The Controlled Burn of Neo Khan
Press Action
Monday, August 30, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cummings08302004/
By Jordy Cummings
The following piece contains much analytical speculation regarding the Israel scandal, the new stories of Halliburton operating wherever it wants, and other stories that comprise “neocon-gate.” I will attempt to provide a framework, within a Marxian/AntiCapitalist understanding of the larger events, looking at the dilemma between individuation versus collectivization of “blame” and responsibility. I will also look at my own contact with one such member of the neocon network, and attempt to place his background into the broad framework of what I see as an Right Wing International, at odds with Globalization from a different direction.
Are the chickens coming home to roost for the neocons? Justin Raimondo and others think so, but I would not be so sure, not so sure at all. The neocons are but a branch of a larger tree, and whoever is being offered up and investigated, the most that may come out of it is simply the matter being dropped and Colin Powell giving a few mild rebukes to Sharon. It is Beltway infighting to an extent, and one gets the sense that the United States, exhausted of options to perform the duty that the rest of the world needs it to perform—implement some form of ‘67 borders settlement on Israel—is going to do a little exposure here, exposure there, all the while David Frum will cry AntiSemitism, and AIPAC and others may lose some credibility. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and it seems obvious, as has been reported, that CBS’s report of the story actually harmed the investigation. One imagines a few lone principled Fox Mulder types wishing they could tell their wives, journalistic contacts, somebody, anybody, about what is going on…
What was a more important motivation for the Iraq War? Crony profiteering and Oil or the Israel lobby? Intent is not the issue. When one looks deeply at the story, Halliburton working in Iran, the wink-wink, nudge-nudge relationship between Iran and Israel (their public posture remains one of lovers desperately trying to hide their infatuation.) In fact, it is like chicken or egg, this amorphous international right-wing, Pro-Israel, Pro-Berlusconi neoconservative network. It is through the murky international right wing underworld that one finds the squared circle in which there is really no difference between Halliburton and Bechtel or AIPAC and SISMI (the Italian Intelligence Service) and beyond that into what can only be called a right wing international, coordinated in a manner as to render itself invisible, operating on the principle of “Swarm Intelligence.”
Imagine how you find your friends in a crowd of 100,000, like at a large peace rally, sporting event or a rock concert. This is Swarm Intelligence. The modus operandi of this vanguard of capitalism is to maintain capitalist power through a unipolar world, putting them at odds with the more “European/Davos” pack of friendly faced capitalists like J Kerry and Soros. Their goal is to use various tactics—state power in Italy and Israel, both of which harm the “global order”—access to power in the States and England—and to make various threats to other aspects of the aristocracy—through the fascists in Northern Italy and the “greater Israel” Likud—that they don’t seem to actually think they will go through with. Their aim is power, money and hegemony—and like the left, they realize that capitalism is in crisis, unlike the Soros/EU/Paul Martin neoliberal strata that assumes that capitalism can be saved. This group realizes that capitalism depends on force and fraud, and will gladly engage in it without any “coverup.” A hint of this took place after September 11, and afterwards, in which legends from Iran Contra are back, none the more ideologically sinister and fascinating than Michael Ledeen.
A few months back, I started exchanging e-mails with Ledeen, one of the most fascinating figures of modernity. In a piece at Press Action, I called him “Neo Khan.” Now that he doesn’t seem to be interested in continuing a line of communication with me (his e-mails were startlingly ideological, somewhat of a recruitment, and not dissimilar to the writing style of certain Sectarian Left groups—the Spartacists come to mind)—I will reveal his name for all to see. Michael Ledeen, arch-neocon, scary looking dude who told David Horowitz’s Frontpage Magazine that he started out studying Bakunin, while moving away from the left while living in Italy, ostensibly covering it for The New Republic. While in Italy, as reported by everyone from conservative Toronto Sun reporter Eric Margolis to many left-wing “parapolitical” researchers, Ledeen was either initiated into, or became deeply sympathetic to the neo-fascist Masonic lodge P2.
According to David Yallop’s excellent and hard-to-find book In God’s Name, P2 was in many ways an operation of the CIA that took on a life of its own, and was always willing to trade information with numerous countries, the goal being maintaining right-wing power in Italy and elsewhere, even the Vatican. Yes, the Godfather is partially non-fiction. The pro-birth control, socialist pope John Paul I was assassinated, according to Yallop and many Vatican insiders, and John Paul II came to power, soon beatifying the founder of Opus Dei, founded by Franco-ites, and like P2, sort of a right wing Catholic Masonry. Apparently Opus Dei figures prominently in the recent bestseller, The DaVinci Code.
Ledeen seemed to be—as noted, nothing special—far from the reporting of him that portrayed him as a multinational player. Granted e-mail does not deliver much of personality, but close textual reading of his thoughts indicate him to still have a hint of AntiCapitalism from his Bakunin studies. A unique synchronicity as well is that Bakunin’s idea of an amorphous “secret society” and the role of Masonry among the Paris Communards. Could Ledeen have simply been assigned by Langly to use that knowledge to build this network? This doesn’t seem likely. Ledeen seems to be somewhat like an anarchist Shactmanite—so it is no surprise that he uses phrase like “democratic revolution” and seems sincerely to back the Iranian left. There are plenty of contradictions to mine here.
One should assume then that Ledeen thinks like a left activist, but one who uses states like chess pieces, towards his utopia that includes ex-Maoists like Savimibi and the MEK in Iran. The key here—and I hope Michael is reading this—is that he and Franklin and all the other neocons are DUPES, simple workers, neigh proletarians, who are having their idealism used and abused by capitalism. Capitalism will threaten Ledeen, Franklin and even the entire visible neocon network. Capital will even put the squeeze on Israel. In the end, the bosses will still have power, and Ledeen will be further discredited.
It should be clear at this point that in some ways I empathize with the neocons. Jewish or otherwise, I grew up with many people like them, idealistic regarding the romantic notions of Israel and “Democracy” but willing to put both in harms way. In the Jewish community, the notion of Israel and America being separate is unheard of. People are pressured to get powerful jobs and positions that will be “good for the Jews.” At one point in American history, this was an excellent thing, involving Jewish justices like Brandeis being champions of civil liberties. At this point, Jews who want to go into the political life are forced to become ideological servants of capital, even with their own tautological “movement” of neocons and others, or else—like myself and many others—perhaps the majority of American Jews—be scorned as “self hating.” Even with political disagreements with the community, to be called a self-hating Jew is very harsh, like one assumes, being called an “Uncle Tom.”
The neocons are workers, the ideological proletarian prostitutes of the international right wing. As the Jewish Pro-Palestinian former Premier of Austria said to Gore Vidal, “They are the real AntiSemites.” After all, especially in Germany, Italy and Latin America, they break bread with AntiSemites aplenty, fearful that this is the only way to maintain “support for Israel.” Interestingly, Podhoretz and others did not seem displeased when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. My friend Moe, an old Jewish socialist, thinks that this is basically the “Conservative/Orthodox lumpen revenge” against Reform Jews and the Jewish enlightenment (which invloved a negation of Messianism), socialism, Marxism and other Jewish inventions.
Even the founding of Israel had much to do with destroying the character of the Jewish people as cosmopolitans. Leon Uris, the writer of the fraudulent film and book, Exodus was quoted in 1960 by Phillip Roth as saying that he is “sick of these whiny Jews on soapboxes...now we have Israel, we can be fighters.” Much like a man who Amos Oz denies was Ariel Sharon said in 1982, “Enough with the sweetness and light.” Indeed, Zionism has many virulently AntiJewish strains. As an old turn of the century joke goes, “What is a Zionist? A rich Jew who pays poor Jews to go to Palestine.”
So now the system is revealing strain, one is reminded of John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, in which the intelligent yet duped Stasi agent becomes the scapegoat. It is easy to scapegoat Jews, regardless of what their background happens to be. Just as it was easy to scapegoat “The Cubans” in regard to Watergate, and “Arabs” in regard to the Abscam scandal and others. It is even easier to scapegoat a group not actually defined along ethnic lines, like the Neocons. And like Lyndie England, even if they were duped, they were criminals.
But one does not get any sense that this will bring the U.S. any closer to bringing the troops home from Iraq or forcing Israel to implement drastic changes or lose the capital flows upon which its survival depends. In fact, the controlled burn of this story during a slow news period, which may well blow the investigation, is probably the last we’ll hear of it, save some minor shuffling for appearance’s sake, and perhaps a settlement taken down while a dozen more are built. It is a non-story, unless some of its players decide to move to Costa Rica and at the very least write a memoir. Willya, Ledeen?
Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.