Counter-Currents
Remembering Sam Francis (April 29, 1947–February 15, 2005)
Greg Johnson
Sam T. Francis by Phil Eiger Newmann, 2021
1,094 words
Samuel Todd Francis was born April 29, 1947, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He died February 15, 2005 in the Maryland suburbs of the imperial capital. Francis took his BA from Johns Hopkins University in 1969 and his PhD in modern history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979.
Although he died at the age of 57, Sam Francis had two highly distinguished careers, one in the mainstream, the other on the margins. From 1977 until 1981, Sam Francis was a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
From 1981 to 1986, he was an aide to North Carolina Senator John East. In 1986, he joined the staff of The Washington Times as an editor and columnist. In 1989 and 1990, he received the Distinguished Writing Award for Editorial Writing from the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Francis’ break with the mainstream began gradually, as an intellectual parting of the ways. Because of his rejection of the neoconservative takeover of the American Right, Francis was one of the early advocates of “paleoconservatism.” Francis also rejected free market and free trade orthodoxy in favor of economic nationalism and protectionism. He defended Southern identity and race realism against the Right’s rampant embrace of “color-blind” individualism. He realized that you could not found a serious country on one line from the Declaration of Independence, plus a sentence from Martin Luther King. These interests may have estranged Francis from Conservative Inc., but they made him an important influence on two intellectual currents that have only grown since his death: national populism and white identity politics.
In June of 1995, Francis was reprimanded by the Washington Times for a column criticizing the Southern Baptist apology for slavery. Then in September of that year he was fired, based at least in part on a line from his speech at the first American Renaissance conference in 1994:
The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.
The firing was, in a way, just a formality. Francis had intellectually broken with mainstream conservatism many years before. It just took them a while to catch up.
Francis’ response to being fired for thoughtcrime was exemplary: he made the system regret it. He threw himself into writing and speaking. He clearly enjoyed his greater freedom to speak the truth on politically incorrect topics, although he always remained cagey about some issues. Francis’ friends also did the right thing, by pulling together to offer the patronage necessary for him to ride out the financial setback of losing his job.
Francis was not just a writer and speaker. He was also a networker and organizer. Francis understood the metapolitical importance of fundamental ideas. Thus he played a leading role in the foundation of the Occidental Quarterly and the National Policy Institute.
I first encountered Sam Francis’ writings in the late 1980s, and as I moved away from juvenile libertarianism, he became an increasingly important influence. I particularly recall his 1993 obituary for former Texas Governor John Connally, which in a few lines crystallized the difference between economic nationalism and open-borders libertarianism so memorably that backsliding became impossible. Sometimes the smallest works have unpredictable influences. I first met Sam in 2001 at a Council of Conservative Citizens event in North Carolina, where Sam Dickson introduced me to both Sam and Jared Taylor. I remember Sam asked me how I understood the psychology of the Left. He smiled wryly when I said “Dostoevsky’s The Devils.” Jared was less amused.
Over the next few years, I saw Sam speak at a number of events, conversed with him a couple of times, and exchanged a few emails. The last time we spoke, I congratulated him on quitting smoking and losing weight, which I took as his resolution to stay with us for the long haul. I had particularly high hopes for the National Policy Institute, which was to be his platform. But a few months later, he was dead. History isn’t made just by great forces like ideas, race, and technology. It also depends on having the right people at the right place at the right time. We lost Sam far too soon.
When Sam died, he received many heartfelt tributes from people who knew him much better than I did. I urge you to seek them out:
I think Jared Taylor best summed up Sam’s significance for our cause:
Samuel Todd Francis was the premier philosopher of white racial consciousness of our time. No one did more to alert whites to the crisis they face, and no one called them more eloquently to action. His intellectual sweep was of course much broader than this — he was an expert on Machiavelli, a James Burnham scholar, a learned critic of H. P. Lovecraft — but it is for his pioneering work in modern race-realist thought that he will be remembered. His work will endure, esteemed by both scholars and activists.
There is no single place on the web where you can find all of Sam Francis’ writings. But if you wish to begin exploring his life and work, I recommend two websites: American Renaissance and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation.
If you are looking for an audio introduction to Sam Francis, I recommend Gregory Hood and Chris Roberts, “Principalities and Powers.”
I also urge you to explore these works by and about Sam Francis at Counter-Currents, a list that will grow with each passing year:
By Sam Francis
- “Behind Democracy’s Curtain“
- “The Buchanan Victory“
- “Conspiracy“
- “Enemies of the State“
- “At the Heart of Darkness“
- “Impeachable Offenses“
- “The King Holiday & Its Meaning“
- “Looking Backward“
- “Nationalism, True and False“
- “Principalities & Powers,” Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight
- “Sitting on Bayonets“
- “Suicide of the Right“
- “Republicans & Real Federalism“
- “Revolution is in the Air“
- “The Ruling Class“
About or relating to Sam Francis
-
- Beau Albrecht, “The Rising Tide of Anarcho-Tyranny“
- Peter Bradley, “All the News Fit to Forget“
- Edmund Connelly, “Sam Francis on the Jewish Question“
- F. Roger Devlin, “Sam Francis on the Roots of Liberal Hegemony“
- Robert Hampton, “Melting Crackpot: E. Michael Jones on Sam Francis”
- Robert Hampton, “Sam Francis and the Prospect of Secession“
- Richard Houck, “Sam Francis’ Beautiful Losers“
- Spencer J. Quinn reviews Essential Writings on Race
- Gregory Hood, “Francis & the Fire Bird“
- Margot Metroland reviews Leviathan & Its Enemies (Czech version here)
See also articles tagged Sam Francis.
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11 comments
Dr. Francis’ insights are sometimes so droll, you don’t realize how much of an impact they had on you until years later when you realize you’re thinking a thought he taught you to think just by writing so well.
Unlike Dr. Johnson, I never met Dr. Francis, but everything I’ve read or heard by him has incisive and necessary. Things I never thought I’d agree with Dr. Francis about I have come to do so.
He saw farther and clearer than almost anyone and described what he saw with great skill and care.
I’m curious which ideas you never thought you would agree with yet you have come to agree with. Mainly Francis was a conduit to James Burnham for me. Francis explicitly applied his thought to our sphere, which may have been implicit in the original. I’m just curious what you mean.
Dr. Francis argued against White ethnostates and, instead, for a full restoration of White power across the entirety of Lower North America. When I first encountered this position, it struck me as baffling and I didn’t immediately agree with it. I suppose I simply forgot that the role of the visionary is to propose visions whose possibility is only barely recognized. I now accept that a restoration of White power across the entirely of Lower North America should be the very long term goal of the pro-White movement but that the pursuit of the goal is going to be measures in life-times, not decades.
What I also realized is that sometimes political realism – the restoration and continuation of the American Union as a long-term necessity for White survival – can often appear as impossible fantasy when one is dealing with thinkers as subtle and brilliant as Dr. Francis.
By ideas of Burnham I meant the Managerial elite and new Machiavellians and who Francis thought they were stated explicitly in the volume Race and the American Prospect.
I never met Sam Francis although I had the opportunity to do so at the 2004 AmRen conference. I regret very much that I did not take advantage of that opportunity. I have been a subscriber to Chronicles Magazine for many years and I always read Sam’s columns. He was easily the star of that magazine although many of the other writers were pretty good as well. I have read very little of H.L. Mencken but I know his reputation and many people I respect think very highly of him so he must have been great. But, I think, if you had to pick the greatest American journalist of the 20th century, Sam would come in number 1 followed by Mencken.
I’m similar to you, although I did meet Sam several times, beginning at a John Randolph Club meeting in 1993. I spoke with him at some length (for him – maybe 20min), mostly about The Dispossessed Majority. He thought very highly of the book, saying he probably wouldn’t mention it publicly on his own initiative, but that he would discuss it if asked about it. I remain forever convinced, based on writing styles, that both Sam and Jared occasionally wrote pseudonymously for Instauration. Any knowledge on that?
Speaking of Chronicles, I was a 35 year subscriber. Sam’s essays were always the high point for me. I finally stopped subscribing this year. IMO, the magazine has declined greatly, in stages, over the past dozen or more years. Stage 1 was in the late 00s, in which I first noticed that each issue contained many fewer words, slightly concealed to the undiscerning by font and spacing changes. Stage 2 was around the time Chilton Williamson’s brief, post-Fleming editorial tenure ended (why was that, exactly?). Stage 3 I contend was just recently when the price jumped astronomically (to $60 per year, with no more multiyear discounts as there had been since the 80s), and the annual number of issues seemed to decline by 1 (or is it 2?). Also, the quality of the writing over the past few years has markedly declined since what I consider the magazine’s glory days in the 90s.
What are your impressions? I never thought the day would come when I would let my subscription lapse. I like the pugnacious spirit of this new Charlemagne Institute, but I think the intellectual quality of the magazine just is no longer worth its inflated price.
Thanks for your questions. I began subscribing in 1989 and continued my subscription until my wife and I moved to Hungary in 2011. I tried to continue it (in fact they owed me several issues) but I was not able to contact anybody at the Rockford Institute. So, I just forgot about it. At that time, I believe Tom Fleming was still the editor. I still go to the website and Paul Gottfried seems like a good enough editor but I really don’t see any point in trying to subscribe once again to the hardbound version. When in the US I lived in a Chicago suburb called Downers Grove. This wasn’t too far from Rockford so I went to a few events there. My favorite writer, after Sam Francis, is Serge Trifkovic, who still writes for Chronicles and I try to read all his articles on the website. I was one of the co-founders of the Chicago Friends of the American Renaissance. We used to meet once a month on Sundays and I believe we had dinner twice with Jared when he was on business in Chicago. Serge Trifkovic spoke at one of our Sunday meetings as did Bill Regnery who recently passed away. I heard many negative things about Tom Fleming but I met him at least 2 or 3 times in Rockford and had no problems with him. I have no knowledge of Jared or Sam writing for “Instauration”. I never read “The “Dispossessed Majority” but that is on my list.
I agree that the “new” Charlemagne Chronicles is better than the post Sam Francis Chronicles. But it is still inferior to the late 80-early 90s Chronicles. I hear they want to stay away from race and it shows from their articles. Much like the New Right of the 70s, they have the right views on racial issues (affirmative action, multiculturalism, destruction of Southern symbols, etc.) but run away from the topics of anti-white racism and racial differences.
I always felt ‘Chronicles’ could’ve been the upscale version of ‘American Conservative’, had they spent less ink on Catholicism and more on conservatism. Now, I *personally* feel Christianity in all forms is at odds with the long-term future of our people, but that’s not what I’m complaining about here. I mean that otherwise interesting articles and opinions were marred by overindulgence in religious musings. I remember skimming past paragraphs of boring Catholic…well… propaganda to get to the meat of the writing. Fleming and Williamson were particularly guilty of this. (The top book CW’s tome ‘The Conservative Bookshelf’ recommended? The Bible.) Mr. Francis was non-religious, and upon his death I recall Fleming being concerned about his location in the afterlife.
Samuel Francis’ articles in ‘Chronicle’s always stuck out like a sore thumb in the same (good) way Steve Sailer’s pieces drew one’s attention in ‘American Conservative’. I’m not saying the two are much comparable beyond that their articles tended to be the highlight of any given issue they’re in. Mr. Francis was heavier and less humorous than Mr. Sailer.
(Note: I am only familiar w/ ‘Chronicles’ and ‘American Conservative’ from approx. a decade in the early ’00s.)
The ‘heavier’ was an unintentional pun, but brings to mind another point I’m glad Dr. Johnson briefly addressed: Samuel Francis’ weight/size. I can’t help but think his appearance and health held him back from reaching his full potential. His peers were alarmed with his diet, it was learned after his death. For every man who used his obesity to his charismatic advantage (Orson Welles, Churchill) there are 1,000 to whom it’s an anchor dragging them down in matters of the public.
Dr. Johnson, and others who’ve shaken hands with great men, I envy you your memories.
“…call yourself a patriot, a nationalist, an America Firster, but don’t even use the world ‘conservative.’ It doesn’t mean anything any more.”
What did Francis mean by this?
Since most of Sam Francis’ books are out of print/difficult to track down, perhaps it’s time for a “best of” or omnibus-type collection. Counter-Currents might consider publishing that book, which would ideally include an excerpt from Leviathan & Its Enemies.
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