HARPER: CARLSON HAILS DEPARTURE OF 'LEFTIST' BOLTON

On Wednesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson rightfully celebrated the firing of John Bolton as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump.  With no shortage of irony, Carlson noted that many left progressives, particularly those closely associated with former President Barack Obama, lamented Bolton's departure.  Top of the list was Samantha Power, the humanitarian interventionist who was instrumental in the Libya debacle and almost succeeded in getting Obama to go all-in with war against Syria.  "Fundamentally Bolton was a man of the left," Carlson declared.

He explained:  Bolton never saw a problem that could not be solved by government intervention.  That, Carlson noted, is characteristic of the left, not the right.

Whether Carlson intended to dig deeper or not, the reality is that Bolton's brand of neoconservatism came directly out of the far left wing of Soviet Communism.  As some may recall, many of the first generation of neoconservatives in the mid-1970s were former followers of Leon Trotsky--card carrying members of the Fourth International.  They merely morphed Trotsky's core idea of permanent revolution into the neoconservative dream of permanent war, permanent regime change.  First Gen neocon godfather Irving Kristol personified the leftist roots of the neocons.  But he was not alone in his early Trotskyite roots.  Other neocons who were part of the Trotskyite New York Intellectuals included:  Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer, Leslie Fiedler and Kristol's wife Gertrude Himmelfarb.  They moved from the Young People's Socialist League to the American Enterprise Institute.

Perhaps this is why Bolton, who is a rabid subscriber to the permanent war/permanent regime change dogma, shrieks in protest every time he is called a neocon.

Comments

[Julian]

Let's not forget the synthesis with Leo Strauss, who - shall we say - shared a historical milieu with the Lipsets and Kristols of this world. Purely coincidence tho.

[Vegetius]

The Neocon shrieks in protest when he strikes you.

But speaking of Trotskyists in America, have you followed the recent controversy involving the ADL and PewDiePie, the Swedish youtube gaming sensation with over 100 million subscribers? There is little decent coverage in the media, but the Catholic scholar and notorious thoughtcriminal E. Michael Jones did a great video on it.

[Jim Ticehurst]

Colonel...Thank You For putting up these Two Articles on Tucker Carlson...and The Neo.Con Trotskyist Influences on John Bolton...and many Previous "Advisors to United States Presidents..s."on Foreign Policy who believe in Perpetual Wars..and The Irving and William Krystal Types Manipulating and Organizing..The Resistance..I think This all Points and Long History of Political Manipulation..Appointment of Cabinent Members Agency Directors.. U.S.... Policys..and Interventions..I now see how Deeply entrenced the Neo Cons are in Our System..: Long Developed..and Groomed..By Very Rich and Powerful People..Many in The New York.. New Jersey areas..I am beginning to Think The Fusion GPS Group was Was funded by this Group...That Perhaps...Christopher Steele and His Support group are Also Like Minded Neo Cons..That Is Entrenched In England...and that this Whole Matter..Involves Carrying On Trotskys..famous Feud with Joseph Stalin..and Our Wealth..Resources and Republic.... are Victims..of a War Eating up Our Wealth..Attacking Our Culture..and Constitution....The Far Left..Socialists..and The Neo Con..Trotskyist Now Own Both..Branches..and Its Gettysberg..and Valley Forge Time for The United States..IMO....

[coboarts]

damn, let's see... my father served in the Bersaglieri and when returning to Italy at the end of WWII his brother was shot in the back of the neck by communists. My wife endured the reign of Pol Pot, and I took the oath,"against all enemies, foreign and domestic" wtf is a guy supposed to do :-) I hope we aren't planning on letting California go.

[d74]

Left? What left?
Funny thought. Bolton sits to the right of Genghis Khan. That's enough.

[TonyL]

"He explained: Bolton never saw a problem that could not be solved by government intervention. That, Carlson noted, is characteristic of the left, not the right."

That's laughable. A neocon is short for a neo-conservative. Not a leftist. Not by any stretch of imagination. Carlson, while he is absolutely right that Bolton is warmonger, still trying to twist it, in order to bash the left. If Carlson were honest, he would have said "Bolton never saw a problem that could not be solved by going to war".

[turcopolier]

TonyL

I could call myself a horse but that would not make me one.

[Larry Kart]

Strauss and Co. are not particularly of the left or of the eight but are more or less a third force.. They are anti-democratic authoritarians who believe that the mass of humanity is incapable of making "correct" decisions and must be ruled from above by would-be noble tyrants who have been educated and are advised by an elite of the Straussian ilk.

[turcopolier]

Larry Kart

Why have you ignored the trotskyite element of neoconism that Harper stressed.

[Morongobill]

Bolton and his fellow travelers should thank the stars above that, so far, they haven't suffered Trotsky's fate.

[Bill H]

Indeed. I'd like to see his interpretation of neo-liberalism.

[Jane]

Carlson has become a voice for prudent and non-interventionist foreign policy, the only one in the mainstream media I can think of. The president seems to listen to him despite his annoyance with Fox in general.He is credited by some for stopping Trump from bombing Iran over the drone. He has hosted Russia expert Stephen Cohen and Tulsi Gabbard among others that question our overseas engagement. Despite Cohen's real creds to speak on Russia, the networks prefer our former ambassador to Russia, McFaul.

[The Twisted Genius]

I think Larry Kart captured the essence of Trotsky's (and other's) vanguard party, a select group who fervently believe they know how the world should be and work tirelessly to force that world view on all others. The neocons certainly fit this description. They fervently believe in American exceptionalism and work to impose their vision on the rest of the world primarily through military intervention, but also through embargoes and other sanctions. They believe history must go in a certain direction and they know what that direction is. This view fits the neocons as it does the humanitarian interventionists. Carlson is not of that mold, nor is Gabbard. Trump could follow those examples, but he also seems intent on bending to world to his desires. Thankfully he prefers doing so through economic warfare rather than bombs and missiles.

Neocons don't seem to give much thought to domestic policies, but the left and the right both exhibit traits of a vanguard party. The progressives certainly have their preferred view of what America should look like, but the nationalists fervently believe in their vision for America and work just as hard to impose that view on the rest of us as the progressives do. I think there may be a little bit of Trotsky in most of us.

[artemesia]

I stubbornly maintain that the blueprint for the GWOT was rolled out by Benzion and Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jonathan Institute's (named for Bibi's 'martyred' brother) Jerusalem Conference, July 1979.
Following introductory remarks by Benzion, who had been assistant to, then successor to Vladimir Jabotinsky, proponent of "revisionist" or militarized zionism, participants included avowed Trotskyites Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, and hanger-on zionists Paul Johnson, George H W Bush.

The book that Bibi edited from this conference, International Terrorism: Challenge and Response
https://books.google.com/books?id=s8Pm37gg5JkC&q=contents#v=snippet&q=speaker&f=false
planted in my mind the notion that Jabotisnky zionists in league with American Trotskyites formulated and fulminated the Global War on Terror, for the primary benefit of Israel and the advancement of Frankfurt school ideology.

It is worth noting, with serious concern, that Alex Karp, co-founder of Palantir, the CIA-affiliated corporate spy aggregators, completed the PhD at Frankfurt U. in social theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp

Bolton may be gone but neocon/Trotskyite/Frankfurt School theorists are even more deeply embedded than Bolton was in American institutions & decision making.

[turcopolier]

TTG
"here may be a little bit of Trotsky in most of us." Quibbling.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Harper:

Where are the American Electorate in all of this? Are you positing neo-conservatives as their alibi?

[Unhinged Citizen]

Isn't the only one, defining characteristic of the Neo-Con movement their servility to the state of Israel?

So what's the point of defining this in the mindless left-right paradigm?

These people are simply agents of Israel. That is their only ideology. Prove me wrong.

[Harper]

Leo Strauss was part of the same late-1930s migration to the United States as the Frankfurt School. He stopped over in England on a Rockefeller Foundation grant to review the papers of Thomas Hobbes, which further consolidated his love for authoritarianism. He viewed the political front men as inferior, preferring a quiet behind-the-scenes dictatorship of lies by what he called "the Gentlemen."

Frankfurt School moved into universities, OSS and promoted culture war. They broke with Marx over the fact that the working class was profoundly patriotic during World War I and every effort at creating a Bolshevik revolt in the West failed. They like Strauss concluded that an intelligentsia elite had to rule, by lying to the gullible masses and destroying their sense of morality and values. Identity politics, political correctness were consequences of this outlook, shared by both Strauss and the Frankfurt School.

Some openly embraced the Nazis. Hannah Arendt had a long relationship with Heidegger when he was one of the ideologues of National Socialism. History is not linear or objective.

[turcopolier]

Unhinged Citizen

IMO it is a major error to think the neocons merely servants of Zionism. they see themselves as a sort of secular priesthood intent on unifying the world under the whacko Straussian ideology. for them the Jews, Israel and the US are all just tools and the power of the Zionist lobby in the US makes their support of Israel and reciprocal Zionist support of them an attractive thing.

[The Twisted Genius]

Unhinged, You're forgetting the containment/rollback period in American foreign policy. The neocons were in the thick of that.

[ex PFC Chuck]

It's useful to think of the political spectrum as circular, not a straight line. The extreme "left" and extreme "right" meet each other in the extremity of their violent inclinations.

[gnv987]

How about the fabianists? were they not partners to the Frankfurt School complementing each other?

[catherine]

''Where are the American Electorate in all of this? Are you positing neo-conservatives as their alibi?''

Silly...the American Electorate has no say in policy.
All we do is vote and then the Elected Ones do whatever they want to or are told to do by their real Ma$ters.

[catherine]

All neocons are Trotskies , all united in hate of whatever and whoever stands in the way of their preferred "World Order'.
'Spreading democracy,'protecting the homeland','human rights' blah,blah,blah is just the lipstick on the pigs.

[Barbara Ann]

The neocons' GWOT brand was a master stroke. Just like the progressive Left's wars on discrimination and inequality, the struggle must necessarily be eternal. After all, what does victory look like when the enemy is an abstract noun?

The zeal to wage permanent revolution must have an underlying psychological cause and I would not be surprised if it were the same in progressives and neocons. Both share a disdain for and eagerness to make war on other cultures. Could this be born out of the angst and fear of not being at home in their own? Most people I meet who are culturally at home have no such desires and are content to simply make their way in the world - and let others do likewise. Tucker Carlson appears to be one of these.