Two correspondents make points about the way the neocons pass along their political philosophy to the next generation. Says Joachim Martillo:
The Jabotinskians appear to do an excellent job of socializing and
indoctrinating their children. It makes a generational effort possible. In contrast, Moshe Arens and Yigal Arens are political antipodes.
This phenomenon is historically common in Imperial Systems like the
Spanish and the British. The Imperial ideology is much stronger among
those that never faced the reality in the imperial possessions.
I’d note that Leon Wieseltier states in his book Kaddish that his father was a Jabotinskyite. And my impression is that Wieseltier’s own views on Israel are unreconstructed, or have a factional air about them. Marty Peretz’s intellectual activities also have a paternal quality. He has nurtured god knows how many important journalists, and before each one leaves the factory, or before it even gets to the factory, he stamps him (I don’t think there’ve been many girls) with a Star of David.
And here is my friend Jack Ross reflecting on his political education on dad’s knee:
For many years I felt something very similar [to young Daniel Feith's ideological obedience to his father] in my relationship to my
own father, carrying on his factional stand against the evolving
neocons in YPSL (Young People’s Socialist League). The ironies of this abound. Only because of his
passion about the neocons did I ever evolve into something roughly
resembling a paleo (though I had old right-populist leanings from the
moment I became something other than an unthinking Clintonite, about
the time I turned 16), but on the other hand I imbibed from him a
left-factional understanding of neoconservatism which I think is vital
to understanding it and which I doubt I could ever have gotten
anywhere, nor from anyone, else. [Weiss emphasis]But unlike Bill Kristol,
John Podhoretz, and Daniel Feith, I broke out of it, at the very least
to the point where it defined me and my politics. The turning point
was probably about the time I moved to New York when I realized how off
the rails my father’s beloved Dissent Magazine is. (My sense is that rather than being just
one step behind Marty Peretz, they are going the way of Partisan Review,
which is to cease being about anything relevant to the world around
them until they finally die). I think my father may have come to
recognize it to a point, but in short, while I don’t buy his spiel
about a “democratic left” anymore, there is undoubtedly more than
something of him in me in my enthusiasm for the rise of such populist
Democrats as Jim Webb and Bob Conley. Essentially, anyone who knows us both will tell you that my father and I are so different and yet so alike.
That’s endearing. I italicized Jack’s line about left-factional politics because I watched Eric Breindel doing it at Harvard, and was stunned. I’d never seen such obedience before. And lo, he soon became a neocon.
List time!
Kristols (and Himmelfarbs), Poddys (and Decters), Kagans (may be primus inter pares in terms of sheer numbers), Feiths, Goldbergs, Perle/Wohlstetter… not to forget the lovely Wurmsers.
The visible part of the iceberg is what, one tenth?
If I'm understanding your and Mr. Ross's use of "left-factional" correctly, another good example might be David Horowitz's journey from proprietor of Ramparts magazine in the seventies to the head of today's Campus Watch, etc.
(Although Ramparts can also be seen as an early example of the co-option of a dissenting movement by the media class.)
Richard and Daniel Pipes represent the dynamic duo of distortion. The father consistently misrepresented Russian and Soviet history to obscure the role of Russian Jews in the intelligentsia and radicalism (including assassination, terrorism, mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide) while Daniel Pipes has consistently misanalysed Arab and Islamic history for the sake of Zionism.
Horowitz may have followed Irving Kristol in the realization that attacking the so-called "New Class" could raise lots of money from conservative foundations.
Anyway, as I have pointed out elsewhere there is not much difference in the mentality of Soviet and Zionist Ashkenazim while Milton Friedman's economic ideology like Marxism produces a withering of the state, the latter in a dictatorship of the proletariat, the former in a dictatorship of global capital.
Horowitz and Kristol appear to have concluded that serving the plutocracy produced a better life than serving the revolution.
Friedman and the Pipeses, who came from Jabotinskian families, did not even have to make the choice.
I point out in The Israel Lobby and American Society [references work in the hyperlinked section]:
Despite membership in the former Soviet elite, Russian Jewish oligarchs hooked up with incredible alacrity with both the international organized Jewish community and with the Friedmanites (or Neoliberals), whose movement is in many regards the negative mirror image of that of the Marxism even to the point of being characterized by a mostly Jewish leadership with a mostly non-Jewish following. (See Re: Report: Finkelstein Lecture at MIT.[322])
Not only have Friedmanites as members of a predominantly Jewish movement proselytizing to non-Jews found it easy to collaborate with Jabotinskian Neoconservatives on the basis of shared principles and assumptions, but many Jabontinskian Neoconservaties are also Friedmanite Neoliberals.
The target Zionist constituency has always been Jewish wealth while Jews without major capital resources in Zionist ideology, whether Labor or Jabotinskian, serve simply as a resource (except of course for the Zionist intelligentsia) or simply as "useful idiots."
" I imbibed from him a left-factional understanding of neoconservatism which I think is vital to understanding it and which I doubt I could ever have gotten anywhere, nor from anyone, else."
Somehow I would like to know more about the "left-factional understanding". How would he define it.
And Phil, how would you define the "left element" in neoconservativism?
The only part were I can discover it is in the "bringing democracy rhetoric". Admittedly I think it is only PR gloss over the older authoritarian mindset. These guys are highly aware that democratic rules in the ME–in many places–might produce a disaster from the Western point of view.
my all-time favorite was Saul Bellow's son writing a book titled "In Praise of Nepotism". pretty much sums it up
Joachim's analysis reduces everything to the relation of elites. What he overlooks is that in order to dismiss Marxism and Leninism,you first have to understand its working principles. a principal one of which is class struggle. Which may take different forms…reflected even in the attempts of Jewish organizations like the Bund to obtain a special place in the workers movement,at the expense of the solidarity of the whole.
See Lenin on the Bund:
link to marxists.org
Also, what about those Jewish Marxists who rejected Jewish nationalism or zionism?
Fathers & Sons: The idea to "infer" the father's not articulated thought via a paper of his son feels ingenious. It only needs supportive evidence of a very good, close, strong relationship between father and son.
So far so good.
To create a specific neocon "clonology" out of a smooth sucession of fathers and sons, apparently without generation conflicts, feels like a double standard.
What factors create generational conflicts?
We are all shaped by the culture into which we are born.
hlmeankin do you mean like Hannah Arendt, who during the 1967 war gushed over the IDF? Do you mean like her? Well, they never really existed, evidenced by her actions.
Profile of average American soldier in Vietnam: Young, male , and probably about 19 years old, with no more than a grade 12 education, and from a poor or rural family.
Profile of average American soldier in Iraq: ditto
The American system is flexible, draft, no draft, results the same. Thank your congress.