Weiss saw Scott McConnell at the IDF demonstration in New York the other day–after McConnell had participated in a demonstration against Ahava Dead Sea products in Washington–and asked him why a conservative was spending so much time with left wingers, could McConnell write a few words about his progress?
Perhaps one of those moments to examine the shifting Left-Right of identities has come around again. Several weeks ago I attended a small conference in DC devoted to Left-Right cooperation possibilities in the antiwar movement, and the magazine I’m associated with, The American Conservative, is now preparing a symposium on aspects of this question.
The progressive-conservative dichotomy is less fixed than generally presumed. Historically, of course, the intellectual officer class of anti-communists was made up almost exclusively of ex-communists, a group far broader than the neoconservatives who have made that transition famous. I saw the other day that some right wing group at CPAC was giving an award to the great Marxist historian Eugene Genovese. Can you imagine, Genovese!
In my case, the shifts have been much less dramatic. I was kind of on the Left as a kid, driven for the most part by opposition to the Vietnam War. I began shifting rightward after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973—I remember the summer of that year seeing Nixon on TV giving a press conference and being badgered by the press and feeling a tinge of sympathy for him– wow, where did that come from? By the mid seventies I was reading Commentary. A few years after that I was writing for it. Under the influence of reading and professors in college—often European-born social democrats who knew a lot about how fragile bourgeois societies could be—I became pretty seriously anti-communist. Plus, (and I would note that this seems much less a problem with the contemporary Left) I was getting the vibe in the mid seventies—the hey-day of liberal identity politics—that the Left didn’t like white males all that much.
I was propelled by a Commentary view of the world for about twenty years, which shaped (and no doubt aided) my career. But sometime in the mid nineties, that world view began to seem insufficient. The Cold War was over. Urban crime—especially crime in New York where I lived —was way down. Those two issues had probably been at the emotional core of my conservatism, or neoconservatism, in the eighties and early nineties. Of course one doesn’t necessarily recognize the changes right away, as they are happening. Life was busy. I had a good job at the New York Post, most of my friends were neoconservatives. And I was still (and remain) fairly right wing on any number of issues. But the ideological boundaries of the world I lived in were breaking down. I was opposed to large scale immigration, beginning to get concerned about global warming, starting to worry that the United States was no longer a “middle class society”—a place where working class, not unduly gifted, people, could make comfortable and secure lives for themselves. And the only person on the Right seeking to address these issues (well, not global warming) was. . . Pat Buchanan.
I plan to write some day about Pat, and Buchananism. I believe that history will arrive at a much more favorable view of him than the current mainstream consensus. He was, not so incidentally, one of the first people to feel the brunt of full scale barrage from the Israel lobby and the neocons. For me, and perhaps for others, he represented an appealing way to depart from establishment conservativism, without our necessarily realizing it. Perhaps there’s an analogy to be made to Trotskyism here – the vehicle many rode away from the Stalinized Left, arriving eventually at pro-capitalist positions.
As was the case for millions of others, 9/11 crystallized a lot things. I was nearby, my wife called me from her office on Wall Street—she had seen a plane on its way into a building while getting out of the subway. That summer I had been paying a fair amount of attention to the Mideast, writing a bit about checkpoints and settlers and the like for New York Press. I had long known, perhaps always, that the Palestinians had a reasonable argument. But it had seemed, in the nineties, with the Cold War over, and Oslo on track, that a more or less fair solution was imminent. There was no reason for me to upset all my social and professional ties by advocating for the Palestinians.
But as the decade progressed, it became obvious that the Israelis –under prime minister Netanyahu in particular– were trying to derail the Olso process through stalling and settlement building and general obfuscation. I actually said this to Wililam F. Buckley in a job interview dinner at his home, before a score of National Review editors. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job—though one veteran NR editor told me afterwards that he thought this remark “very interesting.” If I remember correctly, right before 9/11, I had written a column pointing out that the biggest pop song in Egypt that summer was one whose lyrics—referring to Palestine, said “America, Please do something!”
After the World Trade Center attack anyone paying attention could see that the neocons would use the event to push Bush into a war against Iraq (and after that many other countries), because Iraq was supposedly a threat to Israel. This was hardly secret—they had been portraying Iraq as the new Nazi Germany for years, but 9/11 was their grand opportunity. In an effort to mobilize conservative opposition to the Iraq war and begin to attack systematically the mindset that created the Iraq war, I started The American Conservative with Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002. I hoped that parts of the Right would not be swept up in the insane jingoism. And some parts did resist it, but never as many as I had imagined.
As you note, I spend some time with the Left now. Monday evening, I demonstrated in DC against Ahava with Code Pink. Tuesday, in New York I marched against Gaza war crimes, in a demo organized by what appeared to me to be Old Left groups. I’m involved with Churches for Middle East Peace. I’ve been to events with Inter-Faith Peace Builders. I write for this site. It seems blindingly obvious to me that America won’t have any sort of decent society, conservative, progressive or otherwise, if it’s involved in endless Mideast wars. We’ll end up bankrupt and without civil liberties. Clearly the Iraq War, even as it has been many times worse for the Iraqis, demonstrates where the present trend goes.
It’s also clear that right now, the biggest engine driving us into more and larger wars, and especially one with Iran, is Israel and those in the US who, either from conviction or a desire to maintain their establishment credentials, see the world through a right wing Israeli optic. And of course if Israel continues to refuse to make peace, it will always be at war, and always ”threatened”. It has and still does have the opportunity to make peace around the ’67 borders—and seems absolutely determined not to do so.
I don’t know where that puts me in the end. In many cases, and in mine, political identification is driven by one primary issue—civil rights, war or peace. My late friend, the brilliant political activist Jim Chapin, used to say people define themselves more by what they’re against than what they’re for—and the direction of their ideological movement is more telling than their past positions. Take away the war, and I would probably be on the center-right, arguing against most readers on this site. Philosophically and temperamentally I find much to admire in George F. Kennan and Sam Huntington, who may be the last of America’s great WASP intellectuals. They would be hard to place on a left-right continuum, and they certainly had their reactionary sides to them. But both were Democrats, and both opposed the Iraq war of course. Does this begin to answer your questions?
What can I say Scott, it’s a tough life. A guy runs, dodges, backtracks and dances looking for the main chance. Maybe you’ve found it this time. Good luck.
You raise up a monster, feed it on raw meat, don’t be suprised when it starts to savage you.
Buchanan knows this, he’s had a lot of bites taken out of his ass, and he’s no longer viable for anything but sitting with that blowhard McLaughlin on TV.
potsherd. Buchanan is on Morning Joe and Hardball. He has a lot of cogent things to say. He is extraordinarily insightful about political infights, and many times, as much as what he said angered me, he was right about what was going on. And he is not afraid to take on political taboos, which I also love.
Sure, Buchanan talks, but no one seriously listens.
potsherd, I’ve been kicking around here as long as you have. Seriously, you should check out his articles on antiwar.
MRW, my point is that nobody takes antiwar.com seriously
Pearls and emeralds could be dropping from his tongue, but the Zionist controlled media would just tell us it’s maggots.
potsherd, nobody takes antiwar.com seriously? Who are these nobodies you’re talking about? Antiwar has great aggregate reporting, and features serious reporters, contributors, and columnists both in print and on its radio show.
These nobodies must be ignoramuses because it is a highly credible news source. Anyone who says otherwise has no understanding of the news business.
potsherd, last month the NYT tried, on its front page, to spin Ahmadinejad’s anniversary speech in Tehran as a declaration that it had the capacity to make weapons-grade nuclear fuel and implied that Ahmadinejad said he was going to do it, both of which were patently false.
antiwar.com’s managing news editor, Jason Ditz, went after the NYT for false reporting, with proof, and the NYT was forced to issue a detraction.
jesus, I meant retraction.
You’ll have to forgive potsherd. He’s a great guy, in my opinion, but often he defaults to inertia and passivity.
Although knowing that now does bother me because A) I didn’t know about it sooner than just now, when you said it, and B) a lot of papers across the country parrot articles directly out of the NYT. So how many of them parroted this article, and then the retraction as well?
Here’s the link to Ditz’s article.
link to news.antiwar.com
potsherd, I agree with MRW. The antiwar.com site is, actually, quite a serious news blog. It follows the model of places like TPM, Truthdig, The agonist and many others, in that it uses a combination of available news reports, co-postings of known pundits – such as Greenwald, Walt, Avnery, Tomdispatch and many many others (on occasions, Mondoweiss was cross-posted as well, eg,the Chas Freeman article), original columns from many libertarian leaning people including Ron paul, and opinion pieces by the editor of the site Justin Raymondo (who is more libertarian leaning than a “ranting’ leftist), jiraldi (who has a great piece there now) and several other associated part-time columnists. Sometimes, they even have independent investigative reporting they sponsor on their own.
It is, IMO, a very good aggregate of news and opinions and the format is one of the best I’ve seen – which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend for anyone who wants a daily snapshot of the shenanigans of empire, capital and ziocain-laden trops. I consider it a necessary antidote to groveling PBS-style MSM reporting and a first rate complement to democracy Now, Grit TV, TPM and similar outlets.
From what I’ve seen they manage to raise 70 K every quarter too, which pays a few nominal salaries and helps maintaining the site and the reports coming in. Since they are not supported by contributions from the high and mighty, they can maintain their independence – unlike, say the HuffPo or DK (the latter is far from independent of the democracratic party machinery, and hence is cross -contaminated by the same forces that we know all too well).
The currently posted Raymondo’s article on the Afganistan Potemkin village is a must-read, IMHO. I’ve been following this story for a while now – it’s really astounding how Marjan, the great bustling m”metropolis” of over 80,000 people, went from “taliban stronghold”, to a collection of hamlets, family compounds and open markets spread over 125 miles, with hardly a taliban in sight. Where, oh where did all the taliban go, the brave grunts – ready to tackle any and all – must be asking themselves…
Did I do well, MRW?
The site is serious and I often read the articles there, but it’s not influential. No one pays attention to it but those of us on the left wing of the left wing.
And if you try to cite it over at Daily Kos, they’ll try to ban you.
Danaa, you done good. ;-)
potsherd, my friend, I beg to differ. Far more people, right left and center, read and trust antiwar than DK, for the simple reason that the owner, Raimondo, has been assiduous, from Day One, in keeping his focus on warring parties globally. He keeps his opinions to his own columns, makes (forces?) anyone who writes for him provide links to substantiate claims, and he publishes ‘right’ and ‘left’ wing content.
Daily Kos has become a group grope, a Democratic Den, and I resent it’s taboo list. It’s a social/political media site. It is not a news site, like antiwar. And the fact that DK tries to ban anyone who mentions antiwar.com tells me they are hyperventilating frontal lobe-challenged fools with time on their hands and an overworked amygdala (not unlike Israeli settlers). Which, frankly, is why I have never participated over there. Every once in while, like once a year, something fabulous there comes out in a diary. I read it regularly during the primaries and general election. I find the majority of the people who comment here far more informed.
P.S. potsherd, I know you can come back with something like Alexa statistics that show DK has more hits than antiwar, but antiwar doesn’t have the hit list because it doesn’t have the active commentary section, and the investment those commenters make in DK.
BTW, everybody, Danaa’s recommendation to read about the Afghanistan Potemkim Village is an excellent suggestion. Will really put anything you hear about Marjan into perspective. Talk about Americans being duped by drivel!
potsherd, read Buchanan’s articles on antiwar.com. You will be surprised.
Hey Scott, during all the time you were evolving, did you ever make any attempt to really look into the history of the I-P conflict? You never really told us, but it appears that you did not. Fine. Some of us regulars here on Mondoweiss are not leftist all the way. Israel First is not our only concern in terms of what that means for the USA. I don’t really see much in what you say other than that one can make a nice career for oneself by rubber-stamping Israel right or wrong. I mean, what would happen to you if held Justice tight, and ran with the ball? Worried about your family? So are we all. AIPAC counts on it.
“…a desire to maintain their establishment credentials…”
Yup. If you seem to have sympathy for the Palestinians — even to speak of them (or Arabs in general) as human beings — you pretty much get kicked out of the conversation in Washington. It’s sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle, but after a year in Washington, it was manifestly obvious. It’s truly ridiculous. Something’s gotta give.
link to fasttimesinpalestine.wordpress.com
Scott,
I had the same trajectory. Reading Ostrovsky’s books woke me up, or caused my waking up; they explained so many lingering questions in the media/press/events that I had while I was in NYC that remained unanswered for so long, and shone a light on forces that certainly weren’t working in my best interests or for my survival. But I will never go back to Republican, Democrat, right, left, liberal, conservative. Now I’m just pissed, at all of them. And I will do what I need to prevent WWIII, which I’m convinced we would be in the middle of if it were not for the web. I’m a Baby Boomer, and I am massively unimpressed with the shit mess we’ve made of things, our arrogance, our lack of care. And our collective timidity.
McConnell’s TAC , now under Jewish ownership, is far from conservatice:
Unzism, A Dangerous Doctrine
link to chroniclesmagazine.org
Thanks for the explanation Scott. I used to believe Democrats were the moral group, but Israeli support makes everything corrupt in both parties. It’s a problem that is not going away. Sites like this are active protest signs to the mainstream media’s myths. It’s great to think that people like you and Phil, are forming political bonds. To me, it indicates there is a much greater audience out there that will eventually understand the big picture of the Mid-East.
I used to think Buchanan was an antisemite, which was before I understood the whole Meghillah of the Middle East. But I realized that he is more concerned with the success and independence of this nation (not a Jackson Diehl), and that made me realize antisemitism, is often overstated by Jewish Americans. I started listening to him in 2003 when he was one of the few who spoke against the war. But his columns have a great amount insight into world history.
I’ve generally thought of myself as centre-left, but it was the centrism and belief in moderation that misled me for many years. I kept thinking that if only the moderates on both sides of the ME dispute could gain power in Israel and Palestine there would be a friendly agreement that would be in everyone’s interest and all would be well. After Oslo I thought it was only a matter of time.
I should have known that when it comes to a clash between two whole human groups whose general wills are in conflict moderates, in the sense of those ready to make concessions that threaten the all the plans and purposes of the group, never gain power, unless perhaps they are installed by an illegitimate process. And in that case they claims to speak for the group carry no conviction.
Zionism and anti-Zionism have led a complex double life on both sides of the standard left-right divide. The existence of right-wing anti-Zionists isn’t inherently surprising.
Scott,
I am on the left, but I tend to agree with your view of Buchanan (at least to a point). However, I have noticed that frequently Buchanan will articulate a position or group of positions which should cause him , for example, to support Kerry or Obama for President, but he will not do so. It is as if he cannot help himself, even when he has not been thrown red meat. It is disappointing.
On another matter, although I am Irish Catholic and am aware of the anti-Irish bigotry among the WASP elite,I also admire much of that old elite (specifically the old New England and/or abolitionist branches). Truthfully, they did a better job than those who followed.
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