Militarists, Drug Warriors, and Heresy-Hunters: The Anti-Ron Paul Axis of "Decency"

Toxic smugness: Google the term "Backpfeifengesicht."

Newt Gingrich, lapsed adulterer, impenitent warmonger, and self-appointed“teacher of civilization,” has excommunicated RonPaul and his supporters from the ranks of human decency. A similar anathema hasbeen pronounced by left-wingheresy hunter David Neiwert -- a former sidekick to the degenerate fraudnamed Morris Dees – and many other self-appointed political “watchdogs.” 

Those banishment decrees condemn Dr. Paul and his supporters forrejecting the fundamental tenet of statism – the belief that officiallysanctioned lethal coercion is the key to social progress. 

"I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside themainstream of virtually every decent American," insisted Gingrich in a CNNinterview. Although Gingrich alluded to the manufactured controversy overdecades-old newsletters published by Dr. Paul that contained supposedlyoffensive material dealing with matters of political correctness, Gingrich’schief complaint – which he has reiterated on many occasions – is that Dr.Paul seeks to end America’s interventionist foreign policy and the God-awful wars that policy entails. 

Gingrich has also dismissed Dr. Paul’s constituency as beinglimited to “peoplewho want to legalize drugs.” Unlike Gingrich – who used government-proscribed canabinoids as ayoung adult – Ron Paul has never used such illicit substances nor condoned their non-medical use, whileunderstanding that no government has the moral right to punish individuals who consume them as they see fit. In 1988 – at a time when, according to Gingrich andother detractors, Paul was peddling racist propaganda – Dr.Paul was denouncing the racist roots of the so-called War on Drugs. Gingrich,on the other hand, has endorsedthe execution of first-time drugoffenders who possess trivial amounts of narcotics. 

For Gingrich and the dominant militarist wing of the GOP, itis rank indecency to oppose the mass murder of foreigners through aggressivewar overseas, and to leave individuals free to choose what mood-altering substances they consume, if any. For “Progressives” of Neiwert’s ilk, it is similarly uncivilized totreat Americans as adults capable of managing their own affairs, and choosing theirown associations, free from the directives of bureaucrats and social engineerswhose mandates are backed by the threat of deadly force.

Neiwert volubly disapproved of foreign war when GeorgeW. Bush was in power, but found other things to complain about once Obamaascended to the Imperial Purple. A deeper problem than such facile and predictablehypocrisy is the insistence – which Neiwert shares with many other figures onthe academic Left -- that war and military occupation are morally superior topeaceful, market-centered action in dealing with institutionalized bigotry. 

“The hand-wringing about whether Paul is a racist or notreally is beside the point,” declaredNeiwert in a typically sanctimonious outpouring. “Labels really becomeinconsequential when the real issue is how their politics would play out on theground if they achieved power.” He denounces a supposed “monstrous bind spot inlibertarianism – namely, their apparent belief that the only element ofAmerican political life capable of depriving Americans of their rights is thegovernment….”

Actually, the core libertarian tenet is the non-aggressionaxiom (an application of the Golden Rule), which recognizes that it is anunalloyed wrong for anybody to commitaggressive violence against the person or property of another human being. Libertariansdo not exempt private actors from that principle. We refuse to exempt thegovernment from it, as well – and this is what is deemed unacceptable by collectivistsof Neiwert’s ilk, who believe that all good things in life begin withofficially sanctioned coercion. 

Consider, for example, Neiwert’s claim that it waslibertarian-leaning conservatives (or their philosophical ancestors) in theaftermath of the War Between the States, who “led the resistance toReconstruction that overturned the verdict of the war….” 

Neiwert’s use of the term “verdict” in this fashionresonates with the view expressed by Thrasymachus,the notorious sophist depicted in Plato’s Republic– namely, that “in all states there is the same principle ofjustice, which is the interest of the government; and as thegovernment must be supposed to have power, the only reasonableconclusion is, that everywhere there is one principle of justice,which is the interest of the stronger.”

In Neiwert’s moral universe, only incorrigibly hatefulpeople question “verdicts” imposed through mass slaughter and propertydestruction.

The “Reconstruction,” it must be remembered, was anundisguised military occupation of the conquered South, in which “wholesalecorruption, intimidation of new voters by the thousands and tens of thousands,political assassinations, riots, [and] revolutions … were the order of the day,”as Dr. Paul Leland Haworth wrote in his1912 study Reconstruction and Union,1865-1912. 

The objective that inspired Reconstructionwas not a vision of civicequality, but rather a desire to destroy the troublesome Southern aristocracy, whichwas seen as an impediment to the designs of the Northern corporatist elite. 

“I was satisfied, and have beenall the time, that the problem of war consists in the awful fact that thepresent class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than inthe conquest of territory,” wrote General Sherman to his wife (in a letterquoted in VictorDavis Hanson’s book The Soul of Battle). In what Hanson approvinglycalled Sherman’s war of “terror” against the South, the General warned thatthose who refused to display a properly submissive posture would be “crushedlike flies on a wheel.” 

"Good Indians," by Sherman's definition, at Wounded Knee.

Sherman, and his fellow stateterrorist Philip Sheridan, would follow the same approach in dealing with thePlains Indians, who also had the temerity to claim a measure of independence fromthe supposed authority of the Central Government. Neiwert, interestingly,addresses that horrifying historican episode in his recent book TheEliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.

In a chapter dealing with "Eliminationism in America,”Neiwert describes some of the atrocities committed against the Plains Indiansby U.S. military forces commanded by  Sheridan and Sherman. He then devotesthe rest of the book to ritual execration of "neo-Confederates." That category must include anybody who understands that war to reclaim and “reconstruct”the South was a bloody prelude to the slaughter of the Plains Indians, theimperial war of conquest in the Philippines, and contemporary campaigns ofhumanitarian bloodshed that have blessed the lives of “people of color” in suchplaces as Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Neiwert, who is consistently oblivious to the implicationsof his own research, also points out that the Ku Klux Klan’s early-20^thCentury revival began when it was embraced by local governments (including somein the Midwest) as "an auxiliary police outfit" to enforce lawsagainst bootlegging. The Klan, of course, is the marquee hate group that hasserved as such a profitable foil for Neiwert’s mentor, Morris Dees – and it’squite possible that group would have disappeared permanently had it not becomea government sub-contractor in the first War on Drugs. 

This brings up a very important point: If Morris Dees andhis comrades at the SPLC are genuinely agitated over institutionalizeddiscrimination, why have they never publicly uttered a syllable of condemnationfor the patently racist “War on Drugs”? 

One possibility is suggested by the fact that thecontemporary SPLC, like the Ku Klux Klan of roughly a century ago, is aquasi-private adjunct to lawenforcement agencies that profit extravagantly from Prohibition. Dees istoo canny and cynical to disturb that lucrative arrangement by protesting aboutthe costs inflicted by Prohibition in terms of the lives and liberties of blackand Hispanic Americans. After all, complaints of that kind are the sort ofthing one hears from indecent, irresponsible extremists like Ron Paul. 

David Neiwert and other self-anointed custodians of socialjustice insist that Ron Paul and his supporters have somehow inherited the sins of bigoted people whodied long before they were born, and prospectively share the guilt of those whomight do horrible things if federal power were curtailed. Meanwhile, thepresident supported by Neiwert and his ideological kin is massacring innocent “people of color” in at leastthree countries, and escalating a domestic Drug War that is rife with racialprofiling and racial disparities in sentencing guidelines.  

 The mass slaughter of brown people abroad, and massincarceration of brown people at home, are a price Neiwert and his ilk arewilling to pay to preserve a system that can regiment societal arrangements totheir liking. In that system, as Neiwert candidly admits, social “verdicts” areimposed and upheld through state-licensed murder, rather than achieved through peacefulcooperation. 

Professor George P. Fletcher of Columbia Law School provides an incisive description of the ideological foundation of that system in his valuable book The Secret Constitution. 

Fletcher, anunabashed Marxist, is difficult to dismiss as a “neo-Confederate,” yet heagrees with the revisionist view that the war waged by the North was not aneffort to "preserve the Union," to emancipate the slaves, or (asLincoln absurdly claimed) a crusade to restore the pre-war constitutionalorder. Instead, that war was intended to consolidate a confederation of statesinto a unitary regime governed by what Fletcher calls a "New ConstitutionalOrder." The founding premise of that New Order is that "the federalgovernment, victorious in warfare, must continue its aggressive interventionin the lives of its citizens." (Emphasis added.) That "aggressive intervention" inescapably involves the threat -- and, increasingly, the exercise -- of deadly force.

Newt Gingrich and David Neiwert -- and the ideological cliques they represent -- disagree about a great deal,but they agree that “decency” in political affairs is measured by one’s willingnessto support State-sanctioned murder as the central organizing principle ofsociety.

 Once again, thank you!

My family and I wish to express our continued gratitude for the generous support so many of you have offered to Pro Libertate. This means more to us that we can adequately express. God bless you all. 

On another matter: I have been curating the news blog for Republic magazine; please pay that site a visit, and -- if it meets with your approval -- spread the word. 

Be sure to check out Republic magazine! 

Dum spiro, pugno!

Steven Pinker's Statist Gospel

Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, who has saidthat he never “outgrew my conversion to atheism at thirteen,” has written atheodicy – a tract intended to validate the redemptive power of the LeviathanState. In his new book The Better Angelsof Our Nature, Pinkerinsists that humanity has “evolved to become less violent” through the ministryof elites who employ the State to evangelize on behalf of what he calls “enlightenmenthumanism.” 

According to Pinker, since the emergence of the modern secular state in the 18th century there has been a dramatic decline in primitive expressions ofaggressive violence. People who live in contemporary developed societies “no longer have to worry about abduction into sexualslavery; divinely commanded genocide; lethal circuses and tournaments;punishment on the cross, rack, wheel, stake, or strappado for holding unpopularbeliefs; decapitation for not bearing a son; disembowelment for having dated aroyal; pistol duels to defend their honor … or the prospect of a nuclear world warthat would put an end to civilization or to human life itself,” Pinker asserts. 

The precipitous decline in private violence,which Pinker heralds as “the most important thing that has ever happened in humanhistory,” is a triumph of the “social contract,” an arrangement in which political government asserts a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force. By over-awingthose inclined toward individual acts of violence, the State supposedly suppresses“demonic” impulses – such as greed and sadism – while emancipating the “betterangels of our nature” – empathy, self-discipline, and peaceful cooperation.

"Oh Divine State, protect us from the unenlightened...."

 As is the case with most religious doctrines, Pinker’stheology of the divine State is built on a paradox – in this case the idea thatthe human tendency toward violence can be eradicated through the scientificapplication of the same by enlightened people who have supposedly transcendedsuch primitive impulses. 

Given that Pinker is one of the leading exponents ofthe “box with wires” view of the human brain, there is also a rich vein ofirony in Pinker’s unabashed use of the terms “demons” and “angels” indescribing a conflict over competing visions of morality. 

In an interview given more than a decade ago, Pinker describedhuman beings as “nothing more than a collection of ricocheting molecules in thehead.” Like others who subscribe to that view, Pinker has yet to submit a schematic explaining how morality is produced through molecular reactions.And like theologians from other traditions, Pinker is content to leave such mattersundisturbed in the unfathomable depths of mystery. This would be a perfectlyacceptable arrangement – were it not for the fact that Pinker, like fundamentalists from other traditions, embraces the use of sanctified coercion as a meansof purifying those less enlightened than he.

As a child, Pinker, says, he thought as a child, embracinganarchism at about the same time he converted to atheism. But as an adult, hehas put away childish things: “I was a Rousseauan then; now I’m a Hobbesian.”What this means in practice is that he merely abandoned one sect of totalitarianstatism for another.

Rousseau, it should be remembered, was  wasthe author of whathe called "The CivilReligion" — a doctrine that would enable themasses, in Rousseau's phrase, to "bear with docility the yoke of thepublic good." 

The most important article of Rousseau's Civil Religion was the absolute divinity of the State; the gravest transgressionwas "intolerance," which was regarded as evil not because it injured therights of individuals, but because it challenged the State's authority.

According to Rousseau, the ideal social arrangement would be a "form of theocracy, in which there canbe no pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates.... [W]hoever dares to say, 'Outside the church is nosalvation,' ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church,and the prince the pontiff."

TheState would make belief in its dogmas compulsory, even as it denied it wasdoing so: "While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish fromthe state anyone who does not believe them…..” Apostasy would be a capital offense: "If any one, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if hedoes not believe them, let him be punished by death -- he has committed the worstof all crimes, that of lying before the law."

Rousseau believed that man --until corrupted by traditional institutions -- was intrinsically good. Thomas Hobbes– not to put too fine a point on the matter – didn’t share that opinion. He didagree that the State, as the embodiment of what could be called the “generalwill,” should combine the civil and ecclesial functions and exercise unlimitedpower to regiment the lives of its subjects. The objective wouldn’t be to savepeople’s souls, or elevate their morals, but merely to impose order.

Pinker claims to be “eclectically, non-dogmaticallylibertarian” in his political outlook. Given his unbuttoned embrace of Hobbesianabsolutism, that’s a bit like claiming to be an “eclectic, non-dogmatic vegan”while subsisting on a dietof steak tartare.  

Although Pinker began his academic career in a Montreal counter-culturalmilieu “dominated by hippies ... and US draft dodgers,” he has endorsed theexercise in State-inflicted violence called the “War on Drugs” in terms thatwould earn Hobbes’s approval:  “A regimethat trawls for drug users or other petty delinquents will get a certain numberof violent people as a by-catch, further thinning the ranks of the violentpeople who remain on the streets.”  

This process involves filling the streets with State-licensed“violent people” in military attire, and granting them a plenary indulgence to loot and terrorize the public. The “by-catch” gathered by thegovernment’s trawling net includes perfectly innocent people. But it is not ourplace to question the inscrutable wisdom of the divine State, which causes thepain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Leviathan's "by-catch": A 71-year-old victim of a wrong-door drug raid.

 There is also the matter of quo warranto: By what authority doesthe State assault and imprison people who peacefully ingest mind-alteringsubstances? 

This is where Pinker’s Rousseauist background comes into play: It’snot necessary for subjects to understand the logic of the State’s decrees; theysimply must have faith in its bottomless competence and unalloyed goodness – orsuffer the penalty for their apostasy. 

All religious belief requires the acceptance “of thingshoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Pinker’s dogma requires that weignore the evidence of things that are clearly visible in order to embrace hisvision of something yet to materialize. The most compelling argument againstPinker’s claim that humanity has evolved beyond violence is the systematic slaughter duringthe 20^th Century of at least 170 million people by governmentsclaiming and enforcing a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force. 

In The Better Angelsof Our Nature, Pinker – to his credit – does recognize R.J. Rummel’s pioneeringresearch into the phenomenon of "democide." Given the body count compiledthrough war and politicized mass murder during the 20^th century, andthe persistent bloodshed in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, the ideathat humanity has progressed beyond violence “seems illogical and obscene,” Pinkeradmits. This is something else we simply have to take on faith as well, itappears. 

The rampages carried out by totalitarian states were atragic prelude to the “Long Peace” that has prevailed since WWII, Pinker insists.We’ve reached a point at which mass violence only among those sub-populationsthat have resisted signing on to a “social contract that [gives] government amonopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” That heathen population, he pointsout, includes Americans who reside in the southern and western states, wherepeople “retain the right to bear arms [and] believe it is their responsibility,not the government’s, to deter harm-doers.” This means that “private citizens,flush with self-serving biases, [can act] as judge, jury, and executioner….”

Of all the impious nerve! Such power can only be exercisedby those duly anointed as emissaries of the divine State – beginning with the ExaltedOne in the Oval Office, who commands the power to imprison, torture, or execute anybody  on the face of theplanet. 

In a 2007 TED lecture, Dr. Pinker urged Leviathan’s subjectsto count their blessings: A mere century ago, he pointed out, some of them mayhave been “burned at the stake for criticizing the king, after a trial thatmaybe lasted ten minutes.” Today, by way of contrast, a U.S. citizen who condemns Washington’s imperial aggression can be summarily executed by way of adrone-fired missile without the benefit of a trial. The latter approach is acceptable to at least some peopleof Pinker’s persuasion because the State’s priestly caste possesses themystical power to transubstantiate violence into “policy.” 

Although he followed a different vector, Steven Pinker, a proudly irreligious cultural Jew, has arrived at the same destination as the reactionary 18th Century Catholic writer Joseph de Maistre, who insisted that "all greatness, all power, all social order dependson the executioner; he is the terror of human society and tie that holds ittogether. Take away this incontrovertible force from the world, and at thatvery moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, societydisappears." While Dr. Pinker criticizes the death penalty, his view of social order ultimately rests on the supposed authority of State functionaries to kill those who refuse to submit to them.

The modern material and ethical progress Pinker properly celebrates are not the product of State coercion. They are the result of private, mutually beneficial action based on reciprocal respect for individual rights -- in other words, the application of the Golden Rule, which Pinker acknowledges in passing while pointedly ignoring uncomfortable questions about its provenance and most notable Exponent. 

To use Pinker's categories: The impulses unleashed by the State are demonic, not angelic. 

Your donations to keep Pro Libertate on-line are much-needed, and very much appreciated! God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!

The Awlaki Sanction: Who's Next on the List?

The links connecting Anwar al-Awlaki to anti-American terrorismwere entirely suppositious, forged through unsubstantiated official assertion. Hewas, at most, a clericalpropagandist who never exercised command authority. For that matter, noevidence has been presented that he ever had an operational role in a militaryforce of any kind. 

Awlaki -- an American-born cleric who was once courted by the Pentagon -- was accused of expressing support for armed attacksagainst U.S. military personnel and government interests. It is not terrorismto employ lethal violence against an invading and occupying army, nor is it acrime to express support for armed self-defense -- including armed interposition against the aggressive designs of the U.S. government.  

The administration asserted– without providing evidence – that Awlaki had an “operational” role inplanning terroristattacks against U.S. citizens. If evidence supporting that charge existed,the administration had the unconditional constitutional duty to indict Awlakiand put him on trial. 

Intelligence officials knew Awlaki’s location. Thegovernment of Yemen, which is headed by a pliant thug named Ali Abdullah Saleh,is a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington and would have eagerly cooperated inan effort to track down and extradite Awlaki. But this would not have validatedthe claim – madeby the Bush administration, and embraced by its successor – that thePresident of the United States isn’t bound by the Constitution, but rather is the Living Constitution. 

As a guarantee of individual liberty, a politicalconstitution is about as intrinsically valuable as a paper currency. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are irredeemable unless they are backed by a noble metal –lead, in the form of privately owned ammunition. Nonetheless, and for therecord, this must be said: 

There is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the UnitedStates of America that permits a president to order the summary execution ofany human being. Only Congress can declare war. Only a jury can find someoneguilty of a crime. Only a judge can impose a death sentence. Or such would bethe case, were we still living in a constitutional republic, rather than themilitarist empire into which that republic inevitably degenerated. 

The vertically integrated murder apparatus that killedAwlaki and fellowU.S. citizen Samir Khan is entirely autonomous – and increasingly automated.Awlaki was addedto a “kill list,” and hisexecution “sanctioned” by a secret legal memorandum, on the basis of thingshe had said in public. Within a few years, the machinery of mass murder will berefined to the point where people – including U.S. citizens – may findthemselves targeted for execution on the basis of behavior “patterns” thatsuggest unexpressed by impermissible thoughts. 

 As Thomas Englehardt points out:

“In 2007, [then-] CIA director Michael Hayden beganlobbying the White House for `permission to carry out strikes againsthouses or cars merely on the basis of behavior that matched a “pattern of life”associated with al-Qaeda or other groups.’ And next thing you knew, they weremoving from a few attempted targeted assassinations toward a larger air war of annihilationagainst types and `behaviors.’”

Unmanned, automated drones are an ideal instrument for this variety ofall-encompassing warfare against dissent. “They are capable of roaming theworld,” Englehardt continues. “Someday, they will land on the decks of aircraftcarriers or, tiny as hummingbirds, drop onto a windowsill, maybe even yours, orin their hundreds, the size of bees, swarm to targets and, if all goes well,coordinate their actions using the artificial intelligence version of `hiveminds.’”

Accordingto retired General Wesley Clark, the murder – or, to use his term, “takedown”-- of Anwar al-Awlaki heralds a “transformation” of the Regime’s strategy inwaging open-ended warfare. Awlaki’s death “makes his final legacy a proof ofthe effectiveness of America’s active defense against terrorists,” enthuses Clark. 

He goes on to emit one of the purest specimens of totalitarian agitprop everrecorded:

“For the United States, the journey continues: Awlaki’sdeath … moves us closer to the time when we must transition, psychologicallyand practically, from being a nation under threat to a nation that once againchampions its openness and welcome to the whole world.”

Mere acceptance of the presidential power to execute anybodyon a whim isn’t sufficient. It must be celebrated openly – nay, it must be extolledas a selling point to the rest of the world: Come visit this uniquely blessedland of killer drones and murder by executive decree! 

Inspired by Clark’s exhortation, and eager to display mypatriotic zeal to eradicate those who have aided and supported terrorism, Iwould like to submit two nominees for the next drone-inflicted counter-terrorist“takedown”: Retired Generals Wesley Clark and Michael Hayden. 

Clark (l.) with KLA chieftain Hashim Thaci (r).

As noted above, there is no evidence that Anwar al-Awlakiever actively collaborated in armed violence by Jihadists. Wesley Clark,however, was the commanding general during the NATO’s 78-day terror bombing ofSerbia. 

Hundreds of civilians were murdered in that act of internationalterrorism, which resulted in the installation of a criminal syndicate calledthe Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as the government of that Serbian province. 

The KLA has a remarkable pedigree: It is descended on one side from thenotorious WWII-era Skanderbeg militia organized by the Nazi SS; the other halfof its heritage is Stalinist. It received material and technical assistancefrom the CIA , and financial aid from Osama bin Laden -- who were partners in supporting jihadist elements during the wars of Balkan secession.

As CIA director under George W. Bush, Michael Hayden wasdeeply involved in recruiting, arming, and supporting a large number ofunreconstructed jihadist, among them an enchanting Somali warlord named IndhaAdde, who now refers to himself as Gen. Yusuf Mohammad Siad.

In an on-the-sceneaccount, Jeremy Scahill of The Nationobserves that Siad has “pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda” and “openly admits tohaving sheltered some of the most notorious Al Qaeda figures—including FazulAbdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the USEmbassies in Kenya and Tanzania….”

Stipulating that the term “al-Qaeda” is, in effect,shorthand for “any group of Muslims Washington has not succeeded in bribingyet,” the critical point here is that Siad openly admits doing the kinds of thingsAwlaki was accused of doing. Hayden and Clark, on the other hand, have committedcrimes well beyond Awlaki’s capacity: As heads of military and intelligencebureaucracies, they offered material aid and support to terrorists. In fact,they – and a number of other veterans of the military-intelligenceestablishment – continue to do so in retirement.

Retired Generals Clark and Hayden are among the War Partyluminaries who are on the payroll of the Iranian Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), orthe so-called “People’s Mujahadeen,” which is listed as a terrorist group bythe State Department. Clark and Hayden, along with former chairmen of the JointChiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton and Peter Pace, former NATO commander James L.Jones, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General MichaelMukasey, former 9-11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, Rudolph Giuliani, Michele Bachmann, andseveral other luminaries have been hired by the MEK to lobby the StateDepartment to remove the group from its list of Foreign TerroristOrganizations. 

MEK Flag.

The MEK was created in 1965 as part of a Soviet-sponsoredinternational terrorist network that waged wars of "nationalliberation" throughout the developing world. Human Rights Watch, whichdescribes the MEK as an "urban guerrilla group," points out that thegroup's ideology is a Muslim variation on "liberation theology." 

In his July 7 testimony before the House Committee on ForeignAffairs, Ray Takeyh, who is (of all things) a Senior Fellow at the Council onForeign Relations, pointed out that the MEK “sought to … amalgamate Islam andMarxism. Islam was supposed to provide the values while Marxism offered apathway for organizing the society and defeating the forces of capitalism,imperialism, and feudalism…. [F]rom Lenin they embraced the importance of avanguard party committed to mass mobilization, and from Third World revolutionariesthey took the primacy of guerilla warfare as indispensable agents of politicalchange.” 

In 1970, 13 members of the MEK received training (mostlikely under Soviet supervision) at PLO campsin Jordan and Lebanon. Upon their return, the PLO-trained MEK cadres sharedtheir newly acquired skills with their comrades, and the group embarked on awave of attacks and bombings intended to bring down the Shah. During onerampage, MEK terrorists killed several U.S. military personnel – including ColonelLewis Hawkins, the Deputy Chief of Military Mission in Tehran. 

Although the group suffered some attrition in its conflictwith the SAVAK, the Shah’s hideous secret police, it survived long enough toparticipate in Khomeini revolution. MEK cadres were involved in the seizure of Americanhostages in October 1979. But the MEK’s ambitions and ideology made it a poorfit for Khomeini regime, so the group was purged from the ruling coalition in1981 and much of its leadership was driven into exile in Iraq. There it was, inTakeyh’s words, used “as Saddam’s Praetorian Guard.”

Following Saddam’s U.S. supported invasion of Iran, the MEK began a hit-and-runguerrilla war against the Iranian regime in the hope of triggering a popularuprising. When that proved unsuccessful, the group set up a political frontgroup called the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in Paris. In1985, notes Human Rights Watch, the MEK's "leadership was transformed whenMasoud Rajavi announced his marriage to Maryam Uzdanlu.... The husband and wifeteam became co-leaders" of the MEK and announced an "ideologicalrevolution." 

Everyday life in Camp Ashraf.

All of the group's members were required to undertake an individual"ideological revolution" by engaging in Maoist-style"self-criticism" sessions. Adherents were expected to listen raptly"to radio messages and explanations provided by [their] commanders"in order to "gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership,meaning the leadership of Masoud and Maryam.... To believe in them as well asto show ideological and revolutionary obedience to them." 

By 1987, the MEK had acquired "all the main attributesof a cult," writes Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian, with Masoud Rajaviclaiming the titles Rahbar (leader) and Imam-i hal (the Present Imam), and theforerunner to the impending second advent of the Mahdi. In 1994, the HouseForeign Relations Committee described the group as a violent,Marxist-influenced cult. The Committee Chairman at the time was Congressman LeeHamilton (D-Indiana), who is now on the group’s payroll.

“Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden” to those recruitedinto the MEK, writes Elizabeth Rubin of the NewYork Times magazine, who has spent time at the group’s headquarters at Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad. “From the time they are toddlers, boys andgirls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you hadto report your dreams and thoughts.” Maoist “struggle sessions” and severepunishment for “deviationism” are commonplace. 

Expelled from France in 1986, Masoud Rajavi was welcomed inBaghdad, where he and his followers built a "NationalLiberation Army" that joined the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam'sside. The MEK's plan was to recruit a huge army of suicide commandos whosesacrifice would inspire the “liberation” of Iran.

“We will not be fighting alone; we will have the people onour side,” proclaimed Rajavi. “They are tired of this regime, and ... they haveevery incentive to get rid of it forever. We will only have to act as theirshields, protecting them from being easy targets for the [revolutionary]guards. Wherever we go there will be masses of citizens joining us, and theprisoners we liberate from jails will help us lead them towards victory. Itwill be like an avalanche, growing as it progresses.”

When the war ended in 1988 without victory for Iraq or the"National Liberation Army," the MEK leadership imposed yet another"ideological revolution" on its followers, this one including compelledmass divorces and widespread torture of those suspected of espionage or ideologicaldeviation. Following the first Gulf War, the MEK collaborated in Saddam'scrackdown on Shi'ites and Kurds.

In its campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq, the Bushadministration mentioned MEK camps in Iraq as evidence of Saddam’s support forinternational terrorism. Following the invasion, U.S. forces disarmed MEKfighters who operated several camps within 60 miles of the Iranian border.Rather than treating them as terrorists, the Bush administration designated theMEK fighters as "protected" persons under the GenevaConvention. 

In fact, the Bush administration was so intent on shelteringthe MEK – which, recall had killed Americans and taken part in the seizure ofAmerican hostages – that it rebuffed an offer from Iran to exchange MEK leadersfor al-Qaeda suspects being held in Tehran. In exchange for protection, the MEKbegan to produce a series of lurid – and entirely fabricated – “intelligence”reports regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The MEK has no support among reform-minded Iranians; in fact, the group is immensely useful to the incumbent regime as a way of discrediting its opposition, which in official propaganda is depicted as allies of the bizarre Islamo-Leninist cult. The current Iranian government is awful; if it were to seize power, the MEK -- which is the Persian equivalent of the Khmer Rouge -- would be dramatically worse. 

As the redoubtable Glenn Greenwald has observed, the retired U.S. officials who have become paid propagandists for the MEK are providing material support for an international terrorist organization. Staten Island resident Javed Iqbal, who operated a cable TV company, was recently convicted of that charge and sentenced to 69 months in federal prison for the supposed offense of carrying programs produced by a television network owned by Hezbollah. And of course, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were summarily executed without trial for allegedly rendering the same service to al-Qaeda. 

Clark, Hayden, and the MEK's other American courtesans are members of the American nomenklatura, which means that they are on the "who" side of Lenin's "who does what to whom" formula. The murder of Anwar al-Awlaki was intended as an object lesson to those of us on the other side of that dichotomy, demonstrating what can and will be done to anyone who is identified by the Regime as what the Soviets used to call a "socially dangerous person." 

An Update, and an Urgent Appeal 

"For the second time this year, Americans can celebrate the elimination of another enemy of the state," proclaims columnist Mark Paredes in Utah's Deseret News. No, seriously -- he really wrote those words. See the blog at LewRockwell.com for my reaction to that Stalinoid screed.

During the past couple of months, I've been doing some editorial work and writing for Republic magazine (and some related properties); this explains why my output here at Pro Libertate has declined during that period. This is very much a full-time job -- but, in all candor, it pays next to nothing, which is pretty typical of activist-oriented publications. It is the first regular paying work I've had since getting thrown under the bus by TNA five years ago today, and I'm certainly grateful for it -- but it's not enough to support a family of eight. 

I recognize that there is nothing unique about our predicament, and that many of you are in similar straits. I would be deeply and abidingly grateful for any help you can provide. 

Thanks so much for your help in keeping Pro Libertate on-line! God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!