Stuart Jackson yahoo.com> wrote:

The Neocons as a Hostile Conservative (!) Elite

by Prof Kevin MacDonald

January 24,2008

I haven't read Jacob Heilbrunn's book on the neocons yet, but I'm not
sure I need to after seeing Philip Weiss's review. Weiss's review
makes it clear that Heilbrunn's book corroborates several of the
themes in my writing on the neocons and on Jewish intellectual and
political movements generally.

First, neoconservatism is a Jewish movement. That should have been
clear to everyone by now, but references to the Jewish basis of the
movement have been noticeably missing from much of the mainstream
media, to the point that Bill Kristol was introduced as a columnist at
the New York Times as simply a "conservative." This is critical
because the neocons have now become the conservative establishment.
When Kristol (or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity) hold forth at Fox
News, most people have no idea that they are tuning into the public
face of a fundamentally Jewish movement that elbowed out more
traditional conservatives.

Secondly, Jewish neocons not only have a strong Jewish identity, they
also have strong Jewish interests. This is obvious from their
involvement in pro-Israel activism, their personal relationships with
Israeli leaders, and close ties with other Jews and with the wider
Jewish community. In fact, I have argued that the neocons are more
strongly identified as Jews than the mainstream liberal/left Jews -
that the neocons form the vanguard of the Jewish community. After all,
neocons were the first segment of the Jewish community to strongly
condemn the USSR, both for its domestic anti-Semitism and for its
alliances with Arab governments. Prominent neocons like Richard Perle
and Paul Wolfowitz began their political careers by making alliances
with Cold War hawks like Henry Jackson This was at a time when the
Jewish left was prominently involved in defending the USSR, apparently
blind to the fact that the status of Jews as an elite in the USSR had
changed greatly following World War II.

And the neocons are notorious for their strong ties to the most
extreme racialist and nationalist segments of Israeli society -
elements that the mainstream liberal/left Jewish community probably
wishes would disappear or at least be less visible. (Hence the uproar
over Christiane Amanpour's God's Jewish Warriors.) Indeed, the Jewish
liberal/left has a huge blind spot, continuing to pursue its leftist
multicultural agenda in the U.S. while ignoring the fact that the
organized Jewish community is deeply complicit in dispossessing the
Palestinians and erecting a racialist, apartheid state in Israel. As
Weiss has noted elsewhere, "Steve Rabinowitz, Clinton friend, told me
this year that if anyone did a study of how much [Democrat] money
comes from Jews, it would fuel conspiracy theories." The Jewish
liberal/left lavishly supports Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but
makes no attempt to wrest control of the pro-Israel lobby from the
hands of what James Petras terms the "reactionary minority of American
Jews" who head the major American Jewish organizations.

But more interestingly, Heilbrunn points to the "lifelong antipathy
toward the patrician class among the neocons . [that] prompted them to
create their own parallel establishment." In this regard, the neocons
are entirely within the American Jewish mainstream. As I noted in a
previous blog (also commenting on Philip Weiss), "Jews have become an
elite, but an elite that does not identify with its subjects - a
hostile, estranged but very wealthy elite that still sees themselves
as outsiders." And along with the American Jewish mainstream, the
neocons have been vital players in the establishment of a variety of
policies opposed to the interests and attitudes of the American
majority, most egregiously unrestricted immigration which has
successfully altered the ethnic composition of the country. Indeed,
neoconservative Ben Wattenberg famously wrote that "The non-
Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost
transcendental quality."

This hostility toward the traditional peoples and culture of America
among people calling themselves conservatives is striking - the
antithesis of normal and natural conservative tendencies. As Sam
Francis noted, what the neocons dislike about traditional
conservatives is simply that they "are conservative at all":

There are countless stories of how neoconservatives have
succeeded in entering conservative institutions, forcing out or
demoting traditional conservatives, and changing the positions
and philosophy of such institutions in neoconservative
directions.. Writers like M. E. Bradford, Joseph Sobran, Pat
Buchanan, and Russell Kirk, and institutions like Chronicles,
the Rockford Institute, the Philadelphia Society, and the
Intercollegiate Studies Institute have been among the most
respected and distinguished names in American conservatism. The
dedication of their neoconservative enemies to driving them out
of the movement they have taken over and demonizing them as
marginal and dangerous figures has no legitimate basis in
reality. It is clear evidence of the ulterior aspirations of
those behind neoconservatism to dominate and subvert American
conservatism from its original purposes and agenda and turn it
to other purposes.. What neoconservatives really dislike about
their "allies" among traditional conservatives is simply the
fact that the conservatives are conservatives at all-that they
support "this notion of a Christian civilization," as Midge
Decter put it, that they oppose mass immigration, ... that they
entertain doubts or strong disagreement over American foreign
policy in the Middle East, that they oppose reckless
involvement in foreign wars and foreign entanglements, and
that, in company with the Founding Fathers of the United
States, they reject the concept of a pure democracy and the
belief that the United States is or should evolve toward it.

Francis, S. (2004). The neoconservative subversion. In B.
Nelson (ed.), "Neoconservatism." Occasional Papers of the
Conservative Citizens' Foundation, Issue Number Six, 6-12. St.
Louis: Conservative Citizens' Foundation, p. 9.

That the New York Times can call Kristol a conservative without shame
or irony is a striking commentary on the death of American
conservatism.

There are several other themes highlighted in Weiss's review that are
worth mentioning because they are typical of other Jewish intellectual
and political movements. Heilbrunn describes neocon "cabals" in the
State Department and in academic departments at elite universities.
This is a reference to Jewish ethnic networking. In general, all of
the important Jewish intellectual and political movements - from
psychoanalysis and Boasian anthropology to neoconservatism - have a
mutually reinforcing core of Jews centered around charismatic leaders.
In the case of the neocons, individuals such as Leo Strauss, Richard
Perle, and Norman Podhoretz have played this role. Neoconservative
cabals have been largely successful in controlling or at least heavily
influencing elite institutions in academia, the government, think
tanks, and the media.

And finally, the neocons are prime examples of another important theme
of Jewish intellectual life - self-deception. Weiss writes:

The reader is left with the shadowy sense that the neocons have
a pro-Israel agenda that they are not upfront about. But it
isn't a conspiracy, Heilbrunn warns. The neocons have convinced
themselves that the U.S. and Israel have congruent interests.
"They just believe this stuff. They're not agents," an
anonymous source tells him, speaking of Cheney aide David
Wurmser, who is married to an Israeli.

Married to an Israeli. The neocons may believe it, but the rest of us
need not be so foolish. For example, Douglas Feith is depicted by
Heilbrunn as having published a letter defending the capture of the
West Bank while still a teenager. Feith has also been credibly charged
with spying for Israel, and was deeply involved in the disinformation
used by the U.S. government to justify the invasion of Iraq. He has
close ties to the settler movement, and was a participant in the
notorious "A Clean Break" paper that advised the Israeli government
that removing Saddam Hussein should be an Israeli strategic goal. The
authors of this report speak as Jews and Israelis, not as U.S.
citizens: "Our claim to the land-to which we have clung for hope for
2000 years-is legitimate and noble."

European Americans may have a difficult time processing all of this.
Their individualism and their own fragile and beleaguered sense of
ethnicity make them less likely to attribute ethnic motives to others.
And there is an imposing edifice of taboos surrounding even the
mention of Jewish influence, much less anything that hints that Israel
is the first loyalty of Jewish neocons - an edifice aggressively
maintained by the organized Jewish community. But the rather
unpleasant facts are staring European Americans in the face, even if
the New York Times insists on calling them conservatives.

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