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We've
heard
much about the "radicalism" of the antiwar
movement, even as it becomes more mainstream. The War
Party focuses on the most marginal elements in an effort
to characterize the movement as kooky. This is not only
a smear, but an effort to divert attention away from
the essential craziness of their own movement, the religious
fundamentalist sources of pro-war sentiment in this
country.
You want pro-war kooks? Then try this
Washington Post article on for size: ".
. . And
Armageddon Tops the Bestseller List." It's
all about the "Left Behind" novels, by evangelist
Tim LaHaye and writer Jerry Jenkins, that sell like
hot-cakes here in the Vale of Modernity:
"Come
spring, many Americans will turn their attention to
the battle of Armageddon. Whether or not it coincides
with an actual war in the Persian Gulf, "Armageddon,"
the 11th entry in the best-selling series
…
will appear in stores April 8. Almost certainly, it
will debut as No. 1 on bestseller lists – as have
each of the last four "Left Behind" books.
This time, the most popular adult fiction series in
recent memory is going to war – a cosmic battle between
good and evil that will pit Satan himself, who rules
the world from New Babylon, Iraq, against Israel and
its Christian allies."
Let's be clear about the theme and context
of these "novels": they're all about how God
is going to "rapture" up into the sky all
those trailer park "Christians" who give money
to Pat Robertson. The rest of us depraved sinners will
be left behind. But not before all the world's Jews
are gathered together in Israel, where the great battle
of Armageddon is supposed to take place – signaling
the End of History (Francis
Fukuyama, take note!) and the Return of Christ the
King. According to the "dispensationalist"
con men who preach this clap-trap, Israel will take
the place of the Church on earth, and a new "dispensation"
(or era) will be inaugurated, as mankind approaches
the "End Times."
And they say the Muslims are
mired in "medievalism"!
Millions of Americans believe this pitiful
nonsense. They pine for a nuclear Armageddon because
it will fulfill their "prophecies." They ignore
the national interests of their own country, and worship
at the altar of Israel, functioning as a far more effective
– and dangerous – fifth column than any commie "conspiracy"
ever did. They are worse than Aum
Shinrikyo, that nutball Japanese cult that unleashed
sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, not only because they
are more numerous, but because they are a potent political
force in the U.S., and practically dominate the Republican
party.
It's
pathetic, really, to read the sniping smears of the
War Party, who are trying to tar the antiwar movement
with the "Communist" brush – what about their
nutballs?! What
about Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who called
the 9/11 attacks "God's punishment" because
all us evil queers have been partying like it's … the
end of the world? This is not some marginal sect, with
less than a few hundred members, like the Workers World
Party, which so much has been made of, but a mass friggin'
movement, one that forms the heart and soul of the War
Party.
The
followers of a genocidal "Christian" heresy,
who number in the millions, are determined to drive
their country into World
War IV. They just can't wait for that mushroom cloud
to billow up over the horizon – and we're supposed to
worry about a couple of dozen Communists whose ideology
is about as relevant as phrenology?
God, I just love the restrained tone
of the Washington Post writer, who avers: "The
timing may be perfect for the publisher, but disconcerting
for others." To say the least! "Just as Europe's
literature of the horrors of war has fostered pacifism
and war wariness there," the Post reports,
"these novels must be influencing the American
view of war today."
The
Europeans, in other words, have been shaped by their
experience. They have gone through two world wars and
the threat of a third, having lost millions of lives
and seen their civilization practically destroyed. This
has shaped an outlook that might be described as more
patient than "pacifist," one that sees
the gradual evolution and spread of the rule of law
and civil society throughout the world, rather than
via some radical eruption of moral righteousness. We,
on the other hand, are shaped in our attitudes toward
war not by recent experience but by the worst sort of
pulp fiction: a cheap novel authored by a couple of
religious fanatics whose moral universe is steeped in
the same obscurantist mindset as Osama bin Laden's.
The
thesis of Samuel Huntington is much bruited about,
especially by our war birds, who claim that this is
a "civilizational" war, pitting the Western
values of democracy, modernity, and cultural diversity
against the authoritarian medievalism that supposedly
characterizes the Muslim world. But obviously the real
civilizational war is going on right here at home, between
our war-maddened Rapturists and the rest of the American
people, religious and non-religious alike.
It is not an overstatement to describe
the Rapturists as crazed. They live, after all, in a
world peopled by hallucinations. They see everything
as a portent, an ominous confirmation of their elaborate
fantasy life: every time Ariel Sharon farts, they breathe
it in with gusto, convinced that it represents the fulfillment
of some prophecy regarding the "sacred" land
of Israel. In their nightmare view of human existence,
the immolation of the world in a bath of nuclear fire
is an event to be anticipated with joy, not horror.
These are the initiates of a death cult, just as surely
as any suicide bomber.
If this is "Christianity,"
then I say: Hail, Satan!
Fortunately,
the real Christians in this country, represented not
only by the Vatican, of course, but also by the National
Council of Churches and the mainstream Protestant denominations
– including dispensationalists who disagree emphatically
with the Armageddonites – reject this dangerous "Christian
jihadism," as the Post calls it. And their
voices are now being heard, much to the dismay and even
panic of the War Party. The Catholic Church recently
slapped
the Italian defense minister on the wrist for jumping
on the bandwagon for war, and the National Council of
Churches is a key component of the United for Peace
campaign, which has become the fulcrum
of antiwar activism in the U.S.
As I pointed out in my piece on the
antiwar movement in the Feb. 8 issue of The American
Conservative – hey, it's out now, and already
making waves (scroll down) – the opposition to World
War IV is going way beyond the Left. This has the War
Party in a panic, and they have deployed their Smear
Brigade in full force.
Accuracy
in Media was first out of the gate with a critique
of my article, and, no,
they didn't like it. Somebody with the made-up sounding
name of Cliff
Kincaid penned a screed stupidly entitled "Antiwar
Conservatives?" As if he would even be writing
about them if they didn't exist. Since Kincaid's outfit
is so concerned with "accuracy," then let
them take a look at the numbers: A
recent Gallup poll shows nearly thirty percent of
self-identified conservatives oppose invading Iraq.
A minority, yes, but an articulate and increasingly
vocal
one.
This is precisely what scares Kincaid
and the brigade of neocon smear artists like David Horowitz,
Ronald Radosh, and the P. J. O'Rourke wannabes over
at National Review. Their strategy is to caricature
the antiwar movement as a bunch of far-out lefties,
Iraqi spies, and burnt-out hippies, but they are generals
fighting the last war. A Republican businessman and
contributor to the Bush campaign recently shelled out
$170,000 to pay for a full-page antiwar ad in the Wall
Street Journal. And what about all those soccer
moms waving American flags on January 18? I was not
the only observer to note that the most popular slogan
was "Peace
is Patriotic."
Kincaid quotes my criticism of the Workers
World Party-controlled A.N.S.W.E.R. group, and cites
"I
Ain't Marchin' Anymore" as proof that I "flip-flopped"
by calling for "All
Out on January 18." But the whole point was
that the January 18 event, as I anticipated, would be
so big as to overshadow the organizers, a signal that
the antiwar movement had outgrown the Left. A.N.S.W.E.R.
has been undone by their own success. The hundreds of
thousands who demonstrated all over the country, on
January 18, did so on account of the President's escalating
war rhetoric, not because of anything coming from the
organizers of the event. No one could even hear the
speeches in Washington and especially San Francisco,
that day, anyway: that's how big the crowds were.
Kincaid acknowledges that groups like
the National Council of Churches are now taking the
lead in the new United for Peace group, but, according
to him, they, too, are Commie stooges. As proof, he
points to their alleged support for "a communist-run
conference on 'liberation struggles' in southern Africa."
Opposing apartheid, it seems, makes one a "communist."
Kincaid cites some neocon front group,
the "Institute
on Religion and Democracy" – virtually all
these neocon outfits have the word "Democracy"
in their titles, just like the commies used to refer
to their "Democratic
Peoples Republics" – descrying the NCC's contention
that we are seeing "a rise of militarism under
President Bush." Why, only a commie would say that
– right? Never mind that only a catatonic could deny
it. The NCC has also noted that "the war on terrorism
has 'sacrificed' principles of 'justice, fairness and
accountability.'" No doubt that commie Phyllis
Schlafly and that
left-wing radical Bob Barr would agree. Another
crime of the NCC is that it challenges the radical increase
in military spending, which puts it in the same league
as the Cato Institute, the Democratic congressional
caucus, and even the "cheap hawk" faction
of the GOP. Off with their heads!
Kincaid's tiresome tirade notes my efforts
to transform the leadership of the antiwar movement,
and makes this prediction:
"Raimondo will fail. He won't
succeed because the communists are hard workers and
started this movement. Their alliance with radical American
Muslims is strong, firm, impressive and obviously dangerous."
Fortunately,
the transformation of the antiwar movement doesn't depend
on little old me. If it did, we'd really be in
trouble. It isn't me who is driving the movement's exponential
growth, broadening it beyond the dubious categories
of "left" and "right" – it
is the President of the United States, who has embarked
on a crazed course for war no matter how many times
the Iraqis try to surrender. What is driving this transformation
is that decent people, the world over, no matter what
their politics, aren't fooled by the crude propaganda
coming out of this administration: our friends and allies
abroad, Democrats and Republicans at home, all want
to avoid a catastrophe in the Middle East. Antiwar sentiment
goes way beyond the organized antiwar movement, and
that is what has the War Party tossing and turning
at night….
"Another
problem for Raimondo is that there's just not that many
right-wing opponents of the war willing to overlook
the crazies, kooks and hate-America zealots. I don't
know how many libertarians and anti-war 'conservatives'
marched in San Francisco, but I saw less than ten identified
as such who were at the Washington event."
How the heck does Kincaid know what
the politics of the tens of thousands of antiwar protestors
are? Is he a mind-reader? So he went around photographing
the banners of each and every obscure leftist outfit
that showed up on January 18 – big friggin' deal. And,
speaking of kooks….
When I saw this article and looked at
the byline, I remembered where I had heard Kincaid's
name before: he interviewed me on his radio program
during the Kosovo war, a war he opposed. I remember
the interview because it was so ... weird. Kincaid kept
talking about "the Insiders" (it sounded
like he was capitalizing it...) and, finally, after
the third or fourth reference to a mysterious "cabal"
that was supposedly behind the Kosovo war, I asked him
what the heck he was talking about. I can't recall his
exact words, but it was clear, from what he said, that
he meant A Certain Ethnic Group – he was trying to get
me to agree that the Jews were behind the "globalist
conspiracy" to drag us into war! I don't remember
his exact words, but that was the definite implication
of his remarks. My reaction was pure revulsion. I thought,
for a moment, that I should just hang up the phone,
and cut his hate-fest short. But that would've been
rude, so, instead, I told him I thought he was full
of baloney, and the interview soon came to a merciful
end.
You want pro-war kooks? You want real
haters? Here's
the "Justin Raimondo Watch" page of the Jewish
Defense League website. The JDL is a
terrorist organization famous for its bombings as
well as ordinary street thuggery: their most recent
terrorist escapade involved a plot by their nutball
leader and an accomplice to bomb
a southern California mosque and the office of Congressman
Darrell Issa. JDL leader Irv
Rubin committed suicide in jail: his
accomplice has pled guilty. Take a good look at
the filth peddled by these people. Not to mention the
rich fantasy life they seem to enjoy, as evidenced by
their wholly fictional portrayal of the most mundane
details of my life.
Oh,
I almost forgot to mention Richard Poe's curious
piece, accusing me, in effect, of sedition. The
target of his ire is a recent column, entitled "Listen
Up, Soldier," that, according to Poe amounts
to "reckless incitement" of the military against
Bush's rush to war. And this isn't the first time I've
been guilty of a crime punishable, by 20 years in prison
and a $10,000
fine: he reminds readers that, during the fracas over
the Florida vote count, I "urged soldiers to come
out of their barracks," and, presumably, take the
White House. The truth is that I did no such thing,
either then or now. What I wrote, when the Democrats
were disqualifying three out of four military ballots
on technicalities, was this:
"Should the military just shut
up and take it? Clearly, the answer must be an emphatic
no. Soldiers are citizens, too, and if they fail in
that aspect of their duties then they have failed the
test of their vocation. At this crucial moment in our
history, a turning point – and not for the better –
Americans in uniform could play a key role and an entirely
legitimate and constitutional one, merely by exercising
their First Amendment right to free speech."
And
that is it. No tanks in the streets, no Seven
Days in May: just soldiers exercising their
God-given right to free speech. U.S. soldiers are American
citizens: they aren't slaves. They have the right to
participate in the democratic process, and, most specifically,
to vote. They also have the right to speak out on the
issues of the day, especially those that involve their
own lives: this is guaranteed by the Constitution, a
document that has been over-ridden, in many respects,
but not completely abolished. In "Listen Up, Soldier,"
I did directly address U.S. military personnel, urging
them to read the comments
of General Norman Schwarzkopf, General
Anthony Zinni, and other high-ranking officers critical
of our warmongering chicken-hawks.
If referring my readers to this
material is sedition, then so are the opinions of
Schwarzkopf, Zinni, et al. Why not accuse them, too?
I knew, while I was writing that column,
that somebody would charge me with "sedition."
Too bad it was only Richard Poe, the former
editor of David Horowitz's Frontpage website, and
not the Attorney General of the United States.
C'mon, you guys: make my day!
–
Justin Raimondo
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