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Historian here. "Neoconservatism" (and its variants) isn't an anti-Semitic term. Not only has it been applied to people of other faiths (hello DPM!), many neocons have self-identified. Trying to spin it as bigotry or slander is a dodge, and even many conservatives have said so. https://t.co/wZs2tnm8a6
Josh Mound (@JoshuaMound) February 14, 2019
Harsh criticisms of neoconservatism have become so mainstream that its defenders like Boot and Center for American Progress think tankette Kelly Magsamen have been trying to resurrect the old argument that the label is antisemitic, which is absurd since plenty of neocons aren't Jewish and many neocons label themselves as such. Russophobic McCarthyism is also being used to kill anti-neocon sentiment, naturally, with everyone from Tulsi Gabbard to Bernie Sanders subreddits now being smeared by the mainstream media as Russian plants simply for objecting to the neoconservative military interventionism of the unipolar empire.
And it is of course a good thing that hatred of neocons is re-entering mainstream consciousness. You can trace a straight line from the endless US military expansionism we've been seeing since 9/11 back to the rise of neoconservatism, so paying attention to this dynamic is important for diagnosing and curing the disease. But it's just the beginning, and it's going to have to go a lot further before we get healthy.
As with damn near everything else, partisan feuding masks the big picture on this issue in a way that causes people to miss the forest for the trees. Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul may indeed be useful in calling out the Never Trump neocons like Boot and Kristol, as well as opposing escalations against Russia and Syria, but good luck getting them to say anything about virulent PNAC neocons like Elliott Abrams and John Bolton or the longstanding neoconservative agendas they are advancing against Venezuela and Iran within the Trump administration. Some Democrats may oppose Trump's warmongering against Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, and maybe even Syria, but good luck getting them to oppose sanctions and senseless cold war escalations which advance neocon agendas against Russia.
Most importantly, what will need to happen to truly strike the head of the beast is to see that the unipolar globalist imperialism of the neocons is already fully in the bloodstream. It isn't just limited to the people who helped drive the agendas of Project for a New American Century in the wake of 9/11 anymore, it's being sold to everyone as the status quo worldview by MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the New York Times. The idea that it's fine and normal for America and its tight network of allies to use any force necessary to ensure world dominance and anyone who says otherwise is a Russian agent has been hammered into mainstream consciousness over the last two years, and it's going to take a lot of work to extract it. But it is only by rolling back the consent for unipolarist interventionism that we can ever hope to purge the toxic influence of neoconservatism and the warmongering that it has been shaped to facilitate.
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