Justin Raimondo, long-time Chronicles columnist, vociferous anti-war activist, and a leading member of the paleolibertarian political movement, died June 27 at age 67 after a long battle with lung cancer.
An influential champion of anti-interventionist foreign policy within the Libertarian and Republican political parties, Raimondo lobbed broadsides at warmongers left, right, and center from his post as founder and editorial director of Antiwar.com. He was a close friend and collaborator of both the patriarch of conservative-libertarian thought, Murray Rothbard, and Patrick Buchanan, the doyen of Paleoconservatism.
“I have known Justin Raimondo since we stood together to oppose the rush to war against Iraq in 1991,” Buchanan said in an email. “In the three decades since, no man in America worked harder or did more to resist the interventionist impulses of the American establishment and the wars they produced than Justin and his Antiwar website.”
Raimondo was a compelling and seemingly contradictory figure. He was a gay-rights activist and unbeliever who at the same time cherished his Catholic roots and sympathized with cultural conservatives. He was an anti-war stalwart who once found common cause with those on the left and yet became a staunch defender of President Donald Trump. He was a key member of the paleolibertarian movement that grew around the John Randolph Club in the...