The Reactionary Loyalties of John Lukacs (Reconsideration I) (Critical Essay) (Biography)

IN THE DUEL, A RIVETING account of Churchill's confrontation with Hitler in the spring and summer of 1940, John Lukacs wrote that "Churchill was the opponent of Hitler, the incarnation of the reaction to Hitler, the incarnation of the resistance of an old world, of old freedoms, of old standards against a man incarnating a force that was frighteningly efficient, brutal and new. Few things are as wrong as the tendency to see Hitler as a reactionary. He was the very antithesis of that. The true reactionary was Churchill." (1) In only a few sentences, Lukacs here revealed much about himself, especially to those who esteem his work but find him difficult to pin down politically and philosophically. Although conservatives have claimed him as one of their own, no one has been more scathing in his criticism of such political figures as Hoover, Taft, Eisenhower, and Reagan or more contemptuous in his dismissal of such celebrity polemicists as William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan. Furthermore, he has made it almost brutally clear that he has no regard for the Republican Party and he rejects anti-communism in the strongest terms possible.