William Buckley Jr. was, historically, a man on the "right" side of things. Once he founded and became the editor of the 'National Review' magazine in 1955, his conservative viewpoints were supplemented by support from many conservative figureheads at the time. Buckley used this medium as a way to weaponize racial relations in the United States in favor of the conservative, white Christians living in the U.S.. According to Joseph Lowndes, associate professor of political science at the University of Oregon, "For William F. Buckley, racism was not merely a strategy to draw whites out of the Democratic Party, but a way to illustrate and advance a philosophical commitment to elite rule, social inequality, and market libertarianism". He frequently refers to white people as the "superior race" in the articles he writes. These racist and classist ideologies present themselves in full view when the Cambridge Union debate in 1965 pitted Buckley against James Baldwin, going so far as to say that progressively democratic ideas in the United States would need to be fought on the scale of World War II against Nazi Germany (James Baldwin vs William F Buckley...). Many conservatives were appalled by the direction Buckley took the political party, and declared that his weaponization of racism was not the way they wanted to proceed. Even with some protest emerging against his views, the conservative party was rebranded to include inherent racism, where it still has this partial image to this day.
"James Baldwin vs William Buckley: A legendary debate from 1965." Youtube, uploaded by Aeon Video, 13 Aug 2019,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tekah3a5wQ
Lowndes, Joseph. "William Buckley Jr.: Anti-blackness as Anti-democracy".
American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture, vol. 6, 2017. Accessed 16 Nov. 2021.