Posted on 04/22/2003 10:03:26 PM PDT by quidnunc
What is the difference between Dennis "Justin" Raimondo, who publicly encouraged U.S. service personnel to desert, not long before the Iraq operation began, and his ally, Kevin "Keith Sorel" Keating, who carried a banner in the streets calling on the same troops to "shoot their officers?"
In practical terms, nothing. In political and psychological terms, they represent identical specimens of a single type: the frustrated, alienated, and isolated extremist, without a profession, without a place in society, without normal associations or aspirations; above all, without hope.
In a sense, both are children of the Internet; Dennis possesses a fraudulently-titled website, antiwar.com, while Kevin flourishes on "independent" e-media. Neither can be imagined publishing anything in a legitimate media venue, even an ultraradical one, and had they to depend on serious polemics or organizing work to gain attention, they would have remained unknown.
Like those perverts who disguise themselves as young girls to engage in sexual byplay by computer, these two seek to reinvent themselves. Dennis became "Justin" in search of glamour and mystery; Keating called himself "Sorel" (after a late 19th century apostle of radical violence) to make himself sound powerful and dangerous. Both attempts failed, for these individuals are no more than maladjusted, unhappy males unable to escape adolescence.
Both believe words are more important than reality; and they live firmly in a past built on words. Dennis believes that by reviving the rhetoric and obscure political figures associated with the pro-Axis "America First" movement of the late 1930s, he can bring that historical period back to life. Keating thinks that by employing the slogans of the antiwar extremists of an even-older generation, that of the first world war, he can similarly preside over the return of a lost era.
Neither of these nullities possesses the philosophical energy or insight of Nietzsche, the most famous adherent of the theory of eternal recurrence. Cycles have their place in historical analysis. But Raimondo and Keating fantasize in a different direction; they believe that history will rescue them from the void of their existence, lifting them up and making them figures of global impact.
Because of their impotence, both are addicted to provocation. Raimondo could not restrain himself from writing, in a despicable text titled "Hiroshima Mon Amour: Why Americans Are Barbarians," in the Russian journal Pravda only a month before September 11, "the idea that America is, in any sense, a civilized country is easily dispelled." The motive of his rage was transparent: admiration for Japanese militarism in World War II, and resentment that America won that conflict. As shocking as this must seem to the rest of us, Dennis Raimondo minced no words: he believes "the wrong side won the war in the Pacific." (For a thorough discussion of this revealing article, see my article "What Raimondo Really Meant.")
Keating, for his part, launched a campaign of terrorism in San Francisco against unknowing bystanders and innocuous businesses.
Both have misappropriated the term "libertarian." But both also fail to understand that history has rendered their interpretation of "libertarianism" meaningless.
Raimondo, and his peers at lewrockwell.com and other sites, repeat as a mantra the claim that war will bring about a vast overgrowth of oppressive governmental authority. They do not grasp that the free-market critique that emerged during the domination of the Rooseveltian welfare state and its successive iterations triumphed with Reagan — and its more aggravated, fringe form then became irrelevant. Pressed to come up with an example of the expanding war state, the intellectually-bereft Raimondo might cite the Department of Homeland Security, which barely exists.
Instead, he and his cohort have turned their struggle against the mirage of "empire," which, of course, brings them closer to the ragtag leftists, even though neither group can explain coherently what the term would mean at this time. America was accused of imperialism in the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam, in 1898; in Hawaii at about the same time; in the first and second world wars; in Central America for decades; in Cold War Europe as well as in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in the 1950s; in Vietnam and the third world in general from the ‘60s on. The "empire" never materialized. There is no reason to believe it will today, and the illiterate argument advanced by Raimondo and others that, rather than in Manila Bay a century ago, America is now becoming imperialist, simply demonstrates their intellectual incapacity. It was not real imperialism then, and it certainly is not at present, and will not be in the future — and the republic, rather than being endangered, has been strengthened.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
Dennis Raimondo and those like him are not fascists in the popular sense, meaning defenders of a dictatorial state power — at least, not in their current rhetoric. Are they even nationalists? Of course, Raimondo, the fan of Japanese imperialism in the Pacific, can hardly be considered such. Others among them prefer to be considered the greatest of American patriots even while some of their supporters, the Southern nostalgics, acclaim a treasonous insurrection that, had it succeeded, could have brought about the complete disintegration of the republic and its very real descent into decadence and ignominy. For them, the importation of kidnapped Africans as slaves was a noble act, but legal immigration by qualified professionals from Bangladesh is an atrocity. But Buchanan, Taki, and Raimondo do love the American worker. They love the American worker so much they want to preserve forever his or her right to a low-minimum-wage job in a right-to-work state. In the past, nothing exercised them so much as the belief that immigrants would rob the "white" American’s God-given freedom to pick lettuce, pluck chickens, wash dishes in restaurants, clean hotel rooms, and assemble high-tech components in a cloud of toxic chemicals.
Debate over sociological categories is less important, for now, than the impact of the Raimondo-Keating style on public discourse. Fascism is not a program or philosophy, but a method of gaining power. These individuals are fascists in their contempt for civility, even more than the lust for influence and habitual incitement of the mob visible in Buchanan, Taki, and Raimondo.
-snip-
In the present situation, the neofascists, which I consider the correct title for Buchanan, Taki, and Raimondo, must be granted no quarter, just as Saddam, the Serbs, and the Wahhabi Islamofascists in Saudi Arabia deserve no quarter.
I think I tend to agree with Schwartz on this one.
A bit of a stretch, doncha think?
"Dennis" ain't studly.
It's tough to swagger with a cigarette dangling from your lips when you remind people of a kid who messed up Mr. Wilson's flower bed.
Dennis, indeed! LOL!!!
Maybe he should have just gone for broke and changed his name to "Dirk Diggler"?
Good article, though I'd have given it a different title:
"Rebels Without a Clue"
-Jay
If anything, that qualifies him to be quarantined for rabies.
So, what religion is Schwartz today? Or has he gone back to being Communist?
One of them is a homosexual?
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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