His dad was best pals with William F. Buckley, Jr. His son is a J6 convict. Leo Brent Bozell III pioneered complaining about the “liberal media,” including its coverage of Nelson Mandela’s death. These days, that resume will make you the U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
Waging diplo-economic war on South Africa wasn’t exactly a hot topic in the last campaign, was it? For the life of me, I just can’t imagine what or who pushed this target onto Trump’s radar.
Nevertheless, we have seen an ongoing White House effort to preserve white advantage here and abroad by pushing a “meritocracy” that looks at the world through a very particular (one might even say discriminating) set of historical blinders. Weird.
THE FIRST TWO MONTHS: RETALIATION & RESENTMENT
The Trump/Musk effort to retaliate against Musk’s old homeland for addressing the repercussions of its own history has taken a few forms so far:
DJT suspended U.S. foreign aid to South Africa, citing a yet-to-be-used act that allows agricultural land seizure “for the public good” in certain circumstances. About 75% of individually owned farmland in South Africa is still owned by white citizens, who make up 7.2% of the population.
Related, the Trump administration offered to import the poor, poor white beneficiaries of apartheid to our country, welcoming them as “refugees” while pursuing drastic immigration cuts from just everywhere else (sources of cheap tech labor excepted, of course — the Oval has your six, Elon!). An early count found 67,000 white South Africans had expressed interest.
More recently, the White House expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the U.S., Ebrahim Rasool, after Mr. Rasool had the temerity to notice out loud that the administration of working to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle.” Racial dogwhistles might be the only attempt at subtlety from this administration so far, so it’s no surprise that Secretary of State Rubio got upset when Rasool said it where decent humans could hear it.
THE BOZELLS: FROM CAPITALIST TO CATHOLIC-CONVERT EXTREMIST …
Trump has followed all this up by nominating Leo Brent Bozell III to serve as U.S. ambassador to South Africa. If you wanted to pick one family to mirror the downward spiral of modern American right-wing accomplishment, you might pick the Bozells.
A little over a century ago, the original Leo Bozell started an advertising agency that still bears the family name. He served in World War I. He was the director of a railroad company and was part of the leadership at his Episcopal church. I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly a hippie. There are no obvious signs of wingnuttery. Far as I can tell, he served his country and worked hard. Fine.
Then Leo, Jr. put the family name on the conservative map. A two-time state oratorical champion, he went to Yale. While there he became, by all accounts, best friends with William F. Buckley, Jr. After Yale, a brief tour of his career highlights include outspoken McCarthyism, converting and adopting hardcore Catholic views on social issues including abortion, and ghostwriting a book for Barry Goldwater.
Bozell also married Buckley’s sister, Betty. Eventually, the men’s long friendship soured, in part due to Bozell’s choice of extremist anti-abortion tactics. (Did you catch the post when I said the parenthetical is often actually the most interesting part? It’s because of asides like this.)
Bozell’s later life was marked by increasingly staunch views and, unfortunately, bipolar disease among a raft of health issues.
TO CONSERVATIVE WHINER …
Which brings us back to our upcoming ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III. Where his grandfather led businesses and his father shaped far-right thought in this country, this Bozell has spent his adult life in the Republican outrage machine. He made his mark as a pioneer of cultivating and monetizing the idea of “liberal media bias.” In the twilight of the Reagan era, Bozell founded the Media Research Center.
And where his father ghostwrote for a prominent conservative, this Bozell endured the revelation that large portion of his published columns and even his books were written by other people. Kind of the Milli Vanilli of conservative propaganda. I’m sure it was someone else’s fault.
Bozell’s most prominent previous connection to South Africa came in the 1980s. He joined other conservatives in opposing U.S. dialogue with the African National Congress (ANC). Later on, following Nelson Mandela’s death, Bozell chose to publicly complain that NBC’s coverage was more complimentary to Mandela than it had been toward Margaret Thatcher after her death.
That explains why Bozell is pretty much a perfect Trump pick for this job. But it doesn’t finish the story of the Bozell family as poster children for the rise and fall of U.S. right-wing integrity (such as it was).
… TO CRIMINAL
David Bozell went to my alma mater. Graduating a few years after me, Bozell eventually latched onto a fundraising gig for his dad’s “council,” where he stayed for 11 years.
In 2010, he assumed the role of president at ForAmerica, a Facebook-popular group that apparently focuses on advancing white Christian Nationalism by posting memes on the internet.
Did I mention that this Bozell goes by “Zeeker”?
By 2021, the Bozell family conservatism once fueled by capitalism and then by religious fervor had been overtaken and replaced by MAGA brain rot. David Bozell drove from Pennsylvania to Washington, attended the Stop The Steal! rally, and was one of the first rioters inside the Capitol building after breaking windows and other malfeasance.
Bozell was arrested the next month (remember the guy identified because he wore his Christian academy’s hoodie?), sentenced to 45 months in prison, and freed with case dismissed upon President Trump’s blanket J6 pardons on January 20 of this year.
I have a crisp, new Trump $100 that says ol’ Zeeker will be the White House Deputy Press Secretary for online messaging by 2026. Who’s in?