Neo-Conservatism was a CIA op

First of all, to debunk the popular Trotskyist origins of Neo-Conservatism narrative, watch these videos from InDefenseOfTooucan, I’m not a Trotskyist but they are a Trotskyist YouTuber I respect.

https://youtu.be/xzM0lUko6hY

https://youtu.be/sgr2jkZxFcM

What most people typically mean when they refer to someone as a “Neo-Con” is the most Hawkish Pro Intervention people in the Republican Party in contrast to the firmly Non Interventionist Paleo-Cons.  Specifically how such Foreign Policy aims were framed during first the Cold War and adapted for the War on Terror.  Anyone meaning anything more specific than that is frankly referring to something that doesn’t even really exist., rarely has anyone actually called themselves a Neo-Con.

The core of Neo-Con ideology was defined by the magazine National Review and its founder William F. Buckley Jr.  Buckley was a Yale Graduate who is known to have worked for the CIA for two years at the start of the 50s including one of those for E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City. 

When he launched National Review in 1955 he made a point to hire intellectuals who were Ex-Communists of some sort.  This is tied to the basis for the Trotskyist narrative, but the small number of Trotskyists among them were specifically Shachmanites, a sub group disowned by both Trotsky himself and James P. Cannon and are people who ultimately fell out even with Shachman. What most of them do happen to have in common is having all worked for either OSS or CIA at some point previously as they transitioned into abandoning The Left.  James Burnham is perhaps most important as the Magazine's lead writer on Foreign Policy specifically.  

A CIA associate of Burnham who also wrote for National Review was Miles Copeland Jr.  They were both staunch Anti-Zionists.

But going outside the realm of intellectuals.  Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles were major players in the internal politics of The Republican Party and were in fact key backers of the early rise in political importance of both Prescott Bush and Richard Nixon.

Irving Kristol was part of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a known CIA operation.  However I don’t consider Irving Kristol important actually, he and many others you usually see named as the key Neo-Conservatives are part of the Genre of historical figures whose importance as “behind the scenes” political players is grossly exaggerated while just so happening to be Jews.  However since Kristol is the only person who has ever really self identified as a Neo-Con I couldn’t ignore him completely.  

Leftists should stop talking about Taxing The Rich

The YouTube Channel Tribunate has a good video on the Grain Dole of Ancient Rome.  There is a lot that’s misunderstood about it including over stating just how progressive it actually was.  But regardless it was upon introduction a massive relief to the Poor and Working Class.

And the Rich did not in any way pay for it, it was paid for unfortunately by the exploitation of the conquered people of the colonies.  Not a single Grain of it was paid for by Taxing the wealthy.  Yet Rome’s Aristocratic Patricians hated it anyway, they despised it and never stopped trying to undermine and destroy it.  Because the more Desperate the poorest in a society are, the easier they are to exploit.

And that fact is even more true under modern Capitalism than it was in ancient economies.  

There are now a number of good YouTube videos on Modern Monetary Theory or MMT.  The fact is Modern States with Currency Sovereignty like the United States create the money they spend and do not need a source of income to have enough money.  One of 1dime's videos on the subject is about how wrong it is to claim social programs are funded by Taxing the Rich.

However 1dime said one thing in that video I do disagree with, he said we should still Tax the Rich for “moral reasons”, well in my opinion doing things for “moral reasons” is the height of immorality actually, it’s founded upon an Idealist rather then Materialist framework.  Morality should be based on reducing harm and benefiting society.

These videos do explain why some Taxation is still needed for the government backed currency to have it’s objective value.  But once we understand that the Rich will oppose social programs like UBI and Free Healthcare and so on regardless and that how much money the Government has doesn't actually matter, I say we should stop giving them the excuse of perceived victimization, because however hallow to us online Leftists that is, America’s ruling ideology has made most even working class Americans very sympathetic to the idea of wanting to keep what you think you’ve earned.

And another added benefit is that if CasualHistorian is right about Lowering Taxes being the only truly unifying principle of the Republican Party, then once self proclaimed Communists stop pretending we need to tax the rich to achieve even our short term goals we can start trying to run in primaries even when only the Republican Party is having one.  Their Primaries are easier for a GrassRoots candidate to win anyway, and the right kind of Communist can build a coalition based on being pro Gun Rights and being Libertarian on Social Issues and courting the non-interventionist Anti-War wing of the Party.

I wish I understood this MMT stuff 4 years ago when I tried to argue something similar after the 2020 Election.

A lot of Leftists like to use Austerity as a scare word, as a core embodiment of the Capitalist Economics they oppose.  Well the actual way to be the exact opposite of Austerity is to propose increased spending and lowering taxes at the same time.

We need to start making it more clear that our objective is for the masses to have more, not inherently for anyone to have less.  

But if the existence of the Ultra Wealthy bothers you that much, I believe what they have will naturally start to diminish once the masses are less exploitable, we don’t need to take from them directly.

The Continuity between Pre-Civil War Parties and their Modern forms

There's a lot about both the Democratic and Republican parties that have changed during their long histories, but also a lot about both parties that has stayed the same.

The Party Switch narrative is correct in that specifically Southern White Supremacists switched from being Democrats to being Republicans in the mid 20th Century, which in turn impacted how both parties as a whole were on Racial issues.  How and why it happened is a longer and more complicated story than the common simplified narrative that makes it about 1 or 2 presidential elections in the 1960s, but the gist of that narrative is true. 

In fact I’ll even say there’s another type of voter who switched from being more likely to be Democrats to more likely to be Republicans slightly sooner and that’s Classical Liberals or Pro-Capitalism Libertarians like Grover Cleveland.

However, the problem I have is when people act like this means in every way they completely switched, that there was nothing Liberal about any of the Antebellum Democrats and nothing Conservative about the Antebellum Republicans.  The fact is that what political positions seem to innately go together today did not always innately go together, many of them seemed innately at odds in the past.  At their philosophical core the continuity between what these parties were when they were founded and what they are today is greater than the divergence.

Typical attempts to in any way deconstruct the Party Switch narrative are done with an agenda of supporting the modern Republican Party.  But that’s not what I’m doing, I don’t like either party in its current state and think both had more redeeming qualities in the past then they do now but would not fully endorse either at any time period.  Which one I would nominally consider the lesser Evil depends on the circumstances. But the basic fact that the Republican Party is today the party of the Racists is not a fact that can be denied no matter how you look at its history.

I shall start with the origins of the Democratic Party.

Andrew Jackson was a Slave Plantation Owner and a Racist against both Blacks and Native Americans.  But he very much demonstrated that he did not prioritize his positions on those issues over the Unity of the Union.  He opposed “States Rights” during the Nullification Crisis creating tension with other Southern Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and even predicted the next Crisis to provoke Secession would be the Slavery question.  Regardless Jackson was also the first U.S. President who was an active vocal defender of Slavery.

The reasons Jackson is a villain to modern Leftists were unfortunately not divisive issues at the time. People on the right sides of them did exist but they were not what principally animated any Presidential Elections of the 1820s and 30s.  The organized vocal anti Jackson sentiment of the time came from the Right, from New England and New York aristocrats and also the Anti-Masons, modern Conspiracy Theorists lionizing Jackson have it backwards, at the time people who believed in the Illuminati saw Jackson as an Illuminati puppet.

The Democrats were named what they were because they wanted to make the country more Democratic, there is a reason why in both the 19th and 21st Centuries every Presidential Election with a discrepancy between the Popular Vote and Electoral Vote it was the Democrats who lost even though they got more votes.  Both then and now the Party was partly driven by Anti-Wall Street Populism.

The Republican Party when it was founded is often mischaracterized as a Single Issue Party with that issue being opposition to Slavery.  The thing is there had already been Anti-Slavery single issue parties and they were no more successful than any other single issue party.  The Republican Party was simply the first major Political Party that was not internally divided on the Slavery issue.

And that includes the Democrats, Anti-Slavery Democrats always existed, particularly in the northern States.  Martin Van Buren was a co-founder of the Party who came down against Slavery when that became a divisive issue.  In New York the Pro-Slavery Faction were called the Hunkers and the Anti-Slavery faction the Barnburners.  Remember when I said above the Classical Liberals were mostly Democrats in the 1800s? Well they were usually with the Anti-Slavery Democrats like Samuel Tilden, which is not surprising since Classical Liberals followed the Economic Ideology of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill who both made their opposition to Chattel Slavery well known.  Local and State level Politicians in the North often didn’t concern themselves with Slavery one way or the other which is why I have trouble even finding the Anti-Slavery Democrats outside New York, but one example is Nelson Dewey the first Governor of my home state of Wisconsin.

The most vocal and uncompromising Pro-Slavery Southern Democrats were not Liberals, Classical or Otherwise, nor were they “Conservative” by any modern American understanding of Conservatism, they were Agrarian Neo-Feudalists who self identified as Anti-Capitalist and loved Thomas Carlyle.  But those two types were not the only types the Democrats had, they also had the ideological ancestors of the future Progressive Democrats.

Slavery was not the only issue early American Parties were internally divided on, for the most part they were not even truly Ideologically defined parties to begin with.  America’s first party system was during Washington’s first term primarily about the fight over Hamilton's Bank but after that issue was settled it became principally Political Anglophiles (Federalists) vs Political Francophiles (Democratic-Republicans).  However the French Revolution context of that made it so Anglophiles tended to lean Tory (or at least Burkean) and Francophiles tended to lean Jacobin (or at least Girondin).

However one interesting exception would be how after the Hattian Revolution many former Saint-Domingue Slave owner emigres settled in the Southern United States, especially the Carolinas.  Some of them were Royalists but some supported The French Revolution in-spite of how popular Abolitionist Sentiment was across all the factions of the Revolution in Paris.  And then there's how Napoleon complicated things.

The story of how the Democratic Party is related to prior American political parties is usually oversimplified as just being a daughter of the Democratic-Republicans.  And there is some truth to that especially in New York where Tammany Hall is the continuity between them.  The problem is after the Federalist Party was basically dead and the U.S. became functionally a Single Party State for awhile, many Federalists just joined the Democratic-Republicans without really changing their positions on anything, this is especially true of John Quincey Adams.

Jacksonian Democracy is basically the partial fulfillment of the vision of Northern Federalist James Wilson.  While the Ethos of the Southern Democrats arguably began with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney who was Hamilton’s handpicked successor as leader of the Federalists.  Oliver Wolcott Jr was an important Federalist who became a Jacksonian at the end of his life.  And James Buchanan was a Federalist till 1824.  Timothy Dwight was a Federalist who was the mentor of John c. Calhoun.  Meanwhile Thomas Jefferson who was still alive in 1824 was vocal in his distaste for Andrew Jackson.

Another interesting detail of the Jackson era Nullification Crisis was that James Madison came out in clear opposition to allowing states to Secede from the Union.

Early American Labor Unions were already more inclined to support the Democrats over Republicans even before the Civil War.. William H. Sylvis supported Stephen Douglas during the 1860 Election but was Loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Before that just look at the history of the Locofocos and the Working Men's Party.

Also pre Civil War it was already the Democrats who were more supportive of Immigrants while the Nativist WASP Xenophobes like the Know Nothings and Bowery Boys were more inclined towards first the Whigs then the Republicans, even Thaddeus Stevens had been a Know Nothing.  George F. Edmunds was of the founding generation of the Republican Party being elected to office as a Republican in 1954, and went on in 1894 to be a founding member of the Immigration Restriction league which throughout its history was lead by Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge though most Democrats also wound up voting for the Legislation it backed in 1917.  The principal sponsors of the even worse 1924 Immigration Act were also Republicans, Albert Johnson and David A. Reed.

The reason so many people want to believe the “party switch” represented a more complete switch then it actually was is because the simplistic shorthand definition of what a “Conservative” is makes one assume a Conservative could only ever claim to oppose Slavery in Hindsight.  However Edmund Burke is popularly referred to as the father of Modern Conservatism, and he was very vocal in his opposition to Slavery.  John Wesley was an Abolitionist to the right of even Burke actually calling himself a Tory and opposing the American Patriots.  The Federalists in the United States were very much the Edmund Burkes of America, especially Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris and John Adams, all three opposed Slavery with Morris being the one person at the Constitutional Convention trying to get Slavery outright Abolished at the country's inception.  And they equally shared Burke’s hatred of the French Revolution.

The Whigs were born out of the ashes of the Federalist Party, especially Northern Federalists, and then the early Republican Party was entirely led by former Whigs.  During it's brief existence the Confederacy never developed much of a Party system, but in North Carolina an opposition party made of former Whigs did exist for a bit and called itself the Conservative Party.

Alven R. Bovay was a former Whig co-founder of the Republican Party who in 1874 denounced the Party considering its Anti-Slavery mission statement complete at a time when Reconstruction was already on the verge of failing and went on to join the Temperance movement.  So he sounds exactly like a modern “Racism is already solved” type Conservative.

Following the various “Compromises” of 1850 and 1854 the most recent changes to the Status Quo were in favor of the Slave States.  So in that context fighting those changes became definitionally Conservative and Abolitionism full on Reactionary.

The appearance of the Republican Party being a single issue party was marketing, they got the Votes of even Marxists because Marx himself rightly deemed opposing Slavery the most vital issue in the U.S. at that time, and also many Anti-Slavery Democrats left to join the Republicans.  But the leadership of the Party was almost entirely former Whigs who were a Burkean Conservative Party.  At the 1856 Convention their platform already treated another issue as of near equal importance, opposing Polygamy on the same false Biblical Logic that their 2004 opposition to Gay Marriage was based on.  At the 1860 Convention’s Platform they downplayed the Slavery question refusing to call for outright Abolition.  This platform condemned Disunion but also affirmed the sovereignty of the States, so no the Republicans didn’t start caring about States Rights only when former Southern Democrats joined them a century later. 

Opposing Slavery was always objectively good, but not everyone who opposed Slavery did so for the right reasons.  Some were Racists who didn’t want Black people in the country at all.  But more influential than that were the Northern Capitalists who viewed the Southern Plantation owners as Economic Rivals they wanted to crush, and the South as a whole as a Pre-Capitalist Society ripe for Imperialist exploitation.  And that’s why most of the Republicans never really wanted Reconstruction to go all the way, actually making the Freed Slaves truly fully enfranchised citizens would make them more difficult to exploit.  Giving them ownership of the Land they spent generations working on would get in the way of Proletarianizing them.

Meanwhile a lot of the founding Republicans were mainly just opposed to Slavery expanding westward and/or the Fugitive Slave Act and not actively calling for Abolition in the states where it was already entrenched.

With the Democrats the unifying factor that enabled Neo-Feudalists and Classical Liberals and proto-Social Democrats to be able to coexist in the same party was their shared hatred of Wall Street and Bankers.  Benjamin Tilman was one of the most vile and despicable openly racist Southern Democrats, but he also has his name on one of the most important pieces of Progressive Era Antitrust legislation, the Tilman Act of 1907.  There were even pro New Deal Segregationists like James F. Byrnes and Tom Connally.

Republican President Calvin Coolidge was Fiscally Conservative and also Anti-Racist.  The 1924 Immigration Act passed with a Veto Proof Majority, but Coolidge's singing statement heavily implies he would have Vetoed it if he could.

No one actually denies the Republican Party already had Conservatives before 1960, but they desperately want to pretend that in the Roosevelt era Republican Party there was no overlap between the Conservative Republicans and those who were still fighting Racism.  However Robert Taft and Hamilton Fish were absolutely leading the fight to get Anti-Lynching legislation passed while self identifying as Conservative at the same time, and Taft at least is who later Conservative Republicans sought to claim they were carrying the mantle of even while squabbling with each other.  

That said the Republicans party also already had Racists at that time, James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. opposed Anti-Lynching legislation on States Rights grounds, as did William Sterling Cole, Harold Knutson and Clare Hoffman who voted against the 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill. And the Republicans even already had a full blown Nazi in Jacob Thorkelson.  

Even the Progressives the Republican Party had during the era of Teddy Roosevelt Progressivism did in fact take what we now see as Conservative positions on things like Prohibition.  And their Conservationism was much more Eco-Fascist then actually Environmentalist.

Basic Income could become the next New Deal

Andrew Yang liked to cite Thomas Paine's Citizens Dividend from Agrarian Justice as part of arguing that the Basic Income is a very American idea.  What's interesting though is that Thomas Spence criticized Paine in The Rights of Infants, he agreed with having a Basic Income but combined it with full Abolition of Private Property.  Spence was an influence on Charles Hall who Karl Marx cited as an influence.  The Basic Income was part of the Socialist Tradition before Marx was.

But in the last several years as the Basic Income has become a trendy proposal online among progressives and social democrats, a number of Socialist and Communist YouTubers have made videos on how it's bad actually because it's another Capitalist plot to appease the Proletariat with a mere reform of the Market Economy.  And the thing is The American Left has made this mistake before.

During the first term of the FDR administration both the Socialist Party of America and the CPUSA under William Z Foster opposed the New Deal because they saw it as a Capitalist plot to appease the Proletariat with a mere reform of the Market Economy.  And that decision more then anything else is what killed the early Socialist Movement in the United States.

In the 1932 Presidential Election the Socialist Party Candidate Norman Thomas got 884,885 votes and Foster got 103,307, which were both up from their 1928 numbers.  In 1936 Thomas got only 187,910 votes and the CPUSA Candidate Earl Browder got 79,315 votes.  Now Browder would actually reverse Foster's position on the New Deal but it was in 1936 itself he took over the party, it was kind of too late but still perhaps why the CPUSA didn't have as big a drop.  

Marxists love to talk about materialism, how our main objective Politically should be to advocate for The Working Class not get all caught up on some specific Utopian Vision.  It was absolutely possible to support the New Deal and Huey Long's Share Our Wealth project while still talking about how that's a drop in the bucket compared to what our Party wants to do and also criticizing the Racism in how the New Deal was being implemented.  Their decision not to do that but flat out oppose the New Deal destroyed most of the support the Socialists had in the country, they never returned to their 1932 numbers.

Caleb Maupin loves to white wash the CPUSA's New Deal era history, lying by omission to make it sound like they were always in support of the New Deal.  He calls himself a Foster Communist not a Browder Communist even though his opinions on the New Deal and the Popular Front are exactly what Browder's break with Foster was.  It also amuses me how all his hyping up of the early CPUSA's legacy ignores how the Socialist Party was always more popular, they Elected multiple Mayors the CPUSA elected none, they twice got a Representative in Congress the CPUSA never got anyone in Congress.

The Basic Income isn't Communism or Socialism, but as far as Goals achievable in the short term to do something for the Working Class it's doable alongside Universal Healthcare and Student Loan Debt Forgiveness.  We need to be seen fighting for them not against them.

Yet some Communists especially MLs actually have bought into the American fetishization of Work as a concept, and that is a problem.  Most people do want to work and not just sit around all day doing nothing, making it so they don't literally have to in order to not starve increases their bargaining power.  But some people don't, and that's why I recommend the book The Right to be Lazy by Paul Lafargue.

The thesis of that book has nothing to do with why Marx said of certain French Marxists "If they are Marxists then I am not a Marxist". Rather it was Lafargue and Guesde's militant Anti-Reformism that he was referring to.  Now someone who's still anti-Reformism as a general rule may say Marx supported those Reforms because they organically arose out of the demands of the working class, and I'd argue the same is happening with the Basic Income, it's growing broad popularity is at it's core coming from the left of center yet being supported even by some conservatives and libertarians makes it a true manifestation of the will of the Proletariat.

Neoliberalism doesn't exist

I have decided that I really do have to break with most of my fellow online Leftists and agree with Casual Historian that Neoliberalism isn't actually a thing.  But it's not just a talking point of self described Socialists and Communists but also of Progressive Liberals, Centrist History YouTubers and even some online Conservatives.

Now it is true that the Republican and Democratic Parties are really just variations of the same basic Economic ideology, that ideology being Free Market Liberalism, no Neo prefix necessary, and they exist alongside various other variants.

The Neoliberalism narrative typically goes like this. 

Milton Freidman developed the Chicago School of Economics in the 1970s and influenced the Economic Policies of Chilean Dictator Pinochet.  Sometimes a claim that his ideology is just a slight modification of Ayn Rand's is thrown in.

Then in the 80s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher applied Freidman's ideology in the U.S. and U.K. overthrowing the prior Keynesian status quo.  

Finally in the 90s under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair the parties that were supposed to oppose those parties just caved and became just as Neoliberal and really still disagreeing with the other party only on Social Issues and sometimes maybe Foreign Policy.

I'm going to work backwards here, but I can only really comment on the U.S. since I don't have the lived experience of growing up in the U.K. during the 90s.

The core ideology of the mainstream Democratic Party is just as Keynesian as it ever was.  The destruction of cash welfare during the Clinton Administration wasn't spearheaded by Clinton himself, it was a consequence of the Republicans taking control of the House under Newt Gingrich.

Since then the Democrats have never had enough control necessary to undo all the Reagan era damage.  Even when controlling the White House and both Houses of Congress they've never had a Filibuster Proof Majority.  The last Presidential Election to ever be a true landslide was 1984.  We've been in a fairly perpetual stalemate for a Generation.  In my opinion to deny the Obama administration was Keynesian is as absurd as denying he was an born in Hawaii.

But another reason people fail to see Keynesianism in the modern Democratic Party is that some people waxing Nostalgic for the 50s have overstated just how Progressive Keynes actually was.  He was not anywhere near the Social Democracy of Bernie Sanders, he didn't want Nationalization of Industries and he wasn't even as big a fan of Welfare and Unions as you probably assumed he was.  If anything it might be possible to argue that modern Democrats are actually closer to Keynes then FDR or Kennedy were.

Now it is true thar Milton Freidman was an influence on Reaganomics, he was an advisor to Reagan and other Republican leaders, but he wasn't their only advisor, regular old William F. Buckley style Conservatives were the far greater influence.  And the U.S. Government becoming more fiscally Conservative actually started under Carter who put Paul Volker in charge of the Fed who Reagan then kept in that position.  Opposition to Social Programs and Government hand outs for the Poor had been a part of Burkean Conservatism since Edmund Burke himself in Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Reagan didn't need the Chicago Boys to get the idea.

Milton Freidman wanted the Federal Reserve Abolished, Decriminalization of Drugs and Prostitution and no Minimum Wage.  The last of those is indeed something Republicans want but simply aren't getting.  But the Republican Party as a whole never even began to flirt with even mild criticism of The Federal Reserve until after Ron Paul made his big impact in the 2008 Election.  And Friedman's opposition to the Federal Reserve was not some minor issue you can deem expendable, it was a core pillar of his ideology, as long as we still have the Fed you can't claim Freidman won, putting a claimed Freidman student in charge of it isn't enough.

Ron Paul was an outlier within the Republican Party, and even he wasn't a Chicago Schooler, he was Austrian School like Murry Rothbard.  Milton Freidman hated both Rothbard and Ayn Rand, and Rand hated all Libertarians from either school.

Frankly I feel Neoliberalism discourse is parallel to the old Neoconservatism discourse I remember from my Ron Paul supporting youth.  I've never seen anyone self describe as either Neoliberal or Neoconservative, and after watching some videos from a Trotskyist deconstructing the Trotskyism-Neoconservatism pipeline narrative I'm pretty sure it too isn't a real thing.

Neoconservatism was a boogeyman invented by Pacifist Conservatives to justify their denial that War Mongering has always been a part of the Conservative Tradition, but it has from William McKinley to how Joseph McCarthy became Senator.  Likewise I think the Neoliberalism narrative began among Progressive Liberals who wanted to deny that the problems of the last 4 decades are innate to Market Economies.  Then a bunch of those Liberals became Socialists after jumping on the Occupy Wallstreet or Bernie Sanders bandwagon and that's where Breadtube comes from.

I've also seen it suggested that Neoconservatism should maybe be considered an Antisemitic Dog Whistle, from the claimed Trotsky connection to the claimed Henry Kissinger connection to the sometimes claimed association with William F Buckley's Zionism.  And the way they would often be depicted as behind the scenes manipulators "Neocons don't win elections, they attach themselves to winners" was a quote I remember.

And since it's Milton Freidman and Ayn Rand who's actual influence on the current status quo is being massively overstated, and a WASP Gentile who's continued influence is being denied, maybe Neoliberalism should be considered an Antisemitic Dog Whistle as well.

Update: Here's an interesting Twitter Conversation I had after sharing this.

https://twitter.com/afran90/status/1689419942964199424

Another Update: John Todd

John Todd was in the 70s a Right Wing Evangelical Christian Conspiracy Theorist, one of the first to claim to actually be a former member of the Illuminati who left, before Warnke or Schneoblen made that a trend.  He specifically claimed that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was the Illuminati Blueprint for a Satanic Take Over and even specifically predicted 1980 would be the year of that take over.

In other words the Neoliberalism Narrative actually claims the predictions of a 70s Conspiracy Theorist were essentially right.

The Left was Anti-War even during the lead up to WW2 (and the Right was not)

At least in the English speaking world.  Also for the purpose of this post I am defining the Center as FDR and those mostly in agreement with him (both Democrats and Republicans) and thus principally the Left are those noticeably to the Left of FDR and the Right those significantly to his Right.

Emma Goldman, the standard-bearer of Anarchism in the United States during the first decades of the 20th Century (who was also Jewish and often a target of Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theorists) said that while she despised both Hitler and Stalin she would not support a War again either.  The same goes for Paul Goodman.  Another Anarchist who's Anti-Fascist credentials are unquestionable is Dorothy Day, she continued to stand by her Pacifist principals even after Pearl Harbor.

W. E. B. Du Bois, the leading Left Wing Black Civil Rights leader from the end of the 19th Century until the rise of MLK was also very vocal about opposing U.S. involvement in WW2.

The only person in either house of Congress who refused to vote in favor of the Declaration of War following Pearl Harbor was Jeannette Rankin, she was also a vital leader of the Suffragette movement being the first Woman elected to Congress ever.  And at this time she had recently regained her seat specifically to remove an actual Nazi sympathizer Jacob Thorkelson.

Another Left Wing Anti-Interventionist in Congress was Robert m. La Follette Jr who was carrying on the mantle of his father who was one of the most Progressive U.S. Senators of all time.  He was the Congressman removed from his seat by Joseph McCarthy who explicitly used Follette’s Pacifism against him the same way war loving Republicans do today.  Another Wisconsin Progressive enemy of McCarthy who was Anti-War was Alexander Wiley who voted for vital Civil Rights Legislation.  McCarthy himself had more actual Nazi sympathies then these Pacifists, his War time service was in the Pacific and he actually went out on a limb to defend defend Nazi Soldiers in the Malmedy scandal.  Robert's brother Philip La Follette was a vocal critic of the Fascists and Nazis after his trip to Europe in the 30s and criticized the Munich agreement, yet still opposed U.S. entry into the war in 1940, but also after Pear Harbor joined the military to the serve in the Pacific. Ralph Immell was a partner of Philip La Follete who was Ant-interventionist as first but started changing his mind even before Pearl Harbor.

Burton K. Wheeler a Northern Democrat who was La Follette Sr.'s Vice Presidential Candidate was the leader of the Non Interventionist Wing of the Democratic Party while also being an ardent New Deal supporter.  Accusations of Anti-Semitism were made against him but they were unfounded.  Another Northern Democrat Anti-Interventionist was David I. Walsh who was one of the very few Senators to vote against the Immigration Act of 1924, the most Anti-Nazi thing you could do in 1924.  Vic Marcantonio is also worth mentioning as is Louis Ludlow, both were leading Progressive Anti-Interventionists who also voted for the 1937 Anti-Lynching Bill.

Rearmament opposition in Brittan from 1933-1935 was primarily led by the Labor and Liberal Parties.  Conservatives like Stanley Baldwin always wanted Rearmament but were quite about it only because it was unpopular.  George Lansbury stood by his Pacifism even as it started to become unpopular within the Labor Party.

But I haven’t mentioned any Marxists yet and that’s where this shall get a bit complicated.

From the aftermath of the Russian Revolution through most of The Cold War generally speaking political Parties with Communist in the name were either taking their marching orders from Moscow or at least considered themselves some other type of Bolshevik/Leninist (like Trotskyist or Right Opposition).  While parties with Socialist in the name were usually not Leninist but absolutely were still Marxists (except the SPD in Germany which was always more Lasallian), they were the Mensheviks, the Luxemburgists, Kautskyists or Bernsteinists of their countries.  Internally everyone in these parties understood they support both of those words, but for branding purposes you only lead with "I’m a Communist” if you wanted to be seen as a Bolshevik.

So Communist Parties were incapable of having ideologically pure positions on Foreign Policy, their position on what their countries Foreign Policy towards Nazi Germany should be could change every time Nazi Germany’s relationship with the U.S.S.R. changed, even Foster and Browder in-spite of their many disagreements still agreed on following Stalin's line on Foreign Policy.  As far as the central claim of the title of this post goes which really refers to different time periods depending on the country, their most Anti-War period was after the War started in Europe but before it had for the U.S.  In fact the only U.S. Presidential Election where this was even kind of a divisive yet important issue was 1940 during this period.  

The American Trotskyists were pretty consistent actually, James P. Canon's SWP and the Workers Party (Shachtmanites) and the Revolutionary Workers League all opposed the War.  It was the American Right Oppositionists (Lovestoneites) that had a schism over it with Jay Lovestone and Louis C. Fraina being the only American Socialists in 1940 who supported intervention while Bertram Wolfe broke with them to oppose Intervention.  Both of them soon stopped being Communists altogether, though in fairness so did Bertram Wolfe and some of the Shachmanites.

Non Bolshevik Marxists like the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Party of Canada and the World Socialist Party of the United States and The Socialist Labor Party of America and A. J. Muste were each consistently Anti-War, up to a certain point on the timeline at least.  Meanwhile the Socialist Party of America under the leadership of Norman Thomas was Anti-War up until Pearl Harbor and some members still were even after, that Party was always more popular then the CPUSA.

And here’s the thing, both Left Wing Pacifists like Norman Thomas and Conservative Pacifists like Robert Taft were among the few actually calling out and condemning the Internment of Japanese citizens at the time.  Those who modern pundits keep ignorantly condemning for their lack of enthusiasm to oppose Racist Tyranny overseas were the ones actually standing up to Racist Tyranny at home. 

Likewise Republican Isolationists like Robert Taft and Hamilton Fish and Everett Dirksen were still among the leading advocates in Congress for Anti-Lynching Legislation, as was Democrat Isolationist Bennett Champ Clark.  While it was Anti-Isolationist Conservatives like Republican James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr..and the Southern Democrats led by Harry F. Bird, Richard Russel Jr., and Carl Vinson who were the ones opposing Anti-Lynching legislation on “States Rights” grounds.  

Yes you heard that right, most of those notorious Openly Racist Southern Democrats actually supported Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, John E. Rankin went further being one of the few Southern Democrats interested in Anti-Asian Racism he was enthusiastic to go to war with Japan and wanted even more Japanese Americans rounded up into camps, and he was also Anti-Semitic.  Hugo Black was a known KKK member who also supported the War while opposing Anti-Lynching Legislation.  FDR's friend Joseph Daniels was actually among the Red Shirts who did Fascism before anyone in Europe did in 1898. 

There were a few rare exceptions, Robert Rice Reynolds was the only Southern Senator to vote against Lend-Lease and only he and John Overton voted against repealing the Arms Embargo.  Theodore G, Bilbo and Ellison D. Smith are Southern Democratic Senators who are sometimes referred to as having obstructed the War effort even though they voted for Lend-Lease, so they're difficult to classify.  But that's it for Southern Democrats who can even arguably be classified as Anti-War.

Al Smith who had been the political face of the American Liberty League opposing the New Deal during the 1930s strongly supported American Intervention in The War.

The American Legion, which openly identified with Fascism during the 20s, supporting Lend-Lease. The repeated claim that they were Isolationist during the lead to WW2 is consistently contradicted by their actions.

The Enemy being undeniably Evil is not an excuse to be a War Monger, it wasn’t for Saddam and it shouldn’t have been for Adolf.  The Holocaust could have been avoided peacefully if all the Allied countries had welcomed Jewish Refugees like Norman Thomas wanted them to.  

Gerald Nye helped Herman Stern bring Jewish Refugees into the U.S during the 30s and 40s.  He also supported the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and tried to get the Embargo repealed.  And his objective in the Nye Committee in 1934-36 was to get the Arms Industry nationalized, the businessmen he was going after were largely the same ones doing business with the Nazis at the time as well as running the American Liberty League, J.P. Morgan and DuPont.  The fact that modern Leftists demonize it for increasing Non-Interventionist sentiment at the "wrong time" is shameful.

Obviously there were people who opposed the War because they liked Hitler, they were a larger percentage of the Anti-War movement in Britain then they were in the U.S.  But I’m less concerned about weirdos with a fetish for a foreign dictator than I am the more homegrown American versions of what Nazism and Fascism are.  And WW2 isn't the only time that enemy sympathizers have wiggled their way into legitimate Pacifist movements, in fact some of these Germanophiles who supported the Nazis during WW2 had already support the Kaiser during WW1 like George Sylvester Viereck and Ernst G. Liebold.

War tends to be good for Fascism even War against foreign Fascists because at its core Fascism is the cult of Heroism and placing your national pride in your military prowess.  Douglas McArthur and George Patton were American WW2 Generals who it’s not even controversial anymore to say had Fascist tendencies themselves (it is still a bit more controversial to acknowledge the Fascist tendencies of Charles DeGaulle).  And then some younger WW2 veterans went on to found post War American Neo-Nazism, George Lincoln Rockwell, Eustace Mullins, Willis Carlo, Revilo P Oliver, William Potter Gale and Bryant Bowles, lots of WW2 vets were in the 3rd and 4th Klans, and Strom Thurman was a WW2 vet as well.

Fascinatingly at this time American Nazi Sympathizers couldn't help but continue to express their hatred for Pacifism as a concept even while American Pacifists had the same short term goal.  Elizabeth Dilling who was tried under the Smith Act for her Nazi collaborating in her book The Red Network referred to "Radical Pacifists" as being part of the Communist Conspiracy.

At the very least Leftists who believe it was right to go to War with Hitler should stop using the "Appeasement" as a derogatory term strategy.  That originated with Conservative opponents of Appeasement not The Left but it got adopted by the Left later when we naively decided anything that's "Anti-Fascist" must also be Leftist.  It comes from the inherently Right Wing impulse to equate not wanting War with Cowardice.  That Churchill was a Conservative isn't exactly ignored by Liberals when they lionize his opposition to Appeasement, but they do try to make it sound like he was alone within the Conservative Party, the truth is not even every British Conservative named Chamberlain supported Appeasement.  These are the kinds of British Conservatives who if they'd been around during the American Revolution would have called people wanting to concede anything to the Colonists Appeasers, and today they'd call it Appeasement to end the Embargo on Cuba.  Opposition to the Munich Agreement should be framed in terms of how it wronged Czechoslovakia not how it "appeased" anyone.  These British Conservatives were not motivated by the moral outrage at Hitler that makes us view that conflict in Black and White terms however much they may have paid lip service to some of them, what they truly cared about was a fear that letting Germany get away with violating the Treaty of Versailles would make Britain look weak even though some disagreed with it's harsh terms back when it was being debated.

Isolationism is a concept that means more then just your specific position on one specific war, it also includes opposition to Free Trade deals and so on.  Thomas E. Dewey is someone whose Internationalist position on foreign policy over all are well known so no one tries to label him an Isolationist even though he also opposed intervening in the War until Pearl Harbor. But for so many others their positions on other foreign policy issues are obscure enough to get labeled an Isolationist for no other reason.  The Wikipedia page for Philip La Follette says he "became an Isolationist" after the war started in Europe but became Internationalist again after Pearl Harbor, this is incoherent nonsense. No Isolationists stopped being isolationists because of Pear Harbor, there is no contradiction between Isolations and retaliating when you've been attacked.

Ernest Lundeen is a key player in the Conspiracy Theory that Rachel Maddow has helped popularize. Lundeen was a leader in the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party during the 30s that party was basically satellite of the CPUSA, there are official CPUSA propaganda texts from time telling people to support that party. So it's not a coincidence that Lundeen's time meeting with Nazi Agents was during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  His loyalty to a foreign government was Moocow not Berlin, but his German name makes it easy to assume the opposite.

Here's an article debunking one of the popular myths about Hamilton Fish.

https://fascinatingpolitics.com/2024/05/01/investigating-a-smear-hamilton-fish-and-the-swastika-bedecked-platforms/

I'm not interested in arguing the U.S. shouldn't have entered the War, but I'm tired of  people who are otherwise Pacifists playing along with this common War Monger tactic of accusing Pacifists of disloyalty only where this War is concerned.

A lot of Internet Leftists really want to go on about how people DID know about the Holocaust at the time, they can't claim ignorance. What was known to be going on at the time was Bad but not special, remember Leopold II of Belgium's atrocities in the Congo were still recent memory. And it was also a time when people remembered the recent debunking of massive exaggerated and outright false accusations of War Crimes during WW1. Also I should remind that many of the people condemning these 1940 Pacifists on these grounds refuse to believe that Fatah would genocide all the Israelis if they had full control of "Palestine".

It was the footage shown during the Nuremberg Trails that cemented the Holocaust's status in pop culture as the uniquely worst atrocity of all time. No one being a Pacifist in 1940 had any way of knowing The Worst Thing Ever is what that war was ultimately about. 

I'm not a Libertarian anymore but I'm still willing to vote for one.

I would prefer not to settle for that, I'd rather a Socialist run in the Republican Primary and somehow win.  I made a blog post on how that is plausible then you might assume.

I mean the American definition of libertarianism here, I am a Libertarian-Communist.  I also a wrote a Blog post about why I call myself a Libertarian.

But here is my controversial statement.  If a Libertarian can win the next Republican Primary and thus the two viable options in 2024 are Biden/Harris agaisnt a Libertarian, I'll vote for the Libertarian.

So many Breadtubers when they acknowledge Libertarians only want to focus on the ways they are Economically even worse then the Republicans, which they are, they are arguably the only true pure Economic Liberals.

The thing is Economic Issues aren't the only thing I vote for.  I agree they should be ideally the top priory, but if the furthest left either option is willing go economically is still refusing even Universal Healthcare or a Basic Income, then no one is gonna get my vote for Economic Reasons.

But I do also care about ending our Interventionist foreign policy, and the War on Drugs, and also decriminalizing Sex Work and Gambling.  And guess what Libertarians even have some redeeming qualities Economically, many want to end Copyright/Intellectual Property laws, and they tend to oppose corporate bail outs.

And the thing is the bad things they want to do Economically are things a President would need congressional support for.  While what I like about them are largely things the Executive Branch can act on unilaterally.

I will however only ever again vote for an American Libertarian if they get one of the Major party nominations.  I'm only gonna vote 3rd Party for Socialists ideally, and maybe be willing to settle for Social Democrats or the Green Party.

If the Republican Nominee in 2024 is an Establishment Republican or Trump again or someone like Ted Cruz, I'll maybe go for a 3rd Party Candidate but probably not vote at all.  But a Libertarian I will vote for without hesitation.

The Truth about the Hamiltonian v Jeffersonian conflict

First of all it's a bit of an oversimplification even to make it seem like all the "founding fathers" fell neatly into two simple camps.  Even Adams was not quite a pure Hamiltonian.

Meanwhile Thomas Paine was literally a Pre-Marx Communist.  And for nearly 200 years everyone knew that, he was disowned from being counted as a Founding Father by Patriotic Americans for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries during which time the only people who liked him were Marxists and other Socialists.  But then Ronald Reagan started quoting Paine as if they agreed on anything and only then did even Paine become a founder the modern American right thought they could appropriate.

However the greater point of this post is the absurdity of the desire Americans have to see our current political debates as a neat linear continuation of the debates between Hamilton and Jefferson.

Alexander Hamilton was a big government Conservative while Thomas Jefferson was a small government Liberal.  In modern American politics those terms seem like inherent contradictions, but the historical fact is the modern American way of thinking about that is the aberration.  During the age of Revolutions the idea of being a small government Conservative was a complete and total oxymoron completely unprecedented in 6000 years of human history.

On the modern American political spectrum the closest group we have to modern Jeffersonians are the American Libertarians, but even that analogy has flaws.  Plenty of Libertarians are aware of their overlap with Jefferson and like to then paint the Democrats and Republicans as merely an internal dispute among the Hamiltonians.  However even that doesn't pan out.

The modern Democrats and Republicans in addition to each breaking with Hamilton in some way on where they disagree with each other are in fact in even greater conflict with Hamilton in the areas where they agree.  Neither party wants the Presidency to be a lifetime appointment, neither wants to limit the right to vote to only wealthy land owners and both support legal immigration only disagreeing on how much leniency to give "illegal immigrants".

On some of those issues it may seem like many Republicans would like to take Hamilton's position but just know they can't get away with it currently.  But their fundamental belief in "states rights" and "cutting taxes" make them firmly incompatible with Hamiltonian Federalism.  The only modern parties that kind of agree with Hamilton on having a strong federal government are completely opposed to Hamilton in terms of what that government power should be used for.

I'm going to be consistent and not call Hamilton a Fascist since I am someone who criticizes when that term is used too loosely including by my fellow Leftists.  There is at least one core ingredient of Fascism Hamilton was hostile to and that was Populism, Hamilton was disgusted by the very idea of trying to gain political support from the unwashed peasants.  But his actual position on Immigration would get him called a Fascist by most of Tumblr and Breadtube.

There is no actual Hamiltonian party in modern American politics, and no that's not based on allowing any minor disagreement to rule someone out, every Party or Politician capable of gaining even 1% of the vote in a modern election has some major break with a core foundational principle of Hamilton's ideology.  That's why he was the least celebrated Founding Father before a certain Rapper decided he weirdly identified with him as that Musical laments at the end. 

However the United States is ironically the only nation where Hamiltonianism is completely dead.  I would say Alfred Hugenberg was basically the Hamiltonian of Weimar Germany.  The Party that has dominated Japan for most of it's post-War history the LDP is Hamiltonianism for Japan as purely as any party could be.

Now remember Anime is a Niche interest even in Japan.  Most Art tends towards being at least a little left of the center of the culture that produced it, but Anime in particular makes most of it's money off less then 10% of the total population.  So with few exceptions most Anime is made by people who's political leanings range from Jefferson to Paine.  Though obviously none of them would use American figures to define their politics, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and Lafayette don't even show up in any of the many Anime depicting The French Revolution (which Hamilton btw absolutely opposed long before the Terror gave him an excuse).

Update April 2021:  I stumbled on this YT video which in fact already existed when I first wrote this.

https://youtu.be/Zt4lmLK_OUc

That video is not the Libertarian perspective I criticized above, but rather part of the Genre of trying to make the Federalists sound like modern Democrats and the Jeffersonians sound like modern Republicans.  The deception in this video is mostly lies by omission, and it generally misrepresents Hamilton more then it does Jefferson.  Because yeah if Jefferson were alive today he probably would vote Republican at least during Primary season.

Hamilton wanted the Government involved in the Economy, in that sense he looks more like a modern Progressive.  But he did NOT want that interference to be on behalf of the workers or the poor, he wanted the Government getting involved to help big business.  He would absolutely be a Union buster if Unions were a thing yet.  He was for higher Taxes then Jefferson was, but he didn't want it being the wealthy who were Taxed but the workers.

The Federalists were also in bed with the Congregationalists who really wanted the Federal Government to enforce their Puritan Christian Moral Values on everyone which made that party greatly feared by the South (which was believe it or not fairly irreligious back then, and nominally what they were was Anglican/Episcopalian with Presbyterians in Appalachia) and all of the religious minorities in the Northern Colonies.  

Jefferson's "wall of separation" letter was to a Baptist Pastor (Baptists back then were still far from becoming the nation's largest Sect) in the context of promising to protect them from the Congregationalists.  Hamilton meanwhile constantly used Jefferson's lack of devoutness against him in his public attacks.  Hamilton was the only Founding Father who used Religion Politically the way modern Evangelical Republicans use it, even though Benjamin Rush was closer to agreeing with them Doctrinally (minus his belief in Universal Salvation).  Hamilton would absolutely have called Obama a Muslim.

His position on Immigration was openly Racist, he wanted the Untied States to be a WASP Ethno-State.  The Hamilton Musical presents Hamilton as an "immigrant" and stresses that repeatedly, but that was the most technical of technicalities.  He was a WASP who was born in one overseas WASP colony and moved to another overseas WASP colony.  No one would have thought of him as an Immigrant.

Another thing about that Musical that bugs me is how it tries to present the debate about getting involved in the post-French Revolutionary wars as analogous to the 2002-2003 Iraq War debate.  Now I am a Pacifist on nigh universal principal, but Hamilton was taking this position for the wrong reason.  And later when we got pulled into those wars on the other side of what Jefferson wanted the Federalists were the ones responsible for that, because Hamilton weirdly actually loved Britain in-spite of how he just successfully rebelled against it.  So no he didn't actually want us out of the War, he just wanted to wait till he could get us in on Brittan's side.

Since we're dealing with Europe which then like in the 1930s-40s was geo-politically the center of the world.  The debate over involvement in that war should perhaps be considered more analogous to the debate about World War 2 then Iraq.  The French Republic abolished Slavery and Emancipated Jews, but Brittan under Pitt's government was determined to re-enslave the Hattians.  Jefferson did change his tune on supporting the Republic when the Terror got out of control under Robespierre, but Hamilton and his modern selective fanboys paint The Revolution itself as inseparable from that madness.

A True Leftist should try running in a Republican Primary

That sounds like an insane proposition, but hear me out.

First of all it simply is easier for a grassroots campaign to win the Republican Primary.  If the Republican Primary was nearly as rigged against populists as the Democratic one is then Trump would not have been nominated in 2016, even in the primary he didn't get 50% of the popular vote.

The Republican Party has far more ideological diversity within it.  I know Sanders supporters feel like the difference between him and Biden is night and day, but from the outside all internal Democratic party disputes look like merely a mater of degrees and methods. And even then that is only two opposing camps.

However the Republican party even to outsiders looks like a pretty chaotic coalition, Libertarians and John Birch Society style Paleo-Conservatives, Neo-Cons, Dominionist Evangelicals who practically openly want to create a Theocracy, Rockefeller Republicans, the Tea Party and most recently the Alt-Right.

In 2008 lots of Republicans voted agaisnt the Bank Bailout, there is plenty of room within the Republican party for resentment of Wallstreet types.  Eisenhower ran on upholding the New Deal in 52, Nixon created a lot of programs Progressives like and Regan defined himself as an FDR Democrat.  The Rockefeller Republicans were the ones Goldwater most wanted driven out of the party.

Casual Historian did a YouTube Video on how the Republican Party has always been a single issue party, only one issue actually unifies all these otherwise diametrically opposed ideologies, it's just that what that issue is has changed over the decades.

Currently that issue is lowering Taxes.  And because of how unrealistically simplified Taxation disputes have become in America that makes Progressives and Socialists seemingly the only people who can't join the Republican coalition.  But during the French Revolution it was the Left who argued for abolishing the oppressive taxes that the Monarchy had burdened the peasantry with.

Today a Leftist, especially one more Anarchist rather then Marxist leaning economically speaking, is ideally placed to expose how the Republican party has never lowered Taxes for the working class in any meaningful way.  We can propose implementing a Wallstreet Sales Tax as a way to replace the Income Tax on Hourly Wages.  Or at least promise not to raise any while focusing on lowering the payroll tax.

The original founding issue of the Republican Party was opposing Slavery.  A Leftist can point out how that battle isn't over, that the Thirteenth Amendment's loophole makes our Prison System a slave system.  And our position on the Free Trade Agreements puts us in line with the Protectionist phase of the Republican Party as well.

I do think the only kind of Leftist who would win in a Republican Primary is one with Karl Marx's position on Guns, Anarchists are also fully prepared to go to the right of moderate Republicans on the Gun Rights issue.  And when justifying why they're running as a Republican instead of a Democrat just be honest about why and add how the Gun issue alone makes winning a Democratic Primary impossible for them, Sanders can't even get slack for this being the one issue he's slightly moderate on.

We could appeal to a lot of Libertarians by stressing our non-Interventionist foreign policy, and desire to end the the War on Drugs and also legalize Prostitution, as well as being Pro-Choice and for abolishing Copyright Laws.

If we do this during a cycle when there is no Democratic Primary and the sitting DemPres is a "moderate" Neo-Liberal, which will be 2024 if Biden somehow wins this Election, then this Leftist Republican candidate can combine this internal coalition with alienated Progressives and Leftists joining open primaries.