Posted on 08/10/2002 4:48:50 PM PDT by deviant
A great book on the absurdities of the French left intelligentsia is, "Past Imperfect, " by Tony Judt. Here's Justin, on the ex-LaRoucheite!
As I pointed out in my last column, this "advisory board," chaired by ultra-hawk Richard Perle, is a redoubt of the War Party, and it was Perle who invited Rand Corporation analyst Laurent Murawiec to give the Power Point presentation that wowed Washington and ruffled already rocky relations with Riyadh. Now we learn more about this controversial performance, and also about the performer, from Jack Shafer of Slate, who reveals that Murawiec is a "defector" from the LaRouche cult.
According to Shafer, the briefing started out by lamenting the Muslim world's war on modernity, a pretty standard line:
"But then Murawiec lights out for the extreme foreign policy territory, recommending that we threaten Medina and Mecca, home to Islam's most holy places, if they don't see it our way. Ultimately, he champions a takeover of Saudi Arabia. The last slide in the deck, titled 'Grand strategy for the Middle East,' abandons the outrageous for the incomprehensible. It reads:
"' Iraq is the tactical pivot
Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot
Egypt the prize.'"
In its exalted megalomania, its sheer world-conquering scope, there is, indeed, as Shafer avers, a Strangelovian lilt to this rhetoric. There is also something distinctly kooky about it: that sort of Napoleonic grandiosity is usually confined to insane asylums, and the outer fringes of the political spectrum. While we have no knowledge of Murawiec's confinement in the former, certainly he did some time in the latter as the "European Economics Editor" of the Executive Intelligence Review, the LaRouchian mouthpiece. Shafer dug this tidbit out of the Financial Times, which innocently and no doubt unknowingly noted the LaRouche connection in an author's bio at the end of a piece by Murawiec in the January 23, 1985 edition.
For those not familiar with the LaRouche ethos, or the history of his eclectic cult, I shall simply refer you to this, which gives as good an account as any. Suffice to say here that it is the LaRouchians' style, more than the rather arcane content of their often-incomprehensible ideology, that has labeled them the archetypal nutballs of a political bent. In the LaRouchian worldview, LaRouche is considered a world-historic figure, a beloved sage who travels around the globe dispensing advice to heads of state and is received, wherever he goes, as a kind of world-saving prophet. The very titles of his articles are commands to be obeyed: "What Argentina Must Do Now," "LaRouche Advises Democrats on What They Must Do," and "LaRouche Issues a Blunt Warning" are characteristic of this exhortatory style. Only he can save the world from the Conspiracy, which, according to LaRouche and his followers, is somehow vaguely connected to the Queen of England and the old Venetian families known as the "Black Guelphs" – or some such nonsense.
At any rate, it is not hard to hear the echo of LaRouchian conspiracism in Murawiec's "kernel of evil" thesis, now being touted by the clueless Instapundit and the National Review gang as a kind of manifesto. Once again, it is an evil royal family at the root of all the world's problems: the House of Windsor, in Murawiec's new delusionary system, has been replaced by the House of Saud.
The details are changed, but the structure of the conspiracy theory is fully intact, as is the paranoid style that targets the Saudis as the 'kernel of evil" that is "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to footsoldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." LaRouche also speaks of a "kernel" of evil, "the kernel of the international oligarchy," as he puts it, the "London-centered" conspirators who really run the Terrorist International. What's behind "The New International Terrorism," according to LaRouche, is a vast network of Muslim "mercenaries," the "keystone-element within a new international terrorism, which reaches westward across Eurasia, from Japan, coordinated through a nest of terrorist-group command-centers in London, into the Americas, from Canada down to the tip of South America." In one demonology, it is London, in the other, it is Riyadh, but it's the same method – and the same madness.
It isn't clear when Murawiec broke with the LaRouchies. Shafer notes that he moved on up to the New York Post's "Outlook" section in 1999, and this year his byline has appeared twice in The National Interest, the neocon journal of foreign affairs. Murawiec's defection was noted in a 1997 piece by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and by LaRouche himself, who described him as
"A real-life 'Beetlebaum' of the legendary mythical horse- race, and a hand-me-down political carcass, currently in the possession of institutions of a peculiar odor."
I'm not too clear on the "mythical horse-race" stuff – say what? – but there is a certain "hand-me-down" quality to Murawiec's monomania, reminiscent of that legendary leopard who merely changed his spots. At the end of his Slate piece, Shafer zings Perle:
"Now that Murawiec has assumed such a vocal place in the policy debate, the man who gave him the lectern owes us the complete backstory. Over to you, Richard Perle."
I would agree that Perle has some 'splaining to do. But Murawiec's political odyssey, from LaRouchian to neoconservative, is not so hard to fathom. Aside from parallel conspiracy theories, there is, in both, the same world-saving, world-conquering grandiosity that is the hallmark of all political megalomaniacs, whether on the fringes or close to the center of power. Great minds think alike….
If Big Oil and its neoconservative auxiliary are desperate for a pretext to seize oil and gas reserves they cannot otherwise gain access to, then they are going to have to do a lot better than the second-hand conspiracy theories of not-quite- deprogrammed ex-cultists. Speaking of which….
It's interesting to note a peculiar pattern that seems to be emerging: many of the biggest warmongers, in the post 9/11 era, are ex-nutballs of one sort or another who went "straight" – and veered off into a more lucrative variety of extremism. Murawiec is merely the latest case. Think of David Horowitz, the ex-leftist cheerleader for the Black Panthers who now goes around lecturing blacks on their alleged "racism" and demanding all-out war on the Arab world. Think of Stephen Schwartz, the Weekly Standard's "expert" on Wahabism, who gave up the fringe politics of left-anarcho-Trotksyism to become a major theoretician of the Riyadh-as-"kernel of evil" school. Now we have a former cadre of the LaRouche organization – who apparently stayed in the group long after it had evolved from a typical "commune" of New Left Marxoids into a full-fledged loony bin – solemnly addressing an official Pentagon committee on the eve of a fateful war.
There's a lesson in there, somewhere….
(Excerpt) Read more at antiwar.com ...
ummm, no there isn't.
I honestly tried to read the article and understand SOMETHING. But, other than the "Big Oil" reference, the entire screed might as well be written in Swahili.
I was once commended by Raimondo for actually commenting on an article he wrote, instead of calling names....
....sorry Justin, not this time, there ain't nothing there. (no comment on the double neg.)
Too bad, it was the best part of the article.
He seems to be attracted to strongmen.
The slide show gave a good argument for bringing down the House of Saud and replacing them with the Hashimites.
The Hashimites also have a historical claim to Iraq as well.
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