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April 12, 2003

Dark light. Bill Humphries notes a passing bit in Michael Lind’s “How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington”:
Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party’s tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel’s 1981 raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for “democracy.” They call their revolutionary ideology “Wilsonianism” (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism.
Notes experienced skiffologist Humphries:
They used to be Trots? Now that makes more sense, and instead of the current situation being a Tom Clancy, a Bill Gibson, or a Bruce Sterling story, it’s actually one scripted by Ken McLeod. You see, Wolfowitz is our Colonel Volkov. Volkov transforms Nova Babylonia, and Wolfowitz transforms America, in both cases Republics […] into engines to defend the State against external aggressors.
I have personally felt like I was living in a Ken MacLeod future since sometime not long after 9/11, and I wish he’d CUT IT OUT. But I recommend all of his books. Brits and Europeans should start with The Star Fraction. Science fiction aficionados should begin with The Cassini Division. Everyone else should go directly to The Stone Canal. [10:25 PM]
Welcome to Electrolite's comments section.
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Comments on Dark light.:

Avram ::: (view all by) ::: April 12, 2003, 10:48 PM:

Wolfowitz is our Colonel Volkov. Holy crap, yes, that's pretty much it. (I just read Dark Light a few weeks ago.)

I'd recommend SF fans start with The Stone Canal as well. I think The Cassini Division is the weakest of the Fall Revolution books, though it's got the best title.

Avram ::: (view all by) ::: April 12, 2003, 10:50 PM:

Er, Engine City (the third book in the Engines of Light series) is the one I just read a few weeks ago, though I'd reread Cosmonaut Keep and Dark Light shortly prior, so did, in fact, ah fuck it.

Sinboy ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 12:52 AM:

Perhaps Steve Brust should consider a job in Washington. He's a Trotskyite sympathizer.

Lydia Nickerson ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 01:43 AM:

Perhaps Steve Brust should consider a job in Washington. He's a Trotskyite sympathizer.

That really should be Trotskyist, not Trotskyite. The latter is usually considered to be an insulting term. It's taken me a concerted effort to get it right most of the time. I don't know why I care, except that I flinch at Frenchmen being called Frogs and Brits being called Limeys and New Yorkers being called Damn Yankees. I call Star Trek fans Trekkers and I call science fiction sf. Calling people by names that they don't like is calling names. It bugs me.

yehudit ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:06 AM:

You don't think Israel should have destroyed Saddam's reactor?

David Bilek ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:14 AM:

I'm fairly sure you are missing the point, yehudit.

The word "Israel" seems to be even more of a conversation killer than "Hitler" these days. Perhaps Godwin needs to update his law.

yehudit ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:27 AM:

BTW, Patrick, jumping on the "Jewish neoconservatives running Washington" bandwagon is a new low for you. I guess it shows that the "Jewish conspiracy" meme infects almost all antiwar types eventually, no matter how sane they were originally.

And you and Salon are about a month late - Gary Farber, Meryl Yourish and I methodically debunked this meme about the time of Moran's first outburst.
http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/2003_03_16_kesher_archive.html#200014086
http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/2003_03_16_kesher_archive.html#200005866

Ask yourself why this particular horse is being flogged, Patrick.

I have to say I am finally, completely disgusted. You know better. You are not an Indymedia troll. You know better. You know better. You know better.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:30 AM:

Actually, I can think of quite a few arguments for the proposition that Israel was quite justified in the Osirak raid. I'm certainly not convinced it wasn't.

But you know, that wasn't what the post was about. I quoted the Salon piece (with its reference to Osirak) to provide context for Bill Humphries' remarks. Persons wishing to pick fights over Israeli security policy are invited to go do so with somebody else.

Tom T. ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:31 AM:

Yes, it's getting darned difficult to have a pleasant conversation about the Jewish Conspiracy anymore. People get so offended these days...

Picking up on Ms. Nickerson's point, I don't like the idea of neocons being called bloodthirsty authoritarian extremist Jews. That's usually considered an insulting term.

Mary Kay ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:46 AM:

Tom T: Get real. No where in Patrick's post do I see the words bloodthirsty or authoritarian or extremist. He is quoting a piece outlining a theory about the roots of neocons. The piece does not, in fact, say they're all Jews. It says their intellectual and philosophical roots include an "...influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement..." You do see the difference don't you?

MKK

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:08 AM:

Note the timestamps on Yehudit's second post and my own immediately after it. While Yehudit was imputing some kind of nefarious Wrong Belief to me, I was simultaneously remarking that I'm inclined to think Israel was justified in the Osirak raid.

"Ask yourself why this particular horse is being flogged, Patrick."

Actually, I'm more liable to ask myself if I feel like being baited by this kind of obvious baloney. A lot of modern neoconservatism emerges from midcentury left-wing Jewish intellectual circles. Big deal. This is not an indictment of neoconservatism. If a criticism is being brought to bear, it's the observation that the relentless combativeness of the neocons has a striking resemblance to the tactics of some Trotskyist groups.

Most to the point, to observe that something comes out of American Jewish intellectual circles is not to impute any sort of unwholesome "conspiracy." Lots of things have emerged from American Jewish culture, including various strands of literature, science, fashion design, and popular music. You have to be bound and determined to find an occasion for outrage in Lind's observation. Personally, I think you're faking it.

Mary Kay: "Tom T" sees the difference perfectly well. You're talking to him as if he's a person open to reason, instead of (as he is) a set of polemical techniques. Getting you to waste your time and energy is the point.

Graydon ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:47 AM:

This is a tangent, ok?

Osirak aside just for a moment, try, rather than a thought experiement, a worldview experiement.

Everyone on earth has been subject to abrupt nuclear incineration at the pleasure of the United States President and/or Congress for the past fifty seven and a half years; call it sixty in round numbers.

Hardly anyone alive actually remembers a time when this wasn't true; even people who were born before then would have had to be teens to have had a political world picture that 1945 could change, so we're talking about people who are essentially seventy five and older if you are looking for someone who remembers that world where your city *couldn't* go up in a blaze of glory without any more warning than a lot of effort and radar might wring out of sub-orbital ballistics.

So, here we go -- American, and indeed Western, policy is to prevent 'proliferation' -- we've got them, and you can't have them, in other words.

Well, why not?

In some cases, it's because the US couldn't stop them -- Britain, France, the USSR that was, China, are all too expensive and too impractical to fight. (Though it came very, very close in the later case, and there's an argument that France built nukes over being strong-armed about Suez.)

India built nukes after the US parked ENTERPRISE off its coast and said 'stop' about the war India was winning with Pakistan. This was a credible threat *because* of the nuclear arsenal on board the carrier, of course.

Pakistan built nukes because India had them; parity and deternence and one could only wish there were more materialist world views involved than is apparently the case. Up until the US needed access to Afghanistan, there were hard sanctions over that.

So, Israel has nukes; it is widely contended that they got them with a lot of covert and potentially not entirely voluntary US help.

Why can't their Arab opponents have them?

The answer, boiled out of the language of policy, is 'we don't trust you not to attack us with them, so we're going to make sure you don't have the option.'

Their -- quite reasonable -- response to this is 'You have them. Why should we trust you not to use them? Why should we trust Israel not to use them?"

Since US policy in the Middle East has been for that same almost-sixty years something other than holding out a shining vision of democracy and prosperity, this is a tricky question.

At least, if you want to come up with an answer practically different from 'you live in wog land; if you had nukes, that would change, and we want to keep you there.'

Used to be, any place complex enough in terms of social organization to actually build the things wasn't really a worry; they were pretty much guarunteed to be run by pragmatists at least enough. That's not as true anymore, since everything gets easier as industry gets more capable, and building basic nukes is not mystically different.

But, yeah, any place that lacks that materialist world view is a worry; they might use one of the things.

One answer is of course to spread that materialist world view, that humanist address -present-suffering ideal, so that wog land will eventually go away. The nukes won't, but they'd seem much less useful.

Which is not what is going on now, at all -- consider the aid policy changes brought in by the Bush administration -- and try to come up with an answer for that question again that will make emotional sense to an Iraqi, a Kurd, an Iranian Shi'ite and which isn't, boiled ot of its pleasant language, "you're wogs, and you're going to stay wogs."

Because, you know, until there is some other answer, some other answer applied, the basis for hatred of the west, fo the US, of Israel, is entirely real and rational; demanding that they like being wogs closely approximates stupidity, and refusing to recognize that there is a question of self interest involved goes beyond approximation.

(Anyone else noticed that the Bush administration never says 'it will benefit you if'? they say 'do what we want or else'. Stable stuff depends on the 'it will benefit you if' and people agreeing about what the benefit is.)

David Goldfarb ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:52 AM:

I'm not sure I agree that The Cassini Division is the weakest of the Fall Revolution books -- I think I'd prefer it to The Star Fraction or The Sky Road. I definitely agree that SF readers should read The Stone Canal before Cassini, because Cassini has major spoilers for Canal.

Ken MacLeod ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 08:41 AM:

Volkov's grandfather, Grigory Ilyanovich, visited Babylon when he was a military adviser to Iraq in the 1980s. His father, Andrei Grigorovich, is at present in a military academy studying the lessons of recent events.

Alan Bostick ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 11:41 AM:

As a brief check of the table of contents of one of the volumes of George Orwell's collected essays(*) reminds me that the ur-Neocon who blazed the path from Trotskyism to conservatism was James Burnham, author of such works as The Managerial Revolution.

Does Jerry Pournelle count as a neocon? He was never a trot; he got his start in the CPUSA.

Re: "trotskyist" vs. "troskyite" — if you wanted to be linguistically correct, one might call such people "trotskovites," or perhaps even "trotskovniks." (The latter is, I think, the actual epithet in the original Russian.)

(*)Raise your hand if you know where the title of my blog comes from

Tom T. ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 12:30 PM:

Mary Kay: "militaristic" and "permanent revolution" = bloodthirsty. "...mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for 'democracy'" (note the mockery quotes) = authoritarian. "far-right" and "no precedents in American culture or political history" = extremist.

Those of us who are offended by this thinking find it distasteful that Lind and others opposed to current American foreign policy make such a point of tracing it back to the Jews.

Tuxedo Slack ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 01:02 PM:

Tom T. skrev:

Those of us who are offended by this thinking find it distasteful that Lind and others opposed to current American foreign policy make such a point of tracing it back to the Jews.

Yeah, well, I'm offended by your (feigned) assumption that tracing some ideas back to their originators, who just happen to be Jews, is tracing them back to "the Jews" as a fungible group. (Curiously, no conservative I can recall reading had any problem blaming "the liberals" as a fungible group for the actions of anyone occupying any point on the political spectrum between Bill Clinton and David McReynolds.)

Of course, this is a waste of my and the world's time, since our host pegged you exactly in saying that you are not "a person open to reason instead [but rather] a set of polemical techniques". In that context, you're sorry to have wasted my time.

Damien Warman ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 01:16 PM:

Alan: title of column of essays by Orwell?

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 02:49 PM:

"Those of us who are offended by this thinking find it distasteful that Lind and others opposed to current American foreign policy make such a point of tracing it back to the Jews."

As "Tuxedo Slack" points out, noting that an intellectual movement originated in New York Jewish left-wing intellectual circles is not the same thing as "tracing it back to the Jews."

Not that you actually think any such thing, or course. You've tried to palm a rhetorical card, and you've been caught.

N.Z. Bear ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:32 PM:

At the risk of tripping over one of the corollaries to Godwin's Law, for me, life since 9/11 hasn't so much seemed like one of Ken's futures (although let me add a brief digressive hat-tip here to Mr. MacLeod for his fine, fine novels).

It's been a Heinlein future: Solution Unsatisfactory, to be precise. Wolfowitz isn't Colonel Volkov. He's Colonel Manning.

-NZB

Avram ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:49 PM:

As I think I've said before, when I first read The Star Fraction (I think it was in 1999) the background, the US/UN global hegemony, seemed implausible to me. When I reread it a few months ago I felt like I was seeing it come into existence around me.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 03:55 PM:

Tom T., thank you for admitting that Patrick never said any of the things you claimed he did. Your "translation" of it makes "Bite the Wax Tadpole" look good.

How do you expect me to take you seriously when you get offended about what you imagine Patrick thinks? You've made it clear that you can't tell what he thinks.

Randolph Fritz ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 04:19 PM:

Me on Usenet, 2001.09.07: "The Workers Party objects [to a particular education software policy in Brazil.] I am having this feeling of having fallen into a Ken Macleod novel."

Carlos ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 04:56 PM:

Alan Bostick wrote:

"Does Jerry Pournelle count as a neocon? He was never a trot; he got his start in the CPUSA."

JEP anthologized David Horowitz twice in SF collections: "Nicaragua: A Speech to My Former Comrades on the Left", in _Imperial Stars, Volume 2: Republic and Empire_, Baen, 1986; and "Another 'Low Dishonest Decade' on the Left", in _There Will Be War, Volume 7, Call to Battle_", um, Tor [1], 1987.

So, yeah, I think he counts; by their fruits you shall know them.

I wonder if his break from the CPUSA went through a YASTG phase? Man, he *needs* to have a Paul Johnson done on him (as does Paul Johnson).

[1] I myself am three handshakes from Muammar Qaddafi. Maybe less.

rainforest ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 05:01 PM:

Hey, what happened to Yehudit's vowels? Her last message had them the first time I read it. Now they're gone.

Luke Francl ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 05:10 PM:

I second Avram's point. I re-read The Star Fraction shortly after 9/11 and reading the Atlantic Monthly article A New Grand Strategy -- which suggests the US's interest in the Middle East lie not so much in oil, but in preventing Europe from developing armed forces capible of force projection -- and I was startled by the parallels. I even thought of trying to track down Ken MacLeod and email him the article: "Look! It's happening!"

Well, here he is posting on this blog. Maybe he'll see this link.

By the way, I recommend reading The Star Fraction first. The politics make it my favorite book of the series.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 05:13 PM:

Don't fret, rainforest. At the request of the proprietor, the vowels have been reinstated.

(And what, if I may ask, is the point of being God-Empress of the Universe, if one's capricious and arbitrary exercise of power is constantly subject to question? I have had to be merciful three times now! -- no, four! -- since I undertook to moderate this weblog. No one, no one, is ever going to credit me with as much patience as I deserve.)

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 05:15 PM:

I'm quite certain I'm three handshakes from Saddam Hussein. Possibly two. It's a small world out there.

Brad DeLong ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 08:23 PM:

You've shaken hands with Donald Rumsfeld!?

Avram ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 08:27 PM:

I read The Star Fraction first, and was confused by much of it, since it seemed to rely on a familiarity with European politics I did not possess. The Stone Canal fills in a lot of the background.

Mary Kay ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 08:45 PM:

Hmmm. Considering some of the people Jordin knows I bet I'm not more than 3 handshakes away either. Of course, as I've said many times before, being an sf fan and attending sf conventions puts you in touch with all sorts of strange, but wonderful, people who know the strangest conglomeration of facts and other strange people.

MKK

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 08:48 PM:

No, that would put me two handshakes from Saddam. But I've shaken hands with both Newt Gingrich and Barry Goldwater, and I'm sure both of them have shaken hands with Rumsfeld at one point or another. Obviously, it's the famous Rumsfeld handshake that gets us to Saddam.

I've also met Dana Rohrbacher, who (I dimly recall) met and hobnobbed with a whole bunch of Taliban figures at one point. I mean, while we're at it.

sinboy ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 09:50 PM:

Hey, I'm Jewish. I've lived overseas. How come no one ever let me in on this conspiracy.

Does Graydon think the Arab states don't trust the US not to use nuclear weapons in a conventional war or as a pre emptive strike? whatever could have given them that idea??

Next thing you know, they'll be saying we're going to take over the entire midlde east!

Graydon ::: (view all by) ::: April 13, 2003, 10:20 PM:

Graydon thinks that the general Arab on the street doesn't trust the US not to nuke Mecca if that would get the US something it wants.

This is not an indefensible viewpoint.

Mitch Wagner ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 12:49 AM:

Patrick - When did you hobnob with Taliban figures?

Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 12:53 AM:

Mitch, I didn't. Read my previous post again.

David Goldfarb ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 03:50 AM:

Fuck, Graydon, I don't trust the people in the White House not to H-Bomb Mecca if it would get them something they wanted.

Ken MacLeod ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 04:10 AM:


But seriously ... I think this Trot-neocon connection is a red herring.

James Burnham, Max Shachtman, Irving Howe were all, I think, ex-Trots and (variously) influential a long time ago. David Horowitz says he was a 'Deutscherite' in his left-wing days, which means, roughly, that he was a Trot who was a bit soft on Stalinism. And that, as far as I know, is that.

Lind says the neocons 'are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s [...]'

I find this dubious because ... oh, hell, go figure.

He says the neocons 'call their revolutionary ideology “Wilsonianism” (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism.'

Say what? This is using 'Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution' as a token, not a concept.

Mitch Wagner ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 11:24 AM:

Ah. Dana Rohrbacher. Never mind then.

Tom ::: (view all by) ::: April 14, 2003, 04:22 PM:

"But seriously ... I think this Trot-neocon connection is a red herring.

James Burnham, Max Shachtman, Irving Howe were all, I think, ex-Trots and (variously) influential a long time ago. David Horowitz says he was a 'Deutscherite' in his left-wing days, which means, roughly, that he was a Trot who was a bit soft on Stalinism. And that, as far as I know, is that."

Bit more than that. Irving Kristol was also a Trot at CCNY at the same time as Irving Howe, and Norman Podorhetz (sp?). Tom Sowell's an ex-Marxist, as is Marvin Olavsky. A lot of the best minds on the US right are ex-Marxists or are foreigners. Why can't they grow their own thinkers, godammit?

(They're welcome to Horowitz, though)

Schactman never became a conservative, but became part of the Dissent/Social Democrats USA cold wars hawks that were influential in the AFL-CIO.

Jesse Walker ::: (view all by) ::: April 15, 2003, 05:14 PM:

The original wave of neocons in the 1970s consisted of three groups. The ex-Trots were one of them.

Adam ::: (view all by) ::: April 16, 2003, 06:48 PM:

It is difficult to recall with any accuracy the prolonged state of shock and horror that clouded my mind on seeing Reagan elected, but I think it was actually worse than the numb, bitter disgust that attended the ascension of the current Bush.

The only thing as demoralizing and shattering to my fantasies about the potential of my fellow citizens was jury duty (about which I can only say god help the accused and the wronged, for the process assuredly won't).

Reading these blogs and comments is like finding an instant antidote... It's something like breathing at the surface again after a deep free dive.

I feel a need to express my gratitude for your (collective) clarity of thought, wit and imagination--and for the deft handling of the set of polemical techniques masquerading as an outraged person.

Light in the dark light... the waveforms don't cancel, particles don't anihilate...

Thanks.

Tom ::: (view all by) ::: April 25, 2003, 11:31 AM:

Folks, all this stuff about neo-cons "capturing" Washington has the whiff of hysteria about it. It is no different from hearing conservatives bleating about Hollywood etc "capturing" Washington back when slick Willy was in power. Get a grip folks.

I have met Ken McLeod several times in England. Nice guy, very clued up about the libertarian movement in the US and here in Britain. I like the way he writes about the European Union. I still think the Star Fraction, his debut, is his best book.

However, Robert Heinlein still rules!

Mike ::: (view all by) ::: April 30, 2003, 05:59 PM:

Thanks for the link to Michael Lind's disgusting article. Lind can be an intriguing writer at times, but he has definitely been hanging out with too much with Pat Buchanan.

Let's look at some representative quotations from Lind...
"the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment."

Wow. "unrepresentative of [ ] the U.S. population"
So it bothers Lind that the neocons are Jews, period.

"They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history."
Of course we know from the Moscow trials of the 1930s how Trotskyism inevitably leads to fascism. Interesting too that the rootless cosmopolite neo-cons have "no precedents in American culture or political history".

"The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience."
and
"It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding."

So the naive king is tricked by the wicked Jews who surround him. Hmm.

The IDEAS of the neocons can and should be vigorously criticized. But maybe more people would listen if critics didn't invoke every anti-semitic trope that can be found. Excuse me, but I missed the time warp that took us back to the 1930s.

Does anybody here understand why people might find this sort of argument offensive?

Adam ::: (view all by) ::: May 02, 2003, 05:48 PM:

Mike, I missed that timewarp too -- but look around! The signs are everywhere. I think the temporal rift opened while people were distracted by the recount in the last presidential election.

More and more of the thirties has been seeping into the present ever since.

Mike Godwin ::: (view all by) ::: July 20, 2003, 12:27 AM:

Maybe I'm at heart a Brit or European, but I think the best way to read MacLeod is in publication order. Start with the THE STAR FRACTION.

Without disputing that the mention of Israel can kill conversations more quickly than the radioactive dust of Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory," I think Godwin's Law's privileging of the Hitler/Nazis metaphor still has life in it. You can't quite dismiss someone so readily for being pro-Israel as for being pro-Nazi.


--Mike

Ray Radlein ::: (view all by) ::: July 20, 2003, 03:33 AM:

Thanks to Mike Godwin bumping this thread (allowing me to read it anew), I can report that, although I'm not sure about Saddam Hussein, I am two handshakes from Tito (and perhaps from Milosevic, for that matter; I'm not sure). Oh, and Barry Humphries, as well, since we're talking about world leaders.