Philip Geraldi - Curious Bedfellows: The Neocon and Progressive Alliance to Destroy Donald Trump

The neocon metamorphosis is nearly complete as many of the neocons, who started out as Democrats, have returned home, where they are being welcomed for their hardline foreign policy viewpoint.

Philip Geraldi seems to making the mistake, as some people on the right do, of equating all liberals as evil, conflating those, say, who run the porn and gambling industry with those who are evirenmentalists, the trade unionists, the LBGT community, the left, the psychological profession, etc. Anything left of them that has liberal values is seen as evil. But much of what he considers to be the left, I consider to be the right.

Peter Stringfellow, who runs a seedy nightclub in London - which has topless barmaids - is a staunch conservative who is well received within Conservative Party circles because he is successful businessman who despises the left. And I could never see the bosses who run the gambling and porn industries voting for Jeremy Corbyn, or Tulsi Gabbard, or Bennie Sanders, or joining Greenpeace, etc. Their industry may be liberal, but they are arch capitalists who belong on the right, even if they are not traditional conservatives. And there are grey areas too, like Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Philip Geraldo has a different view of how the Neocons came about to the one I have read in the past, which was that the Neocons were originally on the left, even communists, but when they found that the left tended to be pro-Palestine and anti-Israel they swapped sides to become Republicans while keeping many of their social liberal values. But Philip Geraldi says they were communists who thought the left were taking too long to overthrow the world with their liberal values so they moved to right to use the Republican Party as a way of doing it through endless war.

Just the same, this is another excellent article by Philip Geraldi.

Ovid framed his narrative around gods, heroes and quasi-historical events but if he were around today, he would no doubt be fascinated by the many transformations of the group that has defined itself as neoconservative.The movement began in a cafeteria in City College of New York in the 1930s, where a group of radical Jewish students would meet to discuss politics and developments in Europe. Many of the founders were from the far left, communists of the Trotskyite persuasion, which meant that they believed in permanent global revolution led by a vanguard party. The transformation into conservatives of a neo-persuasion took place when they were reportedly “mugged by reality” into accepting that the standard leftist formulae were not working to transform the world rapidly enough. As liberal hawks, they then hitched their wagon to the power of the United States to bring about transformation by force if necessary and began to infiltrate institutions like the Pentagon to give themselves the tools to achieve their objectives, which included promotion of regime change wars, full spectrum global dominance and unconditional support for Israel.


When Trump was elected, it, therefore, seemed that the reign of the neocons had ended, but chameleonlike, they have changed shape and are now ensconced both in some conservative as well as in an increasing number of progressive circles in Washington and in the media. Against all odds, they have even captured key posts in the White House itself with the naming of John Bolton as National Security Adviser and Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State. Bolton’s Chief of Staff is Fred Fleitz, a leading neocon and Islamophobe while last week Trump added Iran hawkRichard Goldberg to the National Security Council as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Goldberg is an alumnus of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is the leading neocon think tank calling incessantly for war with Iran.

DDT is a prime example of how the neoconservatives and traditional liberal interventionists have come together as it is in part funded by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire co-founder of eBay who has provided DDT with $600,000 in two grants through his Democracy Fund Voice, also a 501(c)4. Omidyar is a political liberal who has given millions of dollars to progressive organizations and individuals since 1999. Indeed, he is regarded as a top funder of liberal causes in the United States and even globally together with Michael Bloomberg and George Soros. His Democracy Fund awarded $9 million in grants in 2015 alone.

Omidyar is what he is – a hardcore social justice warrior who supports traditional big government and globalist liberal causes, most of which are antithetical to genuine conservatives. But what is interesting about the relationship with Kristol is that it also reveals what the neoconservatives are all about. Kristol and company have never been actual conservatives on social issues, a topic that they studiously avoid, and their foreign policy is based on two principles: creating a state of perpetual war based on fearmongering about foreign enemies while also providing unlimited support for Israel. 

Unz Review (Originally from the Off-Guardian)

Philip Geraldi - Curious Bedfellows: The Neocon and Progressive Alliance to Destroy Donald Trump