Thomas Fleming is a Roman Catholic writer, president of the Rockford Institute, and editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, a paleoconservative political commentary periodical, published monthly. He received a doctorate in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing his dissertation on Attic lyric poetry, and until joining a series of conservative groups, taught Latin at a small, private middle school in South Carolina.¹ Fleming has never married.

Fleming was a founding member and former board member of the League of the South, from which he later resigned when difficulties arose, as well as an affiliated scholar of its educational arm, the League of the South Institute.² He was the founding editor of the Southern Partisan magazine, started in 1979, until he left when difficulties arose there as well. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Fleming as a key intellectual in what it calls the "Neo-Confederate" movement.³

Frequently abrasive, Fleming has faced charges from fellows of arrogance, flippancy, verbal abuse, inability to accept criticism, and inept leadership. Recently, Fleming has abandoned conservatism itself, stating that none of its major aims will ever succeed:

I regard the ethnic situation – like the cultural, moral, and spiritual situations – in this country as beyond all hope of remedy. I am shutting down this discussion… Any call to direct action… is tantamount to terrorism. The end.⁴

Positions

Religion

Thomas Fleming is a modern believer in Papal supremacy and advocates for the submission of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church:

The Eastern position, from fairly early on and down to fairly late, was unequivocal in acknowledging the primacy of the Roman bishop, and even today most Orthodox bishops and theologians I know concede that if the Church were reunited, the heir of Peter (sic) would preside over the meetings of the patriarchs – indeed, in some Eastern ecclesiastical disputes in recent years, appeals have been made to the Pope.⁵

The consequence of this position is that any Orthodox Christians who acknowledge the Roman Church's claims for supremacy over the East are thereby admitting themselves to be in a state of schismatic heresy and mortal sin.

Citizenship

Fleming advocates a traditionally liberal view of citizenship, that citizenship in the United States should be granted to anyone in the world who asks for it, as long as each takes classes that follow Fleming's particular specifications:

Here is a basic fact we are likely to forget. The word "American" is not a geographical expression but a reference to citizenship…

Indians who, like Italians, Slavs, and the descendants of former slaves, become naturalized and accept the basic myths and premises of America’s European founding, can be fairly described as “real Americans” as distinct from Marxist intellectuals and whining minorities.⁶

Immigration

Fleming directs attention away from the social upheaval and losses incurred by Americans in the massive immigration from the Third World since 1965. Instead, he welcomes the tens of millions of Roman Catholics that have left Mexico for the United States and says, "The problem does not lie in poor Mexicans who come here seeking jobs… but in ourselves that we are so weak, stupid, and suicidal…⁷

Likewise, Fleming accepts the radical Left's solution to the immigration problem in the United States and the rest of the historically white world; that is, to legalize it. As he states above (under "Citizenship"), in his system, anyone who will "become naturalized and accept the basics myths" of America is a "real American." He further applies that rule to all immigrants:

No, I cannot think of an historic people that has not accepted and absorbed immigrants who are willing to be adopted and accept the mythology and social/moral code of the host… the same is true of aliens incorporated into the Roman republic… A propositional state is one that repudiates such traditions – which usually include ties of blood – in favor of an abstract ideology...

It would be entirely fatuous to pretend that nations cannot and do not transform immigrants into adopted citizens or subjects.⁸

Typically, when faced with critical objections to his brand of assimilationism, Fleming dismisses them with ad hominem. In one example, he resorts to name-calling, the words of which he puts in the mouth of his assistant: "Scott Richert wondered if there were any nativist dummies so stupid they would use this against us."⁹

Publications

• The Conservative Movement (1988, with Paul Gottfried) ISBN 0-8057-9724-6
• West Point: Blue and Grey (1988) ISBN 1-59687-356-6
• The Politics of Human Nature (1993) ISBN 1-56000-693-5
• Montenegro: The Divided Land (2002) ISBN 0-9619364-9-5
• The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition (2004) ISBN 0-8262-1509-2

References