I know the various sayings: politics makes strange bedfellows, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and yadda, yadda.
But the John Birch Society is a crackpot group of rightwing promoters of hate and bigotry.
So I wasn't thrilled to see at Antiwar.com an article highlighted from a Bircher journal, The New American. The "About" Web page for that journal explains:
In addition to political topics, The New American also publishes articles about economics (from a free-enterprise perspective of course!), culture, and history. It is published by American Opinion Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of The John Birch Society.
I've posted before about how Antiwar.com is a "libertarian" site with philosophical affinities to the neo-Confederate LewRockwell.com crew.
I've cited articles on numerous occasions from Antiwar.com, and I expect to continue to do so. The same page that featured the Bircher article link also links to a number of current news articles on war-related matters and to articles by Norman Solomon, Ted Rall and Tom Engelhardt, none of whom are close to the Birchers' worldview. The Antiwar Radio feature there has some very impressive guests, including Juan Cole, Wesley Clark, Chalmers Johnson, Gareth Porter, Ray McGovern, Andrew Bacevich and others who are not associated with some crackpot far-right ideology.
So I encourage people to use Antiwar.com for the resources it provides, as I will continue to do.
But front-paging the John Birch Society? This makes me really wish that there was a comparable site run by real liberals or Greens or Catholic antiwar activists that was providing this service. Because Antiwar.com is also a site where articles by rightwingers from LewRockwell.com and now the Birchers are presented favorably to new audiences and have an additional route to mainstreaming their far-right ideas.
Antiwar Radio also features the occasional "libertarian" guest, like the following:
William Norman Grigg, publisher of TheRightSource, and author of the blog Pro-Libertate, discusses America’s descent into an authoritarian fascist state, our current system’s similarity to the way things are in China and Cuba (executions, slave labor, new prisons in waiting, etc.), the Prison-Industrial-Complex, the economics of the corporate warfare/police state, its origins in the Civil and Indian wars, the solution of laissez faire, the militarization of domestic police, the American civic religion of force that makes it all possible and the push for a North American Union. (my emphasis)
The "North American Union" is a popular bugaboo right now for the black-helicopter nativist crowd.
Far-right Congressman Ron Paul is a real favorite at Antiwar.com. Scott Horton at Antiwar Radio can't seem to do an interview with anyone lately without making a plug or two for "Dr. Ron Paul" and his wise thoughts. As Dave Neiwert has pointed out, Ron Paul has been notable over the years for his role in helping to mainstream themes from the far-right gutter to the "respectable" bosom of the Republican Party. Despite his being one of the few overtly antiwar Republicans in Congress, I've always been very suspicious of Paul's Presidential candidacy and even of his antiwar position. One of the reasons he gives for opposing the Iraq War is that he says it was authorized by and is being fought on behalf of the United Nations, a perennial bogeyman of the far right. (That anti-UN sentiment is very much mainstream Republicanism now.)
But the UN did not authorize the invasion of Iraq. In a weird, mirror-image kind of way, he's defending the false claims of Bush and Tony Blair in 2003 that their invasion of Iraq was in defense of UN resolutions.
The Bircher article that Antiwar.com front-paged is also lavish with the Ron Paul quotations. Not surprising: the Birchers like his crackpot economic ideas, too.
I know, "it takes all kinds," and all that. Some isolationist and "libertarian" types do sometimes have decent analyses of some aspect of the Iraq War or US foreign policy. But rightwing isolationism, whether it's the Old Right brand or the paleo-conservative or the neo-Confederate or the clean-shaven-lets-legalize-dope libertarian variety, is based on the same kind of nationalism and nativism that Dick Cheney's unilateralism is. No one should kid themselves about where that perspective leads, even if it agrees with the liberal/left position on the Iraq War or some other particular issue.
Politics make strange bedfellows, true. But that doesn't mean we have to let them take the covers.
And you may want to look twice and three times at articles from Antiwar.com by authors you don't immediately recognize when they talk about anything to do with Israel or Jews. The Birchers don't much like them either.
Antiwar.com 10/05/07 promotes the article War With Iran? Who Decides? from a John Birch Society journal
