William F. Buckley, a little bit of lying, and a lot of propaganda

I went back to read what Buckley had to say about AIDS in 1986, and how his techniques get used today.

Last week, I saw a tweet from Matthew Sitman, co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast and author of a very good recent Gawker piece about “anti-social conservatives.” The tweet was him jokingly contemplating entering the National Review Institute’s William F. Buckley Jr. Essay Contest.

“I’m going to submit Buckley’s 1986 NYT article saying people with AIDS should be required to get tattoos indicating that, but change all the references to Monkeypox,” Sitman tweeted.

Matthew Sitman @MatthewSitman

I’m going to submit Buckley’s 1986 NYT article saying people with AIDS should be required to get tattoos indicating that, but change all the references to Monkeypox

And while I like to consider myself pretty well-versed on the topic of conservative media in the U.S. and its history, this was one Buckley piece I hadn’t yet seen. Naturally, I decided to look it up. After reading it, I decided to do a quick analysis for the sake of the newsletter. Ready? Here goes…