But this time the stupid guy* is a NY Times columnist, so it’s blogworthy. Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall, titans of the liberal blogosphere that they are, do a very good job summing up what’s wrong with Brooks’ piece. And Marshall neatly summarizes the problem with, not only Brooks’ op-ed, but a huge proportion of what the conservative media does: “What’s being practiced here isn’t argument. These are rhetorical brickbats meant to squelch argument.”
So I don’t have much to add, other than to note for the record that I was way ahead of the curve in my irrational, blinding hatred of David Brooks. (Some of those are blog comments, and so you have to scroll down to find them. Probably not worth your time, but I believe in footnoting.) Though the antic muse beat me to it.
Oh, and anyone who compares me to Donald Luskin is so banned. (Okay, maybe not. But do you really want to find out?)
*”dishonest hackish guy” would be more accurate but it isn’t as good a headline.
Where’s the hackery in this column? Brooks’ main point is that Bush’s foreign policy hasn’t been “captured” by neocons and that to say so is a gross exaggeration that borders on conspiracy-mongering. Contra what Drum rights, Brooks never says neoconservatism doesn’t exist. So where’s the hackery? Is it the fact that Brooks points out that “a subset” among critics of neoconservatism are anti-Semitic?
Katherine, you probably have the good sense to stay away from fora where neocons are hit with anti-Semitic slurs and dual-loyalty charges, but on paleoconservative/anarcho-libertarian sites, neocon IS shorthand for Jew. On Islamist and far, far left sites (IndyMedia), neocon IS shorthand for Jew. And in some foreign press outlets, neocon IS shorthand for Jew. Most liberals disagree with neoconservatism for reasons other than the Jewish background of certain neocons, but just because you’re principled enough to attack neocons based on policies doesn’t mean that others aren’t attacking them based on their race.
Most liberals disagree with neoconservatism for reasons other than the Jewish background of certain neocons, but just because you’re principled enough to attack neocons based on policies doesn’t mean that others aren’t attacking them based on their race.
There is undoubtedly some truth to this–I wouldn’t know, as this is the first attempt I’ve ever seen to equate neoconservatism to Jewry, other than acknowledging that some of them (like Perle) /are/ Jews and have a hawkish Israel policy–but it’s beside the point. The hackery in this piece is that Brooks doesn’t attempt to make any such distinction. He doesn’t acknowledge that criticism of neocons can exist without anti-Semitism. Instead, he attempts to paint all critics of neoconservatism with the same broad brush that he claims they are using to paint the neocons.
When Brooks makes this claim:
In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for “conservative” and neo is short for “Jewish”) travel in widely different circles and don’t actually have much contact with one another.
He is pointedly excluding the possibility that “neocon” can mean anything other than “conservative Jew”. While I’m sure there do exist some forums as you’ve described, where this misconception exists, Brooks sets up a false equivalency based on linguistic dishonesty. In the term “neo-conservatism”, neo- carries no meaning more cryptographic than the simple Greek prefix: new. It is a new splinter group of conservatism.
We really shouldn’t have to explain this stuff.
Another great and recent Brooks move. Complaining re lack of civility in political discourse. Then, a couple weeks later, suggesting that the Dems weren’t being, well, uncivil enough when it came to the threat posed by Howard Dean.
Oh, and Matt, the risible thesis Brooks is shoveling is that the neo-cons have no influence in the admin., not that they don’t exist as a group. And the rhetorical tricks he uses to make the point — along with the anti-semitism trap — are as pertinent here as the thesis itself.
Matt, certain idiots may incorrectly use the term “neo-con” as shorthand for “Jews.” That fact, however, does not excuse David Brooks from doing the exact same thing in a game of reverse-gotcha. If it’s idiotic to take the position that all neo-cons are Jews, then it’s equally idiotic to imply (as Brooks does) that everyone who’s anti-neocon is anti-Semetic, or should be suspected of being so.
I tend to think that Brook’s idiocy was accidental, and don’t share Katherine‘s loathing of the man. But she (and Josh Marshall, and Kevin Drum) are right to call him on it.
Catsy, condescend all you want, but there’s no shortage of “neocon=Jew” material out there on the far left and far right. In fact, anti-Semitic attacks on “neocons” began the first time “neoconservatism” became a topic of political debate in Washington — during the war between paleocons and mainstream Republicans over the appointment of Bill Bennett instead of the Confederacy-friendly Mel Bradford for the position of NEH chair during the Reagan administration. I trust that you agree that anti-Semitism is not a weapon the far right is afraid of wielding, and anti-Semitism went flying after Bradford was passed over.
The far-right conservatives who were bitter about Bennett’s nomination lashed out at the “neoconservatives,” Jewish “infiltrators” within the Republican Party who were “perverting conservatism” with their love of the Communist “Martin Luther King.” This is their actual rhetoric from Southern Partisan and other crypto-Confederate rags in the 1980s. It continues to be their rhetoric today when spitting on the Republican Party, and it spills over into the work of anarcho-libertarians like the folks on LewRockwell.com.
A decade after Bradford, during the first Gulf War, the far right and their voice in the press, Pat Buchanan, attacked “neoconservatives” who formed “Israel’s amen corner” in Washington and “led the nation into war.” Today, Buchanan and his intellectual heirs, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com and Mickey Rivero of WhatReallyHappened.com, continue to promote dual-loyalty theories about “neoconservatives,” even going so far to suggest (or link to) theories that “neoconservatives” engineered 9/11 with Israel to give them a trigger to carry through on dreams of empire.
If Brooks’ column was the first you heard of “neocon” as a shorthand for “Jew,” you haven’t been listening.
Von, I read Brooks as bristling against the caricature of “all-controlling” neoconservatism offered by administration critics. The insistence that a small number of “neocons” are directing all aspects of American foreign policy, the use of the phrase “neocon cabal,” the obsession with PNAC — all of these smell like repackaged anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The administration follows more than one current of foreign policy, and critics should at least admit that fact rather than suggesting otherwise.
Catsy, condescend all you want
Wherein lay the condescension? The only thing I can see that could even vaguely be construed as such was the last line about needing to explain this.
If Brooks’ column was the first you heard of “neocon” as a shorthand for “Jew,” you haven’t been listening.
Correction: I haven’t been listening to the same sources you have. I don’t make a habit of listening to Pat Buchanan–or, for that matter, any other pundit who regularly makes blatantly anti-Semitic comments, left or right. Excuse me if that paints me as naive, but it’s not a level of discourse I find appealing to read, even for reasons as legitimate as “keeping up with the enemy”.
Matthew, there are those who refer to the “liberal media” as the “Jew-run liberal media”, particularly on the far right, and have for decades.
Does that invalidate the current unending stream of liberal media accusations? Am I allowed to take a Brooksian approach and declare that “liberal media” always means “Jew-run liberal media”?
I suppose it’s completely off-topic to point out that neocons are, by definition, liberals who have become conservative.
But then you could point out in return that a good half-decade of incorrect usage has rendered the formal definition obsolete. Hey, if you want to continue doing it wrong, who am I to stop you?