National Review has a fraught relationship with National Socialism. In recent years, the magazine has taken to likening liberals and socialists to fascists and Nazis. In a much-derided article published last week, correspondent Kevin Williamson claimed that Senator Bernie Sanders is leading "a national-socialist movement, which is a queasy and uncomfortable thing to write about a man who is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and whose family was largely wiped out in the Holocaust." Later in the article, Williamson added that Sanders is not a "national socialist in the mode of Alfred Rosenberg or Julius Streicher," but this proviso couldn't undo the implication that Sanders and his supporters are modern day Hitlerites. Nor is Williamson alone: His National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg authored a lengthy tome in 2008, Liberal Fascism, making essentially the same argument about the supposed links between modern day progressives and the early 20th century European far right.

While self-evidently absurd as a line of argument, the Williamson/Goldberg thesis is a fine example of projection, especially interesting because of their magazine's long history of both publishing pro-fascist arguments and also resenting any accusations of being pro-Nazi. As the new documentary The Best of Enemies reminds us, the relationship between National Review and Nazism was once the stuff of national television drama in a notorious debate between Gore Vidal and National Review founder William F. Buckley. In August 1968, during the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Buckley compared New Left youths carrying pro–Viet Cong flags to pro-Nazis. Vidal responded by saying, "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi that I can think of is yourself." This set off Buckley, who went bugged eyed and threatened Vidal, saying, "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face."