The curious case of Ron Unz The former publisher of The American Conservative is a case study in contrarianism gone haywire
Contrarianism begins, by and large, with the valid conclusion that many of the ‘facts’ that we are told — by politicians, or the media, or academic and religious institutions — are less than wholly true. You begin to question other aspects of conventional wisdom. There is nothing wrong in this. Yet your questions, and methods of answering them, have to be rational. Otherwise your iconoclastic instincts are unmoored from reason; your passions and biases take over in the flattering guise of independent thought. You question established narratives but swallow alternative claims. You leap to alternative ideas but avoid questioning yourself. In the most extreme cases, you begin by questioning the grounds for preemptive wars and ends by claiming that religious Jews routinely worship Satan.
That, sadly, appears to be what has happened to Ron Unz.