Petr
01-06-2006, 12:30 PM
http://www.forward.com/articles/7102
The Neoconservative Persuasion
Examining the Jewish Roots of an Intellectual Movement
By Gal Beckerman
January 6, 2006
--------------------------------
The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy
By Murray Friedman
Cambridge University Press, 310 pages, $29.
Commentary in American Life
Edited by Murray Friedman
Temple University Press, 232 pages, $22.95.
The Neocon Reader
Edited and with an introduction by Irwin Seltzer
Grove Press, 320 pages, $15.
---------------------------------------------
Acknowledging the Jewishness of neoconservatism has always triggered the red, flashing lights of antisemitism, especially since the start of the Iraq War (with extra points if it's Pat Buchanan doing the acknowledging). But there is some truth to the suspicion. If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren. Understanding what might be Jewish about this movement (or "persuasion" as its godfather, Irving Kristol, prefers it be called) should be possible without being accused of conspiracy theorizing about secret cabals pulling strings for Israel.
...
When he first became editor in February 1960 at the age of 30, Podhoretz was a man of the New Left and made the magazine into a megaphone for radical, even anarchist voices. In the early years of his editorship, Commentary lost much of the Jewish character it had had since its founding in 1945. Instead it took part in the 1960s' deconstruction of Western civilization, tearing traditional notions of race, class and gender out from their roots.
...
Podhoretz wasn't the first neoconservative to discover the evils of communism. Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, who co-founded the neoconservative journal The National Interest in 1965, had begun their intellectual paths during the 1930s in a wing of the Trotskyite communist movement that saw Stalin's Russia as no less wicked than capitalist America. After World War II their hatred of Soviet communism won out, setting them on the path toward neoconservatism.
...
Petr
The Neoconservative Persuasion
Examining the Jewish Roots of an Intellectual Movement
By Gal Beckerman
January 6, 2006
--------------------------------
The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy
By Murray Friedman
Cambridge University Press, 310 pages, $29.
Commentary in American Life
Edited by Murray Friedman
Temple University Press, 232 pages, $22.95.
The Neocon Reader
Edited and with an introduction by Irwin Seltzer
Grove Press, 320 pages, $15.
---------------------------------------------
Acknowledging the Jewishness of neoconservatism has always triggered the red, flashing lights of antisemitism, especially since the start of the Iraq War (with extra points if it's Pat Buchanan doing the acknowledging). But there is some truth to the suspicion. If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it. It's a thought one imagines most American Jews, overwhelmingly liberal, will find horrifying. And yet it is a fact that as a political philosophy, neoconservatism was born among the children of Jewish immigrants and is now largely the intellectual domain of those immigrants' grandchildren. Understanding what might be Jewish about this movement (or "persuasion" as its godfather, Irving Kristol, prefers it be called) should be possible without being accused of conspiracy theorizing about secret cabals pulling strings for Israel.
...
When he first became editor in February 1960 at the age of 30, Podhoretz was a man of the New Left and made the magazine into a megaphone for radical, even anarchist voices. In the early years of his editorship, Commentary lost much of the Jewish character it had had since its founding in 1945. Instead it took part in the 1960s' deconstruction of Western civilization, tearing traditional notions of race, class and gender out from their roots.
...
Podhoretz wasn't the first neoconservative to discover the evils of communism. Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, who co-founded the neoconservative journal The National Interest in 1965, had begun their intellectual paths during the 1930s in a wing of the Trotskyite communist movement that saw Stalin's Russia as no less wicked than capitalist America. After World War II their hatred of Soviet communism won out, setting them on the path toward neoconservatism.
...
Petr