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INVESTIGATION

Full Marx for George Bush

John Laughland

Saturday, 5th November 2005

The President of the United States is not a communist, says John Laughland, but his belief in a global democratic revolution is inspired by Marxist thinking

The same goes for numerous leading lights in the neoconservative movement. In 1996 Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the leading ideologues of the war on terror, coined the phrase ‘global democratic revolution’ — in the subtitle of a book in which he attacked Bill Clinton for being a ‘counter-revolutionary’. The book’s title, Freedom Betrayed, is an obvious allusion to Trostky’s own 1937 account of his break with Stalin, The Revolution Betrayed. Another leading neocon, David Horowitz, himself a former communist, published The Art of Political War and Other Radical Pursuits in 2000: the book was given a warm write-up by Karl Rove, George Bush’s chief of staff, as ‘a perfect pocket guide to winning on the political battlefield from an experienced warrior’ even though Horowitz quotes Lenin approvingly in it: ‘You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can only do it by following Lenin’s injunction: “In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent’s argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.”’ In the same vein Eric Hobsbawm, the veteran Marxist historian, wrote at the end of June that ‘At least one passionate ex-Marxist supporter of Bush has told me, only half in jest: “After all, this is the only chance of supporting world revolution that looks like coming my way.”’

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The law applies to Damian Green, too

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle is reluctant to join the journalistic herd in its unqualified outrage at the Tory MP’s arrest. But it is certainly time to put the police under the microscope

After Baby P: the crisis in child foster care

Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield talks to a courageous woman who blew the whistle on the deep systemic failures in the foster care service — and whose only reward was to be hounded and vilified

The global force behind Mumbai’s agony is in our midst

Stephen Schwartz

Stephen Schwartz and Irfan Al-Alawi say that LET — the Army of the Righteous — is a worldwide Islamist organisation which is well-established in Britain. The Mumbai atrocities are further proof that the march of Islamic extremism is the central fact of our time

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Lloyd Evans

Lloyd Evans finds that Bernard-Henri Lévy is not the ageing French dandy of caricature but a serious intellectual with views on everything from Barack Obama to the Muslim veil

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Aidan Hartley

Aidan Hartley says that Somali piracy is very well-organised and efficient and is opposed publicly only by militant Muslims — who may yet seize power in Mogadishu

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

Rod Liddle

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

A good election to lose

Michael Steinberger

Michael Steinberger says a hefty defeat might be the best result for the Republicans

Here’s how McCain can beat Obama to the White House

Reihan Salam

The acclaimed young Republican writer, Reihan Salam, says that McCain can win the presidency if he appeals relentlessly to the non-college-educated white middle class, pursues family-friendly tax reform and stands for global peace through American strength

Russia’s aggression in Georgia is a portent of perils to come

Philip Bobbitt

Philip Bobbitt says that the crisis reflects Russia’s determination to remain an old-fashioned nation state, dominating its region. Intellectual imagination will be needed to thwart that ambition: a recognition that the post-Cold War world needs new global institutions