Posted on 06/16/2003 5:03:58 PM PDT by ComtedeMaistre
My purpose was to challenge those who claim that, because Reagan shared the same views on foreign policy as neo-cons, he was one of their own. Any Freeper who voted for Reagan in the 1976 Presidential primary against Gerald Ford (as I did), at a time when neo-cons supported Scoop Jackson in the Democrat Primary, can tell you with certainty that Reagan was never a neo-con.
Another point I made in that discussion thread that was hotly disputed, is the fact that Leon Trotsky, the communist founder of the Red Army, is the intellectual godfather of many of the older neo-conservatives. Most younger neo-cons dispute this fact, because they are ignorant of the historical heritage of the neo-conservative movement. In fact, younger neo-cons are not well read, and simply assume neo-con is the ideological middle-ground between a liberal and a conservative. And because they themselves were never communists (unlike the older neo-cons) they deny that neo-conservatism had its origins in Trotskyite communism.
Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky. He is one of the few neo-cons around today, who dares to admit that he admires Trotsky.
The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:
Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)
This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.
The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:
Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)
This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.
Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.
BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.
Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.
BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.
Read the whole article by Schwartz. He is offered the opportunity -- but declines -- to denounce Trotsky as "the man who "mercilessly wiped out rebellious anti-Bolshevik soldiers and sailors at Kronstadt." In his view, Trotsky couldn't make an omelette (Communist revolution) without breaking a few eggs (slaughter of innocents).
You are correct that Trotsky was possibly the most dangerous of the group, even when compared with world-class murderers like Lenin and Stalin. Trotsky is the one who was determined to spread the revolution all around the world. He wasn't satisfied with merely Russia, he wanted "international socialism" to be truly international.
Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.
Russia had its own Pol Pot, and then some. The danger was that he could have been Pol Pot to the world, not just to Russia.
That's all speculation since Trotsky didn't make the cut. He wasn't ruthless enough to preserve his Soviet power in Russia and was exiled. He wasn't ruthless enough, cunning enough to remain while Stalin ruled. But many others were. He was too much the "theoretician" (intellectual) and not enough the wielder of ruthless power.
Trotsky was second only to Lenin in the Politburo, and Lenin viewed him as exceptionally able. He backed Lenin's major policy innovations, but had his own plans for industrializing Russia. When a stroke removed Lenin from active politics in May 1922, Trotsky was not in a position to take over. Never particularly adept at party politics, he failed to outmaneuver the troika of Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin that took power. Although he put himself at the head of a loosely knit left opposition, Trotsky's polemic salvos were no match for Stalin's bureaucratic party machine. In 1925 his adversaries removed him from the Commissariat of War; in 1926 they expelled him from the Politburo; and in 1928 Stalin exiled him to Central Asia and in 1929 expelled him from the USSR.
Trotsky spent the rest of his life seeking a safe place to compose his savage critiques of Stalinist Russia. In Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico he produced a flood of publications, including an autobiography, My Life (1930; trans. 1930); an unmatched History of the Russian Revolution (3 vol., 1931-33; trans. 1932-33); an insightful The Revolution Betrayed (1937); and searing articles on the major issues of his day (Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, the Spanish civil war). A Stalinist agent fatally wounded Trotsky on August 20, 1940, in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the following day.
Just because Trotsky lost the internal struggle with Stalin is no proof that he wouldn't have been just as ruthless or worse if he had gained ultimate power. In the meantime, Schwartz defiantly states that Trotskyites like him do not admire the intellectual Trotsky, but rather "Trotsky, the Father of the Red Army."
Add another key word:
JEWS!!!!
There it is. The entire thing is another fabrication on the part of a Leftist writer who's attempting to link a handful of ex-Trotskyites who because neo-conservatives to the neo-conservative movement as a whole.
In other words, it's bit like saying that since David Horowitz is an ex-communist and now a popular right-wing author, the ghost of Stalin haunts the right-wing publishing industry. Patently idiotic, of course, but standard fair for the guilt-by-association crowd.
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