Flirting with Fascism
Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right.
...there is at least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey began with a fascination not with Trotskyism, but instead with another famous political movement that grew up in the early decades of the 20th century: fascism. I refer to Michael Ledeen, leading neocon theoretician, expert on Machiavelli, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, regular columnist for National Review—and the principal cheerleader today for an extension of the war on terror to include regime change in Iran.
Ledeen has gained notoriety in recent months for the following paragraph in his latest book, The War Against the Terror Masters. In what reads like a prophetic approval of the policy of chaos now being visited on Iraq, Ledeen wrote,
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.
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...Ledeen criticizes Mussolini precisely for not being revolutionary enough. “He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism.” Ledeen therefore concurs with the fascist intellectual, Camillo Pellizi, who argues—in a book Ledeen calls “a moving and fundamental work”—that Mussolini’s was “a failed revolution.” Pellizzi had hoped that “the new era was to be the era of youthful genius and creativity”: for him, Ledeen says, the fascist state was “a generator of energy and creativity.” The purest ideologues of fascism, in other words, wanted something very similar to that which Ledeen himself wants now, namely a “worldwide mass movement” enabling the peoples of the world, “liberated” by American militarism, to participate in the “greatest experiment in human freedom.”
John Laughland
The American Conservative
Jun30.2003
http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html#
Serving President George W. Bush as US International Affairs Analyst is well-known Zionist Neoconservative Michael Leeden. He is a long-time advocate of a US led regime change in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, for the sake of Israel.
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“Ledeen’s ideas are frequently repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America’s manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq. Now Michael Ledeen is calling for regime change beyond Iraq. In an address entitled “Time to Focus on Iran – The Mother of Modern Terrorism,” for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) on April 30, he declared, “the time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon. Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the Neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned.”
William O. Beeman
William O. Beeman teaches anthropology and directs Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is author of “Language, Status and Power in Iran,” and two forthcoming books: “Double Demons: Cultural Impediments to U.S.-Iranian Understanding,” and “Iraq: State in Search of a Nation.”
http://usa.altermedia.info/index_print.php?p=449
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