[Salon] The Straussian In A Suit Would Like You To Wake Up (feat. Michael Anton) - American Moment



One last point on this particular subject of “Straussianiam.” A term I only use because “Traditional Conservatives” so strenuously argue they oppose it ideologically, even though, in fact, there’s no “space between the two” as to “political theory.” With both, the so-called "Traditional Conservatism” created by the CIA officers who founded the "Conservative Movement" (Ideological Conservatism) as an Influence Operation, and “Straussianism,” having the same “genealogical origin,” and objective, in that ideology Leo Strauss brought with him from Germany; Carl Schmitt’s variety of fascism. Which is readily visible when the two are read comparatively, as it is when Strauss’s American devotees are read with Schmitt, or Yoram Hazony (see below), with all having the same hostility to even just the “idea” of “individual rights.” And with all sharing the same hostility to “Enlightenment Liberalism,” as Joseph Goebbels did (read Yoram Hazony for his equally hostility to Enlightenment Liberalism,” in the attached file). Which I’m a defender of, in the actual Western tradition, which for a brief time, meant “conservatism,” as is ‘conserving the “best of the Western Tradition, like Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, and the U.S. Bill of Rights! Before the Conservative Movement misappropriated the name, to apply it to their variety of an incipient fascism.  

Both Leo Strauss, and the “Conservative Movement” invented by the PsyWar specialists at National Review, shared the same objective, which was to ideologically build support for the US Military Industrial Complex and American Militarism. Meaning an American “Ideology of Offensive War and Aggression," which is self-evident to anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think, and can read, which fellow NR editor Frank S. Meyer recognized, approvingly. 

As that minuscule, handful, of “conservative opponents” of so-called Straussianism dissipated so quickly (in a heartbeat, if not quicker) as soon as Trump hinted of his candidacy, it was in large measure due to his support from the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College. With the latter now partnered with The American Conservative in (mis)education projects, particularly with their extreme-right wing Constitutional  Theory, shared and taught with Catholic University of America in their joint “Constitutional Fellows Program. So there’s no longer the “need” for concealing from anyone that Traditional Conservatives, Straussians, Schmittians, are all now under the “Big Tent of Straussianism/Schmittianism, as the “New Right,” as can be seen with Anton.

With apologies but I’m no longer a “Conservative” so haven’t stupefied myself so much that I can’t see that, nor do I oppose the actual U.S. Constitution. Unlike the “New American Right,” as here, or “New Right,” as TAC and the Quincy Institute refers approvingly to it. 

The fact that legitimate issues are occasionally raised does not conceal the “actual political theory” of these right-wing fanatics. As what is actual revealed is the “true nature” of these “Conservative Revolutionaries,” like the German fascists of the same name.  "Conservatives” following in the ideological path of Carl Schmitt. But that requires some understanding of “fascist theory” perhaps to understand that, though it is reducible to one "doctrine,” the "Friend/Enemy Distinction” of Carl Schmitt. With that “Enemy” varying only by historical circumstances. 

Such that in 1950s USA, it was “communists” that were the "Enemy,”  but even more for the Conservative Movement’s theorists, it was the “Liberals,” like Eisenhower, who were the “Main Enemy!”

In this century for Conservatives, it was first, Muslims, then, even before the CIA coup in Ukraine in 2014, and still today, it was the Russians, and simultaneously, the Chinese and Iranians. With Trump’s election, Muslims and Muslim immigrants continued as the “Enemy, and now immigrants in general (apart from legitimate disagreements over policy) are the Enemy. But Trump identified the “Enemy even more specifically with completing the “high-tech weaponry encirclement” (“Infantry,” or even “Armor,” isn’t necessary to fight today’s wars) of Russia and China, while engaged in kinetic war on Iran, in league with Israel. 

But Democrat Party Hawks, who constitute the equivalent of Goldwaterites, are not to be left out of this “New Right,” as they’re lined up “shoulder to shoulder” with the Republicans against the “Main Enemy,” Russia, China, and Iran. And therefore, constructively, with the the self-declared Straussian, Michael Anton, and of Goldwaterism!

With not enough “shame” left in the war fevered US for anyone to even attempt to conceal this open adoption of fascist ideas. Anton’s “ideas” of saving “America from the brink,” is a suicide pact, like the “regimes” of Germany, Italy, and Japan, once entered into with their populations in the 1930s! 

With my sole point being, don’t you Traditional Conservatives and New Rightists continue to lie that “Straussianism” is only associated with Neoconservatism, and has nothing to do with you, or with Trump/Desantis. That lie has been fully revealed and is all out in the open now, indisputably. With all of the aforegoing “Rightists,” basically, “One,” having only the degree of differences that Mussolini might have had with fellow fascists.  

One sees how that is with the National Conservative “theorist” Yoram Hazony, so beloved here. With me having said long ago that it seemed Hazony, with his National Conservative Movement, was duplicating the original right-wing Influence Operation in post-WW II USA, now as a Mossad operation or other Israeli “PsyWar” group. But here are some pages from Hazony’s book on Conservatism, in the finest tradition of right-wing revisionism, as one would expect nothing less of from Regnery Publishing, like Bradley Birxer’s on Andrew Jackson (in my opinion :-)

Attachment: Pages from Part 1-4 compressed.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document


"These descriptions of a powerful executive-one characterized by vigor and expedition, decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch-are, as we know, unappealing to many Americans today, who hear in them premonitions of authoritarianism. This is because the powers of the American president in the Constitution of 1787 were modeled on those of the British king, and Jefferson and his. allies never tired of accusing the Federalist Party of being monarchists. ("Their sight must be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns and coronets:, Jeffer­son wrote to Madison concerning Washington's administration in 1794).

. . . 
"On this point, the Federalists saw things clearly: The preceding decade under a feeble executive-like the anarchic de­cades of the Wars of the Roses that preceded the rise of the Tudors in England-had revealed that a human society always stands at the edge of a precipice. And while a disciplined people may benefit from the lifting of certain constraints that have been imposed upon them, at the time of the next great threat they will invariably cry out for the energies of the executive to be unleashed in order to restore their safety, justice, and freedom. In providing their presi­dent with powers comparable to that of a British king, the Federal­ists made it possible for the United States to prepare for such threats and to meet them successfully, in this way proceeding as a strong, stable, and cohesive nation.”

I’m not going to break it down as every paragraph is so filled with misinformation/disinformation and outright lies, in my opinion, and by the standards of historical/legal scholarship, that it takes an equivalent sized book to list them all. Especially given the proven inability of Conservatives to comprehend actual historical facts, versus their own fabricated myths, meaning no disrespect. But I will admit that after researching the 1950’s “Conservative Movement,” and the "National Conservative Movement,” and having seen the wild enthusiasm shown here for Hazony, Meloni, Netanyahu and his co-conspirators Trump/DeSantis,and the rest of American/Israeli “Conservatives,” that I have become so filled with revulsion, that I only feel disgust and contempt for anyone who embraces there “ideas,” so similar to the Japanese Fascist war criminals who victimized my father with their “torture” and refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions and International Law, jus like the current generation’s successor to their ideology. As memorialized, in a positive way, in Andrew Bacevich’s book on Conservatism where he presented the hyper-militaristic ideas of all the people I’ve mentioned, in celebration of them in his panegyric to Militarism, I mean, Conservatism.

The Straussian In A Suit Would Like You To Wake Up (feat. Michael Anton)

In Today's "Moment of Truth," Saurabh sits down with Michael Anton, author of "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return," to discuss the death of California, why he supported Trump, what a "regime" is, where the paleoconservatives were right, and what can be done to save America from the brink.

Enjoy on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Rumble.

Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration. In 2016, under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, he wrote The Flight 93 Election, an influential essay in support of Donald Trump’s campaign which was subsequently credited by various media as the one that made the argument that got the President elected.

A senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a professor at Hillsdale College, a careful student of Leo Strauss by way of tutor Harry V. Jaffa as well as a dedicated scholar of Niccolò Macchiavelli, Anton is considered by many as the leading thinker of the ‘New American Right‘. Because of his willingness to engage with thinkers outside of the Overton window and usually ignored by mainstream conservatives, he’s also one of the most appreciated figures by the online dissident Right.



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