Paul Gottfried writes: Although I fully share the jubilation of others that Donald Trump may be taking a wrecking ball to the GOP establishment, I don’t hold the view that Trump’s candidacy will reduce neoconservative power. Matthew Richer, Justin Raimondo and other writers whose columns I usually welcome all believe that Trump’s rise as a Republican presidential candidate may help bring down his bogus conservative enemies. The more Trump’s popular support soars, the more the neocons have supposedly turned themselves into paper tigers. The establishment Republicans whom they “advise” have not marginalized Trump; nor have the neocons and their clients been able to elevate as GOP frontrunner someone who serves their purposes. The fact that prominent neocons like Robert Kagan have indicated their willingness to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of a GOP presidential candidate they don’t want, has underscored the emptiness of their opposition to Mrs. Clinton. The neoconservatives’ willingness to abandon the Republican side in the presidential race if they don’t get their way dramatizes their deviousness and arrogance. Presumably others will now abandon these power-hungry careerists and perpetual war mongers.
Unfortunately, I expect none of this to happen. Indeed it would not surprise me if the neocons exhibited the staying power of the Egyptian New Kingdom, which ruled Egypt for five hundred years (1570-1070 BC) despite such occasional setbacks as military defeats. What neoconservative publicists are now doing when they bait and switch, does not seem different from what they did in the past. Prominent neocons have not consistently taken the side of eventually victorious Republican presidential candidates. In 1972 Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell and other neocon heavyweights backed McGovern against Nixon, yet neocon and Democrat Daniel Moynihan carried great weight in the Nixon administration. In the presidential primaries in 1976 Irving Kristol and most other Republican neocons backed Gerald Ford against Ronald Reagan; nonetheless, after Reagan’s victory in 1980 neoconservatives William Bennett and Eliot Abrams came to play highly visible roles in the Republican administration.
Conceivably even if Robert Kagan and his friends support Hillary Clinton against Trump, they would still remain prominent, well-connected “conservatives.” The neoconservatives’ power and influence do not depend on their willingness to march in lockstep with the GOP. Their power base extends into both parties; and if most neocons are currently identified with the “moderate” wing of the GOP, providing their political ambitions are met and their foreign policy is carried out, other recognizable neocons like William Galston, Kagan’s wife Victoria Nuland, and Ann Applebaum have identified strongly with Democratic administrations. Neoconservatives will not likely cease to be part of the political and journalistic establishment, even if some in their ranks chose to back Hillary against the Donald.
Even less likely, will they cease to be a shaping force in a “conservative movement” that remains mostly under their wing. Since the 1980s neoconservatives have been free to push that movement in their own direction, toward a neo-Wilsonian foreign policy, toward the defense of what they celebrate as a “democratic capitalist welfare state” and toward a gradual acceptance of leftist social positions, as being less vital to “conservatism” than “national defense.” Neoconservatives demand that the government be pro-active in relation to the rest of the world. They and those politicians they train speak of “leading from the front” and place special emphasis on the protection of Israel and continued American intervention in “trouble spots” across the globe.
Neoconservatives have their own characteristic American nationalism, which is based on both energetic involvement in the affairs of other states and calls for further immigration, which now comes mostly from the Third World. Both of these foundational positions are justified on the grounds that American identity rests on a creed, which stresses universal equality. Most anyone from anywhere can join the American nation by adopting the neocons’ preferred creed; and once here these “new Americans, “ it is argued, will become hardy defenders of our propositional nationhood while providing the cheap labor needed for economic growth. Perhaps most importantly, neocons have no trouble attracting corporate donors, who hold their views on immigration and their fervent Zionism. Australian newspaper baron Rupert Murdoch, who finances their media outlets, has been particularly generous to his neoconservative clients but is far from their only benefactor.
The hundreds of millions of dollars that are poured into neoconservative or neoconservative-friendly policy institutes annually are not likely to dry up in the foreseeable future. A meeting just held on Sea Island off the coast of Georgia for the purpose of devising and executing a plan to bring down Trump, included, according to Pat Buchanan, all the usual suspects. Neocon journalist Bill Kristol,, executives of neocon policy institute AEI, and Republican bigwigs and politicians were all conspicuously represented at this gathering of the “conservative “ in-crowd , and gargantuan sums of money were pledged to destroy the reputation of someone whom the attendees hoped to destroy.
If the neocons were falling, certainly they are hiding their descent well. Finally, there seems to be a continuing congruence between the liberal internationalism preached by neoconservatives and such architects of America’s foreign policy as the Council on Foreign Relations. Although the Old Right and libertarians may lament these troublemakers, the neoconservatives do not labor alone in imposing their will. They are the most out-front among those calling for an aggressive American internationalism; and this has been a dominant stance among American foreign policy elites for at least a century.
It is hard to imagine that the neocons will lose these assets because they’ve been branding Trump a fascist or because they’re unwilling to back the GOP presidential candidate, no matter who he or she is. Powerbrokers in their own right, they don’t have to worry about passing litmus tests. They enjoy unbroken control of the “conservative movement,” and benefit from the demonstrable inability of a more genuine Right to displace them. Matthew Richer asks whether Donald Trump’s election would spell “the end of NR’s influence over the conservative movement in America.” The answer is an emphatic no, unless those who distribute the funding for the neoconservative media empire decide to close down this particular fixture. Otherwise Rich Lowry and his buds will go on being funded as agents for disseminating neocon party lines.
Moreover, those featured in NR‘s printed issues and/or on its widely visited website are routinely invited on to Fox-news and contribute to other interlocking neoconservative enterprises. Rich Lowry and Jonah Goldberg will not be thrown out of work, because they dumped toxic waste on Trump. And Max Boot will not lose his position at the WSJ because of his over-the-top tirades against Trump, after having railed non-stop for several weeks against Confederate monuments and Confederate Battle Flags. There is nothing the neocons say when they’re reaching leftward or revealing their leftist colors that the leftist media aren’t also saying, even more stridently. Pointing out the silliness of neoconservative assertions about history or the current age may help us deal with our irritation. It does not mean that we can dissuade those who fund the neoconservatives from giving them more money. They are being kept around not for their wisdom or the elegance of their prose but because they are useful to the powerful and rich.
Finally I should observe that the neocons have done so well in marginalizing their opposition on the right that it seems unlikely, as George Hawley points out in Right-Wing Critics of the Conservative Movement (University of Kansas, 2016), that the balance of power between the two sides is about to change. How exactly will a genuine Right that has not been contaminated by the neocons gain enough influence to replace them? How can such a Right, given its modest circumstances, even compete with the neocons for access to the public and for friends in high places?
The neocons would never yield ground to competitors on the right. Indeed they have fought them so relentlessly, because they view them as nothing less carriers of anti-Semitism and other things that the neocons fear. Further, leftist allies would join the neocons in preventing our side from ever gaining ground. And this kind of alliance has worked well before, e.g., when the neocons made their opposition disappear with an assist from the Left in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although there are isolated journalists like Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan who resist the neocons from the Right while enjoying prominence, these are the exceptions. Most of those who attack the neocons from the right languish in relative obscurity. Indeed most right-wing critics of the neoconservatives, as Hawley underscores, have been effectively removed from media visibility. This isolation suits the regular Left as it does the Left’s more moderate neoconservative wing.
To those who hope to see the neocons swept from power as Donald Trump and his backers prosper politically, I am offering the sobering message that your expectations are unrealistic. Although the neoconservatives can be challenged from the Right, such a challenge can only work on the media level if the would-be counterforce is as well-equipped as what it’s fighting. Simply saying that the neocons are losing ground or are now in freefall won’t make one’s wish come to pass. Needless to say, I’d be delighted if proven wrong in this matter.
COMMENTS:
PG: The last commentator raises a good question about how neoconservatives reconcile their view of Americanism as a universal creed with their fervent support of the Israeli nationalist Right. There are two answers: One, some neoconservatives, most conspicuously Douglas Feith, affirm the validity of the double standard, by arguing that unlike the US , which was founded as a “propositional nation,” Israel was created as an ethnic nation. Because of its function as a Jewish homeland, its cooperation with the US, and its exemplary democracy, Israel is the best ethnic nation.The other answer is that Israel exemplifies global democratic ideals and human rights and therefore deserves the support of America as the most powerful example of the same ideals. Needless to say, a neocon who starts with the first answer will often elide into the second, and then go back to the first.
* The U.S. was created as a “propositional nation” specifically among white, ethnic English Protestants who subscribed to Locke’s Second Treatise and the English Bill of Rights of 1688. As Washington wrote in his Farewell Address, “With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles” to which he might just as well have added “race, language, and ethnicity,” as Indians and blacks, who were unfamiliar with Locke and English law, were rightly excluded from the polity.
“The other answer is that Israel exemplifies global democratic ideals and human rights and therefore deserves the support of America as the most powerful example of the same ideals.”
This second answer contradicts the first, and thereby renders itself an oxymoron. Israel cannot simultaneously be an “ethnic nation” and a specifically “Jewish homeland” AND exemplify “global democratic ideals.” If Israel exemplifies “global democratic ideals,” it should give Palestinians and other Arab Muslims an unlimited “right of return” along with the franchise, and see how long it lasts.
Frankly, I am not opposed to Israel asserting itself as a Jewish ethic state, so long as the U.S. can assert itself as a white, Christian state. The idea that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander strikes me as rank hypocrisy.
* The truth about the Neocons: 70% of their stuff is good, at least in the old days, before they became feminists and gay rights activists. Further, I don’t see why we shouldn’t support Israel, its not like we need another failed state in the Middle East. If you need further proof, just look at who supports the Palestinians.
Now, Wilsonian Interventionism is completely nuts, and imperialism on the cheap, that is, sans the high birth rates, malevolent levels of ethnocentrism, and political ruthlessness necessary for successful imperialism, is a couple delusion. Further, the neocons clearly don’t play well with others, but. . .
The further back you go in the neocon movement, the sharper the thinking, the clearer the understanding, and the stronger the determination. The fact is, the modern neocon is completely decadent, no ideas, no insights, no knowledge, they are just a well-funded army of second rate hacks. Give a moron a big megaphone, even a WSJ-sized megaphone, they remain a moron. So whatever their structural advantages, it is hard to see the dynasty continuing past a third generation, notwithstanding Paul Gottfried’s prophesy. House Rothschild they are not.
* “What is a Neocon?”
A liberal secular humanist that goes to the synagogue (maybe church) from time to time, pays lip service to the societal benefits of religion, claims that anyone who wants to block immigration or fight the welfare state is an anti-semite, adores America supporting Israel, laughs supportively at the stupidity of zionist evangelicals, gets a stiff one everytime America topples an Arab regime in the name of holy (but utterly unattainable) democracy, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY doesn’t really hold any real convictions that they wouldn’t ditch in 2 seconds if it meant their media or political career could be advanced by doing so.
* Mr. Gottfried makes a lot of good points.
It is true that Neocons will have lots of money on their side.
But no amount of money can sustain a broken narrative.
I mean neocons pumped so much money into Jeb and Rubio, but it didn’t matter.
When something is dead, it is dead. It cannot be revived with money alone.
Is Neoconism dead? Not really, but it fails with all groups.
Why would Libs and Progs need Neoconism?
And white Cons no longer care about neocon talking points.
Ann Coulter and Ted Nugents’ tweets are of the times.
Identity politics is the future, and Neocons only have identity for Jews, not for whites.
This is where the narrative is falling apart.
* Reason.com: “Because of Strauss’ teachings, Kristol continued, “There are in Washington today dozens of people who are married with children and religiously observant. Do they have faith? Who knows? They just believe that it is good to go to church or synagogue. Whether you believe or not is not the issue — that’s between you and God — whether you are a member of a community that holds certain truths sacred, that is the issue.” Neoconservatives are “pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers.”
* There are two sides to the media – reporting on events (which only the professional MSM has the resources to do on a large scale) and interpretation of these events (which anybody can do). The MSM has already lost control of the later, which is why it heavily censors comments on opinion articles, but still controls the former.
However, the MSM is suffering from a serious profit crisis and doesn’t have the luxury of ignoring stories it doesn’t want to talk about for ideological reasons (like how badly neo-con friendly candidates are doing in the polls). The oxygen of publicity is a vital aspect of political success and Trump knows that while the MSM may be biased against him, it can’t afford to ignore interesting, politically incorrect stories that will draw in readers and viewers.
* Ilana Mercer has been prescient about Trump, I think he can shake things up by defining and expressing the aforementioned interests. In foreign policy, Trump will not rush into war, and might allow developments in Israel’s neighbouring countries which will lead to Israel doing what it needs to do and most Jews who actually live in Israel want to do. Neocons don’t dare consider the said option, but if under a Trump presidency Israel sent its problems across the river, that would discredit the neocons as useless to Israel. The neocons would lose confidence and have to shut up about the desirability of immigration, if Trump brought about the transfer that according to Mondoweiss most Israelis want. Benny Morris also thinks it is the best option.
* Israel’s 1967 acquired Arabs represent one side in a conflict and conflicts have outcomes, not solutions. As you helpfully point out the West Bank Arabs’ view of just desserts means they will never accept anything less than a real state which cannot happen unless an Israeli government orders most Jewish settlers to leave. The Israeli government did do this some extent in Judea and Samaria in 2008 a mass expulsion of Jewish settlers by the IDF is surely impossible given how many there are now. Apartheid or full rights for the West Bank Arabs are no more acceptable than an Israeli state mandated withdrawal, because both the former mean the inevitable end of a Jewish state.
A spread of the current Sunni radicalism into Jordan would mean war against the Jews and Israel would become involved. I think Trump thinks getting involved in Sunni wars to uphold failed state entities should be avoided, and he would not object to Israeli operations against a West Bank Arab fifth column. Of course it all depends if the west bank Arabs take the side of an ISIS type government in Jordan against Israel. I think they might well. Trump is the best hope for Israel to get out of the impasse that they are locked into by current US policy, and the neocons concentration on Iran. Compared to the ever-growing internal Arab threat, Iran is irrelevant.
* Gottfried’s reasoning:
A) I hate neocons
B) I hate immigration
C) Ergo, neocons must love immigration.
As a matter of fact, neocons are all over the place on immigration, from those that want basically open borders (Max Boot) to those who are almost Sailerian (David Frum), with many in between (Bill Kristol). Immigration is nowhere near central to neo-con thinking, nor are they unified on the topic.
* Neo-conservatives are people that firmly hold to Wilson’s idea of democracy and it’s spread. Wilson had the idea that everyone had an American inside them trying to get out and he was willing to go on a crusade to establish American style democracy around the world. That leads to the nonsense of nation building like we have seen attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Neocons were firmly in the camp of the Democrats as recently as the 70s. After Carter’s incompetence as POTUS, the neocons infiltrated the GOP and burrowed under the skin of the GOP to feed like the parasites they are. US foreign policy has been dominated by Neocons since about 1982.
Unfortunately, the most prominent Neocons, such as Feith and Perle are US Jews and some have, as a result, made the accusation of the term “neocon” being a synonym for Jews. That is a false accusation used to try to quiet criticism of the Neocons.
* I first encountered the neocons and that name for them in the 1980s, looking back at their work in the 1970s. Most of the attention seemed to be on their writing on domestic social issues like welfare and education, their application of social science techniques [admittedly learned while they were collectively in leftist New York academia but professional techniques nonetheless], and their comparatively reactionary observations and conclusions about the collapse of the black family and society, the limits of social policy, the negative effects of welfare, and the limits of education to remedy any of this. Granted, not driven by behavioral genetics, but still looking like the sort of thing one might hear from Derb even now.
How did all that square with their emphasis on Wilsonian foreign policy, which demands a very high expectation of what government intervention can do, quickly, on a large scale, and against even more intractable and rooted norms?
And what happened to drive neocons on the domestic policy side toward acceptance of leftist social positions their movement started out criticizing?
Separately, “democratic capitalist welfare state” doesn’t sound all that different from proto-Trumpism. He seems entirely at home with and in favor of medicare, single-payer, social security, as do the bulk of his electorate. He does not seem to be running a campaign on tailored marginal tax cuts. And he and Sanders are the only candidates even theoretically opposing hard core neoliberal globalism, the main force for gutting electoral democracy, welfare systems, and national statehood.
* If foreign policy is to be cold, rational, and about the survival of the American nation, these were valid motives to intervene, even in Asia [as it happens I would except Vietnam from that; it probably was never necessary or a good idea, at least the way it was done, outside the realms of Kenndy/Johnson ideology]. Intervention in Europe was 100% in the interest of the US, even in 1917. A German Europe, even under the Kaiser, would have been less beneficial to the US than one that remained divided among several more or less equal powers. [The US interest and the British one were the same on that]. A German Europe in the 1940s would have just meant the US was in a Cold War with the old world, earlier, and with richer and more useful countries ceded in advance to the enemy than was the case in 1945. So, Americans would not have been speaking German. Maybe never, certainly not in the first generation or two. But many more of the people America had to work with in the world would have been speaking German than ever spoke Russian.
If foreign policy is to be about sentiment and emotions, which is often the prevailing mode on this site [‘we should only fight for Americans’ freedoms’ is not actually that unrelated to ‘we should fight for everyone’s freedoms’, and itself could result in unwarranted adventurism the next time the US gets it in mind to go to war to avenge some American citizen who did something stupid or went somewhere dangerous without adequately informing himself or herself of local conditions and has fallen victim to local laws and or political events] then perhaps gratitude is in order.
The US enjoyed a long period of peace and security in the western hemisphere and was able to promulgate the unbelievably presumptuous and imperialistic Monroe Doctrine to extend its paternalism across the Americas only because the Royal Navy controlled the Atlantic. Once the bilateral disputes were settled in the wake of 1812-15, American ships engaged in commerce throughout the world on seas largely defended by the British. Fighting for their freedom was returning a favor. Ditto France, pain though they might be and quasi-war of the 1790s notwithstanding. Until 1917, the US had not repaid the independence won for them by the French army and navy.
Still, I get your sentiments. If Americans were a mature people, it would not be necessary to couch everything in chants of “Freedom!”. Instead, this mentality has been exported and now peoples like the British can only do anything if it is cast in similarly simpleminded terms. Although the specific ideas vary a bit.
Of course, America’s policy of sending conscript armies to places like Korea and Vietnam was never going to end well.
* Trump would create space for a new conservatism or populism and I assume that the some conservatives will continuing being as opportunistic as they have always been and cling to the republican Trump presidency. Assuming I’m right and that conservatives will start to tailor the ideology it would mean a partial , and perhaps irredeemable, break in the neocon led movement as we have known it. The mere fact that neocons have already decided that they are anti-Trump means a potential intellectual civil war is looming if Trump is elected. There will be a time for choosing and thankfully I suspect a fair amount of conservative opportunists will follow the power. Furthermore if Trump creates a new winning coalition for other Republicans to emulate it would also weaken the neocons who have long been telling Republican politicians how to win.
In short, a Trump victory signifies a coming weakness of neoconservatism’s hold on the movement. The alternative right/paleo’s have only needed an opening and they might finally get one.
* That timing and that “Compassionate Conservative” are the real keys. The neocons prosper because the Republican party leadership and Conservatism, Inc. can’t deal in any way, shape, or form with race in American politics, and they need furrin’ enemies to take the minds of their overwhelmingly white constituency off of that fact (the rubes went for it!). Off of the fact that the petty con-men and small town shysters that run the Republican party aren’t going to do a thing about the left/non-white coalition’s destructive white-hating racism They’re so cowed by the racist left that they’re even siding with them and excusing the brown-shirtism being used against their own party. The neos will exist as long as the Republican party exists in its present form as an amoral business lobby masquerading as a political party.
What makes a cuck a cuck is not that he isn’t pro-white, or that he doesn’t support serious immigration restrictions, etc., it’s that he collaborates with the very real and murderous white-hating racism of the political left while denouncing the largely fictional racism of whites. Anti-racism is a code word for anti-white isn’t just a tag, it’s reality, and as long as the rank and file of the Republican party and conservatism go along with the charade, go along with their own destruction, there will be a place for neocons in the Republican party.
* If one considers the Right as being dedicated to shrinking the %GDP of .gov spending to pre-WW1 levels, then the neocons are certainly against that. Of course, about 80% of the US shares that position.
The first generation, or the real intellectuals, of the neoconservative movement were made up of people who had experienced WWII, and the rapid destruction of the legitimacy of fascism as a political concept. Further, as some of them were former Trotskyites (Podhoretz and friends), they thought you could defeat Stalin’s communism (which they called red fascism) just as quickly. More or less it looked in the early 90s that they were right on that part.
That brings us to the second generation, or the regressed to the mean. Today we don’t have a massive clash of ideology, despite attempts to promote jihadism as such. We are in a civilization level struggle with Islam, but we also have equally important internal conflicts. To add more confusion, the neocons won’t identify Islam itself as the enemy. (You might mention Frank Gaffney, but he’s one guy with little influence). I consider this a strategic error on this part, in order to preserve their immediate position on mass immigration.
To understand their foreign policy position, as distinct from the rest of the liberal internationalists, its mainly a tendency to resort to ‘hard power’ earlier than others. During the Bush years the left considered the neocons to be ‘averse’ to diplomacy, but that isn’t really the case. Just look up a certain John Negroponte. Their real difference is a neocon skepticism towards ‘soft power’. They like bombing things, but don’t actually like occupations and rebuilding. (Quite an irony for those that consider them the key drivers of the Israeli ‘occupation’)
But to a man they all hate Russia, and I can only explain this in terms of ethnic hatred due to their roots as Eastern European Jews. The average Joe Sixpack conservative might believe that Putin is still a Communist, and the slightly more informed would say something about Dugin wanting world domination. I honestly think the foreign policy establishment has pegged Putin exactly, they fear him because he is a real nationalist that challenges the liberal post-1945 cultural order.
* Neocons are strong in politics because they are supported by the Donor Class. Once a non-owned candidate like Trump becomes president, neocons won’t have influence in his administration.
If patriotic conservatives (Coulter, Sessions) gain power in the Trump administration, that’ll translate into media clout too.
Neocons won’t be gone, but they’ll be marginalized to an extent.
* To recap: the core of the problem is that we have some very wealthy people who control large sections of the media and academia. As long as these people continue to throw their money and patronage at the neocons, the neocons will be invulnerable to either public opinion or the press of reality. By analogy, it’s like you are fighting a guerilla war, and the enemy has a safe haven over the border and an external source of supplies that you can’t touch. You can beat them back temporarily but never get rid of them, the war will continue.
On the other hand, one sign of light: Trump trashed Dubya’s stupid Iraq war, and not only got away with it but rose in the polls. Ditto when Trump bad-mouthed Senator (bomb bomb bomb Iran) McCain. If the general public comes to regard the neocons as corrupt and ridiculous, if they can maintain this healthy skepticism even when someone less flamboyant than Trump is leading the way, perhaps there is some hope for us after all.
They say that a Democracy needs an informed electorate. I don’t think that’s right. First and foremost, a real democracy needs a skeptical electorate.
