THE NATIONAL STYLE
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the spring of 1962, both former Vice-President Nixon and Senator
Goldwater had already dissociated themselves from the extremist
right. Nixon repudiated the Birchites, on the premise that they were
already a political liability. Goldwater, treading more cautiously,
expressed his concern that, if not the Birchites, then their leader,
Robert Welch, may have gone too far.
Yet the future, is more murky than Rovere suggests. It is in the
very nature of an extremist movement, given its tensed posture and
its need to maintain a fever pitch, to mobilize, to be on the move, to
act. Lacking any sustained dramatic issue, it could quickly wear
itself out, as McCarthyism did. To this extent therefore, the prospects
of the radical Right depend considerably on the international situa–
tion.
If
Laos and all Vietnam were to fall to the Communists; if,
within the Western Hemisphere, the moderate regimes of Bolivia and
Venezuela were to topple and the Communists to take over-then
the radical Right could begin to rally support around a drive for
"immediate action," for a declaration of war in these areas, for a
pre-emptive strike, or similar axioms of a "hard line." And since
such conservatives as Nixon and Goldwater are committed, at least
rhetorically, to a tough anti-Communist position, they would either
be forced to go along with such an extreme policy or go under.
If
the international situation becomes stabilized, it is then likely that
the radical Right may run quickly out of steam
Yet the future is more murky than Rovere suggests.
It
is in the
still presents in a very different and less immeditae sense, a threat to
American liberties. Democratic consensus as the sorry history of Europe
has shown, is a fragile system, and if there is a lesson to be learned
from the downfall of democratic government in Italy, Austria, and
Germany, and from the deep divisions in France, it is that a crucial
turning point comes, as Juan Linz pointed out, when extremist
political parties or social movements can successfully establish "private
armies" whose resort to violence-street fightings, bombings, the
break-up of their opponents' meetings, or simply intimidation--cannot
be controlled by the elected authorities, and whose use of violence
is justified or made legitimate by the respectable elements in society.
In America, the extreme-right groups of the late 1930s-the
Coughlinites, the German-American Bund, the native fascist groups
-all sought to promote violence, but they never obtained legitimate
