.
The list goes on and I’ll spare you from a full catalog of the present moment. The important thing to know is that disavowal has a long tradition on the Right. For 75 years, right-wing moderates have disavowed right-wing extremists to make sure they’re not associated with them or their beliefs. It began in 1950, when Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith disavowed Republican Senator Joe McCarthy in her “Declaration of Conscience,” leading the way for the Senate to disavow Senator McCarthy entirely in 1954.
Disavowal became formal policy in 1955, when William F. Buckley begin purging the “far right.” A prolific disavower, Buckley famously repudiated Robert Welch in 1962, Revilo Oliver in 1966, Pat Buchanan in 1991, and finally Sam Francis in 1995. Buckley’s successor, Rich Lowry, disavowed Ann Coulter in 2001, and John Derbyshire in 2012.
Disavowal reached its peak in February 2016, when the entire conservative establishment came together to disavow Donald Trump in an essay series on National Review that included posts by Glenn Beck (The Blaze), David Boaz (Cato), L. Brent Bozel III (Media Research Center), Mona Charen (National Review), Ben Domenech (The Federalist), Erick Erickson (The Resurgent), Steven F. Hayward (Reagan Professor at Pepperdine), Mark Helprin (author), Yuval Levin (National Affairs), Dana Loesch (The Blaze), William Kristol (Weekly Standard), Andrew McCarthy (National Review), David McIntosh (Club for Growth), Michael Medved (talk radio host), Edwin Meese (former Reagan admin), Russell Moore (Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of Southern Baptist Convention), Michael B. Mukasey (US Attorney General), Katie Pavlich (Townhall), John Podhoretz (Commentary), R. R. Reno (First Things), Thomas Sowell (Hoover), Cal Thomas (USA Today), R. Emmett Tyrrell (American Spectator), and Kevin D. Williamson (National Review).
This was the most coordinated political disavowal in American history, matched only perhaps by the disavowal of gamers by gamer journalists in August 2014. It was also a failure, perhaps the first great failure in the history of American right-wing self-repudiation. Even so, none of the influencers above really suffered for their disavowal of President Trump. Indeed, most eventually became pro-Trump and remained popular pundits within the Right. Here and there, a few abandoned the Right for the open arms by the Left, again with little consequence.
That’s no longer the case. In 2025, a countervailing tendency has emerged in which right-wingers now disavow the disavowers, indeed they disavow disavowal itself. It’s quite remarkable to see, and the effects of this counter-disavowal have begun to exhaust even some formidable cultural warriors. I think the dismay and frustration expressed by Joel Berry (who I like) in the post below is quite genuine:
Berry is doing what every respectable right-wing pundit has done for 75 years, but for reasons he can’t understand, he is being punished for it in ways his predecessors never were. So what changed?
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