[8] In the first years since inception in 1977, the magazine was an anticommunist bi-monthly called Chronicles of Culture, edited by Leopold Tyrmand (1920–85), pen name of Jan Andrzej Stanislaw Kowalski, a Polish novelist and co-founder of the Rockford Institute who had previously written for The New Yorker.

Fleming published right-wing authors like Sam Francis, Clyde N. Wilson, Paul Gottfried, and Chilton Williamson Jr. As the Soviet Union broke up at the end of the Cold War and nationalism rose there and in Eastern Europe, some articles in Chronicles argued that the United States too would need to disintegrate by ethnicity.

[6] Chronicles "churned out regular anti-immigrant pieces, attacking Latin American and Southeast Asian immigration on the basis of race, culture, national identity and populist defense of the white working class", according to Joseph Lowndes.

[11] The magazine’s political influence reached its zenith in 1992 when prominent conservative journalist and politician Patrick J. Buchanan ran for president.

[15] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described Chronicles in 2017 as "a publication with strong neo-Confederate ties that caters to the more intellectual wing of the white nationalist movement",[8] and in another article said it was "controversial even among conservatives for its racism and anti-Semitism".