Neoconservatives - Revision history

David: /* Articles */

2017-02-12T10:37:18Z

Articles

Tom Griffin: /* =Origins */

2013-03-16T22:57:49Z

=Origins

Tom Griffin: /* Origin */

2013-03-16T22:55:23Z

Origin

Idrees: /* Articles */

2010-11-06T23:52:34Z

Articles

Idrees at 23:48, 6 November 2010

2010-11-06T23:48:01Z

Melissa Jones: /* Economics */

2010-06-17T15:16:46Z

Economics

Melissa Jones: /* Foreign Policy */

2010-06-17T15:12:03Z

Foreign Policy

Melissa Jones: /* The Parallel Establishment */

2010-06-17T15:04:29Z

The Parallel Establishment

Melissa Jones: /* On Human Rights */

2010-06-17T15:01:01Z

On Human Rights

Idrees at 00:31, 17 June 2010

2010-06-17T00:31:39Z

Show changes

@@ Line 162: / Line 162: @@
 *Philip Weiss, [http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/jan/28/00033/ The Long Fuse to the Iraq War], ''The American Conservative'', 28 January 2008
 *Wendy Brown, "American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization", ''Political Theory'', Volume 34, Number 6, December 2006, pp. 690-714
-*Jim Lobe, [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/front_page/eh13aa01.html What is a neo-conservative anyway?], ''Asia Times'', 13 August 2003
+*Jim Lobe, [http://www.ipsnews.net/2003/08/politics-what-is-a-neo-conservative-anyway/ What is a neo-conservative anyway?], ''Inter Press Service'', 11 August 2003.
 *Craig Unger, [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/whitehouse200703?printable=true&currentPage=all From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq], ''Vanity Fair'', March 2007
 *James Bamford, [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war Iran: The Next War], ''Rolling Stone'', August 10, 2006

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 ==History==
-===Origins==
+===Origins===
 Its origins are traced to the political convolutions of 1930s Jewish émigré intellectual scene in New York, and to a certain extent the movement remains predominantly Jewish in its composition and concerns. (''Commentary'', the movement's flagship journal, is published by the [[American Jewish Committee]]) although contradictions and exceptions abound. Neocons reflect a minority position within the US Jewish community as most Jews remain distinctly liberal in their social, political and foreign-policy outlook. The emergence of support by factions within the Israeli state, particularly through the [[Jonathan Institute]]<ref>Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap eds. (2003) [http://www.covertaction.org/%20%09%20index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=117&Itemid=83 Covert Action: The Roots of Terrorism], Ocean Press.  This states that:
 :It was the Jonathan Institute [...] that first promoted the notion of pre-emptive and punitive strikes. As this became U.S. doctrine, it served as an ex post facto justification for Israeli policies already in place. And it was the Jonathan Institute that provided the framework for the anti-U.N. sentiment that appears to have subsumed Washington.</ref> is central to understanding the Neocon's foreign policy preferences of unilateralism, large military expenditures and the disdain for International law and organisations such as the United Nations.
-In retrospect this émigré intellectual scene contained some of the future luminaries of the movement — [[Max Shachtman]], [[Sidney Hook]], [[James Burnham]], [[Irving Kristol]] and [[Irving Howe]] — who mostly began their careers as the leading lights (if not members) of the Trotskyist left. Their radical anti-Stalinism gave way at the end of WWII to liberal anti-Communism and clandestine co-operation with the CIA notably with the [[Congress on Cultural Freedom]] with the view of concocting a surrogate left. However, at the end of the Vietnam war the neocons abandoned liberalism to evolve into their present disposition as 'neo'-conservatives.  Heilbrunn observes the ideological peregrinations:
+In retrospect this émigré intellectual scene contained some of the future luminaries of the movement — [[Max Shachtman]], [[Sidney Hook]], [[James Burnham]], [[Irving Kristol]] and [[Irving Howe]] — who mostly began their careers as the leading lights (if not members) of the Trotskyist left. Their radical anti-Stalinism gave way at the end of WWII to liberal anti-Communism and clandestine co-operation with the CIA notably with the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] with the view of concocting a surrogate left. However, at the end of the Vietnam war the neocons abandoned liberalism to evolve into their present disposition as 'neo'-conservatives.  Heilbrunn observes the ideological peregrinations:
 :First they abandoned Judaism, trading it in for a cosmopolitan brand of Marxism, before fleeing it for liberalism. Then they turned against liberalism and embraced conservatism. Now they may be on the outs with the conservative movement.<ref>Jacob Heilbrunn (2008) They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, (p13).</ref>

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
-== Origin ==
+==History==
+===Origins==
 Its origins are traced to the political convolutions of 1930s Jewish émigré intellectual scene in New York, and to a certain extent the movement remains predominantly Jewish in its composition and concerns. (''Commentary'', the movement's flagship journal, is published by the [[American Jewish Committee]]) although contradictions and exceptions abound. Neocons reflect a minority position within the US Jewish community as most Jews remain distinctly liberal in their social, political and foreign-policy outlook. The emergence of support by factions within the Israeli state, particularly through the [[Jonathan Institute]]<ref>Ellen Ray and William H. Schaap eds. (2003) [http://www.covertaction.org/%20%09%20index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=117&Itemid=83 Covert Action: The Roots of Terrorism], Ocean Press.  This states that:
@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 Possibly as a consequence of the military failure in Vietnam, in the late 1970s the Neocons feared an inward looking US might abandon Israel in the middle-East. Nixon and Kissinger's detente towards Soviet Russia and the turn towards disarmament, possibly encouraged Neocon fears dovetailed with the ever-present concern of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) that its future profits were under threat. It was thus, according to journalist Andrew Cockburn's simplified version of events, that the Neoconservative ''movement'' was born as the nexus of the Israel lobby with the MIC at the instigation of Paul Nitze.<ref>See: Timothy Noah (2007) [http://www.slate.com/id/2160462/ Does Bush Know What Neocon Means? That isn't a rhetorical question], slate.com.</ref>
 ==Ideology==

@@ Line 157: / Line 157: @@
 *Wendy Brown, "American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-Democratization", ''Political Theory'', Volume 34, Number 6, December 2006, pp. 690-714
 *Jim Lobe, [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/front_page/eh13aa01.html What is a neo-conservative anyway?], ''Asia Times'', 13 August 2003
 ===Films===

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:48, 6 November 2010
Line 173:		Line 173:
	==References==		==References==
	<references/>		<references/>
		+	[[category:Neocons]][[category:Israel Lobby]]

@@ Line 62: / Line 62: @@
 ===Economics===
 In leftist polemics, the neoconservative and neoliberal are often employed interchangeably. However, as political scientist Wendy Brown notes, neoliberalism is an economic rationality whereas neoconservatism is a political-moral rationality. He urged businessmen to learn the limits of 'thinking economically' and learn the long-term benefits of 'thinking politically'.<ref>Blumenthal, 1986: p. 141</ref> The neoconservatives have served as the intellectual strata of Big Business, however none of them is an economist. Their role has been mainly as the mythmakers for US business. In Irving Kristol's words:
-:We had to tell businessmen that they needed us. They are still not convinced...The neoconservatives, the Republican politicians, and the business comunity do not make an easy mixture...But at least they mix, whereas they used not to mix at all. Business understands the need for intellectuals much more than trade unionists understand it, but not enough. Basically, it wants intellectual to go out and justify profits and explain to people why corporations make a lot of money.<ref>quoted in Blumenthal, 1986: p. 141</ref>
+:We had to tell businessmen that they needed us. They are still not convinced...The neoconservatives, the Republican politicians, and the business community do not make an easy mixture...But at least they mix, whereas they used not to mix at all. Business understands the need for intellectuals much more than trade unionists understand it, but not enough. Basically, it wants intellectuals to go out and justify profits and explain to people why corporations make a lot of money.<ref>quoted in Blumenthal, 1986: p. 141</ref>
 Famously, Kristol gave two cheers for capitalism -- for promoting affluence and individual liberty -- but withheld the third because of “the cultural contradictions of capitalism”. For Kristol,

@@ Line 54: / Line 54: @@
 :To be neoconservative is to bear almost daily witness to the resurrection of Adolf Hitler. “Truly Hitlerian,” the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer pronounced Saddam Hussein’s saber-rattling before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Three days after the 9/11 attacks, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary, opined that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers “misread our system as one that’s weak, that can’t take casualties. … Hitler made that mistake.” Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of Commentary, said of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last spring, “Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system.” In the same month, the defense analyst Richard Perle mused on whether it had been “a correct reading” of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat “to believe that business could be done with him that would produce a result? I don’t think so. These are the difficult decisions. Diplomacy with Hitler. Chamberlain went to Munich, presumably on the theory that you talk to your enemies and not to your friends, and what did it produce?” (''New York Times'', 13 January 2008)
-However, Heilbrunn warns that 'neoconservatives have invested the Holocaust with a contemporary olitical significance that warrants caution'. He goes on to quote scholar David Biale as saying: 'There is a difference between remembrance and constructing a collective identity around an event and an experience alien to the realities of American Jewish life' (2008:11).
+However, Heilbrunn warns that 'neoconservatives have invested the Holocaust with a contemporary political significance that warrants caution'. He goes on to quote scholar David Biale as saying: 'There is a difference between remembrance and constructing a collective identity around an event and an experience alien to the realities of American Jewish life' (2008:11).
 Israel is central to neoconservatives' foreign policy concerns. In his obituary of Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer recalls a discussion in which he raised the prospect of giving up the territories for peace.
 :Irving was skeptical about Arab hostility: It would never be reduced. But that means war forever, I said. And Irving responded, Yup, it’s war forever.
 This same view would be later translated into the infamous "A Clean Break" document in which Perle, Feith and Wurmser advised Israel to reject 'land for peace' in favour of 'peace for peace'.
 ===Economics===
 In leftist polemics, the neoconservative and neoliberal are often employed interchangeably. However, as political scientist Wendy Brown notes, neoliberalism is an economic rationality whereas neoconservatism is a political-moral rationality. He urged businessmen to learn the limits of 'thinking economically' and learn the long-term benefits of 'thinking politically'.<ref>Blumenthal, 1986: p. 141</ref> The neoconservatives have served as the intellectual strata of Big Business, however none of them is an economist. Their role has been mainly as the mythmakers for US business. In Irving Kristol's words:

@@ Line 95: / Line 95: @@
 ==The Parallel Establishment==
-Neocons have long compensated for their narrow ranks by creating networks of institutions and "citizens' groups" with overlapping memberships which mutually reinforce each other's message. Over the years hey have also infiltrated several traditional conservative organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute and National Review which they have come to dominate over time. Resentful of their exclusion from the WASP-dominated elite, writes Jacob Heilbrunn, the neocons proceeded to create their own parallel national security establishment. In his review of Heilbrunn's book Philip Weiss points out that the neocons 'were propelled by resentments against WASP elites—the men who had ignored the Holocaust, they felt, and “frozen out” Jews from the establishment.' With the advent of the Bush II administration, especially in the wake of the events of 11 September, this parallel establishment replaced the traditional foreign policy elite to itself become the new establishment. The strategic alliances and the institutional infrastructure that enabled this rise dates back to neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol's association with the CIA-funded [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] and his stint as the editor of [[Encounter]] magazine, two key instruments in the US cultural war against the USSR.
+Neocons have long compensated for their narrow ranks by creating networks of institutions and "citizens' groups" with overlapping memberships which mutually reinforce each other's message. Over the years they have also infiltrated several traditional conservative organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute and National Review which they have come to dominate over time. Resentful of their exclusion from the WASP-dominated elite, writes Jacob Heilbrunn, the neocons proceeded to create their own parallel national security establishment. In his review of Heilbrunn's book Philip Weiss points out that the neocons 'were propelled by resentments against WASP elites—the men who had ignored the Holocaust, they felt, and “frozen out” Jews from the establishment.' With the advent of the Bush II administration, especially in the wake of the events of 11 September, this parallel establishment replaced the traditional foreign policy elite to itself become the new establishment. The strategic alliances and the institutional infrastructure that enabled this rise dates back to neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol's association with the CIA-funded [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] and his stint as the editor of [[Encounter]] magazine, two key instruments in the US cultural war against the USSR.
 ===Key Individuals===

@@ Line 90: / Line 90: @@
 Irving Kristol saw himself as a realist and disparaged the very notion of human rights. Likewise, he was sceptical about the idea of promoting democracy. As Glazer notes, 'Irving was skeptical early on about imposing or promoting democracy in South Korea or Vietnam'. In February 1981 when Ernest Lefever pronounced, shortly after being nominated as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, that the US government had 'no responsibility -- and certainly no authority -- to promote human rights in other sovereign states', neoconservatives were quick to come to his defence. Irving Kristol later noted:
-:The politics of polarization, in which the left crusades against the rihgt under the banner of 'human rights', while the threat from the totalitarian left is altogether ignored, appeals to their ideological bias as well as to their self-righteous passions. One might almost say it is their secret agenda.<ref>Wall Street Journal, 29 May 1981</ref>
+:The politics of polarization, in which the left crusades against the right under the banner of 'human rights', while the threat from the totalitarian left is altogether ignored, appeals to their ideological bias as well as to their self-righteous passions. One might almost say it is their secret agenda.<ref>Wall Street Journal, 29 May 1981</ref>
-Though in recent years neoconservatives have championed gay rights as a Western value in the 'clash of civilizations',<ref>Daniel Pipes, [http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/02/favoring-islamists-over-gays-and-jews Favoring Islamists over Gays and Jews], Daniel Pipes blog, 27 February 2005</ref> they did not always look upon homosexuals with such favour. In the early 1980s Norman Podhoretz drew a comparison between England in the 30s and the United States under Carter to suggest that the 'prominence of homosexuals in the literary world' was responsible for the 'culture of appeasment'. He observed: 'The homosexual ethos in England between the wars as anti-English'.<ref>quoted in Blumenthal, 1986: p. 130</ref>
+Though in recent years neoconservatives have championed gay rights as a Western value in the 'clash of civilizations',<ref>Daniel Pipes, [http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2005/02/favoring-islamists-over-gays-and-jews Favoring Islamists over Gays and Jews], Daniel Pipes blog, 27 February 2005</ref> they did not always look upon homosexuals with such favour. In the early 1980s Norman Podhoretz drew a comparison between England in the 30s and the United States under Carter to suggest that the 'prominence of homosexuals in the literary world' was responsible for the 'culture of appeasement'. He observed: 'The homosexual ethos in England between the wars as anti-English'.<ref>quoted in Blumenthal, 1986: p. 130</ref>
 ==The Parallel Establishment==