Justin Raimondo

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article may be deleted soon.
To oppose or discuss a nomination, please go to CZ:Proposed for deletion and follow the instructions.

For the monthly nomination lists, see
Category:Articles for deletion.


This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director and Columnist, AntiWar.com. He is an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, writer for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is a contributing editor for American Conservative (magazine)|The American Conservative, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Ideology

AntiWar.com's Frequently Asked Questions of that site, says the founders of Antiwar.com were active in the Libertarian Party during the 1970s; in 1983, we founded the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee to work as a libertarian caucus within the GOP. Today, we are seeking to challenge the traditional politics of 'Left' and 'Right.'"[1] The domain name was registered in 1995. [2] While some still call him a libertarianism|libertarian, it is clear that he can infuriate some American conservatism|American conservatives, especially those that believe in an interventionist foreign policy. Frontpage Magazine|FrontPage Magazine calls him a neo-Fascist, although he points at what he considers fascist tendencies in the American right.[3] Raimondo, however, has been an active supporter of Patrick Buchanan, a contributor to AntiWar.com, who is widely identified as a paleoconservative.

The FrontPage article gently introduces him as "an amateur demagogue in the libertarian milieu of the San Francisco Bay Area, a political environment where anything goes and nothing matters", and then intensifies.

confused and confusing person, who seeks to be the master of the confusion he creates. Born plain Dennis, he renamed himself Justin...Raimondo unquestionably encompasses many contradictions. Now past 50, he features a photo of himself on his website with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, in a fey (and failed) pose as an homme fatale. He is flamboyantly gay, but promotes himself as a Patrick Buchanan|Buchananite conservative and was in fact Buchanan’s San Francisco campaign spokesman during the “culture war” that other gays took personally, many elections ago. The entire package is deceitful, and it is a calculated deceit. The movement that Raimondo has cobbled out of opponents of the Iraq war, who are drawn into his site, is unabashedly fascist.

Libertarians and objectivism|Objectivists, not infrequently, do make the argument they are not of the Right, when they are not fighting about who is (lower case) right with paleoconservatives and neoconservatives. One Objectivist, Ari Armstrong, criticizes Raimondo's view of Objectivist foreign policy, first for ad hominem argument and then for misinterpretation. Armstrong says "Objectivists believe the neoconservatives pick the wrong wars for the wrong reasons and fight them by the wrong tactics. Both movements are superficially similarly in that both are in some sense "pro-war," but the ways in which they are pro-war are so radically different that further comparison is impossible." In this sense, Raimondo is narrowly correct to suggest that Objectivists are not antiwar. [4] Armstrong suggests that Raimondo is opposed to any use of force outside the continental U.S., although this is not clear in Raimondo's writings.

Editorial goals

In his New Year editorial for 2010, he writes "the prospect of facing yet another year of phony "crises," official fabrications, and Barack Obama|Obama-esque double-talk is daunting, to say the least. My task, as I see it, is to unpack the hyperbole, debunk the hysterics, and give my readers a clear-headed and fact-based analysis of what in the world our rulers are up to. It’s more than a fulltime job, and the holidays provide no respite" [5] Nevertheless, he regularly challenged the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations. He describes his task for the new year as

Lazy "reporters" fail to do their homework – and the War Party smiles. And that’s the reason – right there, in a nutshell – for Antiwar.com. That’s why I write three columns a week, and tirelessly toil in these vineyards: because my readers deserve the truth, or as much of the truth as I can discern. I don’t pretend to be "objective": Antiwar.com definitely has a point of view. However, that doesn’t mean we mold the facts to fit ideological presuppositions: it means we employ the unvarnished facts to advance our goal, which is to challenge the premises of a foreign policy that protects the powerful, victimizes the powerless, and impoverishes the American people materially and morally.

The War Party, in his terms, is not the Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic or Republican Party (United States), but a general characteristic of governance. He was highly critical of John McCain in 2008, saying wisdom does not come with age as he cited a 1983 maiden Senate speech, which, Raimondo writes, could have come from Ron Paul, with whom he often agrees. [6]

Iran

See also: State of Iran
See also: Iranian nuclear program
See also: U.S. policy towards Iran

He believes there is a drive to attack the State of Iran, which shifted emphasis after the report of Iranian work on a weapons-specific component, an initiator, was challenged as a forgery by Philip Giraldi and reported at AntiWar.com. Raimondo wrote that the justification then shifted to Iran's work on placing its nuclear facilities in hardened underground structures, described in a New York Times story,[7] is also an attempt to create a mood that " Every tunnel in Iran is now suspect, a terrain upon which the war propagandist-cum-"reporter" can spread out and build his narrative of impending doom-unless-we-act. These subterranean chambers of nuclear death are conjured out of the boomer generation’s worst nightmares — a generation taught to "duck and cover," cowering beneath their desks waiting for World War III to begin. That this sort of propaganda is aimed at actually starting what would be a third world war is only the beginning of the ironies and absurdities contained in this imaginative narrative, which might be classified in the lexicon of war propaganda as a tall tale." [8]

Yemen

See also: Yemen
See also: U.S. policy towards Yemen
See also: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
In an article on 31 December 2009, he wrote of what he calls the "panty bomber", several different official views of Yemen and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and

The abortive efforts of the "panty-bomber" have inspired the War Party to focus on a new front in our ongoing and seemingly permanent "war on terrorism": Yemen, a godforsaken outpost of medievalism and sun-scorched desert on the northern shores of the Red Sea, is now taking center stage as al-Qaeda’s latest purported stronghold. [9]

He mentioned Joe Lieberman calling for escalation there, saying "Lieberman never met an Islamic nation that he didn’t want to invade and subjugate, but in the case of Yemen, the misdirection such "preemption" would represent for US policy in the region couldn’t be more deceptive. For the real source of irritation to the US, and its Saudi Arabian ally, isn’t al-Qaeda, but Iran." Raimondo refers to Islamic sectarian conflict in Yemen, including between the Sunni Northern-dominated government in Sanaa and the Shi'a Yemen|Houthi movement. He also refers to a secessionist movement in South Yemen, headquartered in Aden. [10]

References

  1. Who We Are, AntiWar.com
  2. Frequently Asked Questions, AntiWar.com
  3. Stephen Schwartz (15 March 2005), Justin Raimondo: An American Neo-Fascist, Frontpage Magazine
  4. Ari Armstrong (13 October 2003), "Raimondo Versus the Objectivists", The Colorado Freedom Report
  5. Justin Raimondo (1 January 2010), "The Road Ahead: Another year of debunking the War Party's lies", AntiWar.com
  6. Justin Raimondo (11 February 2008), "The Madness of John McCain: A militarist suffering from acute narcissism and armed with the Bush Doctrine is not fit to be commander in chief.", American Conservative (magazine)
  7. William J. Broad (6 January 2010), "Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Efforts in Maze of Tunnels", New York Times
  8. Justin Raimondo (7 January 2010), The Case of the Tell-tale Tunnels: Tall Tales from the Times
  9. Justin Raimondo (29 December 2009), [Next Stop: Yemen The Road Ahead]
  10. "Why southern Yemen is pushing for secession: With bleak housing blocks and rusty wrecks for taxis, south Yemen residents pushing for secession say they've been sidelined by the government.", Christian Science Monitor, 15 December 2009