JONATHAN CHAIT MARCH 31, 2011
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I just realized that I never wrote about Frank Foer's review essay about Irving Kristol, which is every bit as good as you'd expect it to be (not just because the author is Frank, but because Frank was born to write this piece.)
Aside from a general endorsement, I want to flag one really fascinating tidbit about Kristol's view of Israel, which was shared by Norman Podhoretz:
Israel’s socialistic ethos alienated Kristol. “Truth to tell,” he later recalled, “I found Israeli society, on the whole, quite exasperating.” He was not alone. In 1951, he received a copy of a letter from a Columbia student named Norman Podhoretz. This missive had circulated to Kristol by way of Cohen, who had received a copy from its original recipient, Lionel Trilling. The letter was an account of Podhoretz’s first visit to Israel. “I felt more at home in Athens!” he told Trilling. “They are, despite their really extraordinary accomplishments, a very unattractive people, the Israelis. They’re gratuitously surly and boorish.... They are too arrogant and too anxious to become a real honest-to-goodness New York of the East.” On the basis of Podhoretz’s chilly response to the Jewish state, Kristol recruited him to write for Commentary.
In the wake of the Iraq war, a fascination with neoconservatism -- a fascination that had previously been shared by very few people, one of them being Frank -- exploded into the political and even the popular culture. But the concept became deeply vulgurized and misunderstood. One common and very crude assumption interpreted the neocons as simply a form of the Israel lobby, crafting doctrines for American power that were merely devised to justify Israel's interests.
The truth is that the original neocons were very far from deep, emotional supporters of Israel. They were pro-Israel, but their pro-Israel views stemmed from their general hawkishness rather than vice versa. In any case, the neoconservative ideology was wildly simplistic and intellectually corrupt, as Frank well shows, but this particular understanding of it has always been misplaced.
10 comments
The term "neoconservative" has been so beaten out of shape as to lose the original senses of its meaning, as you write, Jonathan.
- liberalref
March 31, 2011 at 5:43pm
So what? That could be said of any political label you can think of. They remain useful despite that.
- roidubouloi
March 31, 2011 at 6:08pm
"[T]he neoconservative ideology was wildly simplistic and intellectually corrupt. . . ." Now I don't have to post the long comment that I would have posted to the Foer piece, which is excellent. I will only say that it's ironic that Kristol and his acolytes became the ideological counterparts of the left that he so loathed, true believers who would sacrafice principle for the cause.
- rayward
March 31, 2011 at 6:12pm
Superficial? It can't be!
- GSpinks
March 31, 2011 at 6:43pm
Reading that, it's interesting how the country has changed. Younger Israelis are definitely nicer than their parents, but also a lot more frankly racist.
- WillPastor
March 31, 2011 at 9:12pm
"Foer on Kristol" by Jonathan Chait "The truth is that the original neocons were very far from deep, emotional supporters of Israel. They were pro-Israel, but their pro-Israel views stemmed from their general hawkishness rather than vice versa." Foer's article is useful, but not altogether authoritative. For example, Daniel Bell never claimed to be a neoconservative. He described his position as a "socialist on economic issues, a liberal on political issues and a conservative on social issues." I think Chait gets it wrong on the neocons and Israel. The reason he gets it wrong is he never "names names" and therefore is addressing the issue only in the abstract. Norman Podhoretz may have found his early exposure to Israeli society a difficult experience-but Israel was governed, up until 1974, by a form of "Labor Zionism." The "Socialists," the Labor Party, the members of the Socialist International, were in power in Jerusalem. Of course, the young Podhoretz would find Labor Zionism coarse, boorish and well, difficult to align with the social democratic ideology. With the political fall of Labor Zionism and the ascendancy of Zionist Revisionism, a new dynamic was in play. Kristol, Podhoretz, N. Glaser, the defense intellectuals-Richard Perle, Edward Luttwak-and others- found affinity with the ruling Likud Party and its tactical and ideological orientations. It is arguable that prior to the rise Zionist Revisionism, the neocons demonstrated "deep, emotional support[ers] of Israel. Certainly from the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the neocons articulated "deep emotional support for Israel." The second generation neocons--people like Carl Gershman and Eliot Abrams, consistently demonstrated "deep, emotional support for Israel." The neocon political faction supported Richard Nixon against George McGovern in 1972. I recall a YPSL meeting where Gershman announced his support for Richard Nixon. (George Meany had declared his neutrality in the 1972 Presidential election). Gershman was obviously strongly influenced by and carried out Kristol's factional political line. The early neocons supported--some only critically-- the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the neocons were moving to the political right, rapidly. Unqualified support for Israel was a central tenant of Kristol's political faction. The reason Kristol invited the young Podhoretz to write for Commentary was because Podhoretz, like Kristol, was rejecting Labor Zionism and supporting, first in a critical fashion and later wholeheartedly, Zionist Revisionism. Kristol was recruiting Podhoretz to the factional struggle against Israeli "democratic socialism." Missing from Chait's review and Foer's article is the not so peripheral influence of éminence grise, Max Shachtman and his associates. The literary executor of Leon Trotsky's estate, Max Shachtman supported the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Vietnam war. Although generally assigned a minor role by historians of neoconservatism, Shachtman and his associates held great influence over Norman Podhoretz and Midge Dector, if not Irving Kristol himself. Of course we know Irving Kristol was one of "Max's boys" during CCNY days. Which faction was more pro-Israel than the now defunct Shachtmanites? The early neocons were pro-Israel but not deeply and emotionally because the ruling ideology of Israel up until 1974 was democratic Socialist. The neocons were generally hawkishness and anti-Labor Zionist. Once Labor Zionism collapsed, the neocons and the Zionist Revisionists (the Israeli Government) could make common cause on all fronts, deeply and emotionally.
- LawrenceGulotta
March 31, 2011 at 9:31pm
This is a very slippery post. Chait goes from arguing, via Foer, that the original neocons were never big fans of Israel. He then concludes that the idea that "the neoconservative ideology" has been motivated by a love of Israel "has always been misplaced." Why not conclude that the neocons of the 2000's changed?
- NR851651
March 31, 2011 at 9:52pm
"Why not conclude that the neocons of the 2000's changed?" It changed, alright. Irving K in the late 30's was a Trostkyite. Later on he became a liberal, with an anti-Communist foreign policy. Then for the sake of consistency he turned his domestic liberal views into conservative ones to match his his hawkish foreign policy. Later on his foreign policy followed Trotsky's views of "exporting revolution" which in his case meant exporting democracy. He called himself a neoconservaitve in the late 60's because he didn't want to be associated with right wing views. (the John Birchers for example). The neo really stands for humpty dumpty like for whatever views the Kristols and their arrogant ilk hold at the moment. I don’t care about consistency in a person’s life. People do change. Such inconsistency of belief we see in Kristol is much harder to excuse.
- arnon
March 31, 2011 at 11:01pm
Rayward - FA Hayek noted this movement from one extreme to another in his essay "Why I am not a Conservative": "It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits. *** This may also explain why it seems to be so much easier for the repentant socialist to find a new spiritual home in the conservative fold than in the liberal."
- Geoff G
April 1, 2011 at 7:15am
So what? Spoken like a true ideologue. No matter if a term is battered out of shape, it is still useful to hurl against the other side. Maybe the more battered it is, the more useful it might be. And neither Jonathan nor I argued against political labels, but the (il)logic here seems to be: political labels are useful, so even if a label has gotten wildly distorted, we cannot note that because ... gasp!, the noting of such a phenomenon might undermine the existence of useful political labels. And this is the kind of thing that passes for thought in the comment sections of TNR Online.
- liberalref
April 1, 2011 at 12:01pm