Paul Gottfried

Paul Gottfried
Gottfried speaking in 2017
Born
Paul Edward Gottfried

(1941-11-21) November 21, 1941
New York City, U.S.
Education
Alma materYeshiva University (BA)
Yale University (MS, PhD)
ThesisCatholic Romanticism in Munich, 1826–1834 (1968)
Doctoral advisorHerbert Marcuse
Philosophical work
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
American philosophy
SchoolPaleoconservatism
Institutions
Main interestsWelfare state, pluralism, Romanticism
Notable ideasTherapeutic state, movement conservatism, alternative right, white nationalism (denied)

Paul Edward Gottfried (born November 21, 1941) is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He is an associated scholar at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and the US correspondent of Nouvelle École, a Nouvelle Droite journal.

Gottfried helped coin the term paleoconservative in 1986 and alternative right (with Richard Spencer) in 2008. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described him as a "far-right thinker" and recognizes the H.L. Mencken Club, which he founded, as a white nationalist group. Although noted for working with far-right and alt-right groups and figures, he has said that he does "not want to be in the same camp with white nationalists" or associated with pro-Nazis, "as somebody whose family barely escaped from the Nazis in the '30s".