The “Straussians”
By Judith A. Hess, August 2005
revealed. For this reason,
it is crucial to understand the influence of Leo Strauss and his
philosophical underpinnings on the neoconservative philosophy in the
philosopher, primarily at the
must know a little about his beginnings and early career.
the decline of
included the necessity of totalitarianism, deceit of the governed by the
governors and a brutal
loss of personal autonomy.
He was guided in his development, in part, by
Carl Schmitt, ironically, an avid anti-Semite.
Schmitt was an author and legal scholar in the Nazi regime.
excerpts are from Natiomaster.com Encyclopedia)
In his paper,
“The Concept of the Political", Schmitt developed his
controversial state law theories.
Apart from his academic functions, Schmitt was counsel for the Reich
government in the case
"Preussen contra Reich" when the SPD led Prussian government
disputed its dismissal by the right-wing
von Papen government. One of the counsels for the Prussian government
was Hermann
Heller. In German
history, this sad struggle leading to the de facto destruction of
federalism in the
as the 'Preußenschlag'.
1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to
calendar). ...
Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its
largest city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants
(as of January 2005); down from 4. ... 1932
is a leap year starting
on a Friday. ... The
University of Cologne
(Universität zu Köln) is one of the oldest Universities in
Europe and, with over 47,000 students, is
one of the largest institutions of higher education in Germany. ...
Hermann
Heller (1891-1933) was a
German-Austrian
legal scholar and philosopher active in the non-Marxist wing of the
German Social
Democratic Party (SPD) during the Weimar Republic. ...
Schmitt's
theories in this paper were later used by the Nazis
for an ideological foundation of their
dictatorship, and Schmitt was later accused of having justified the
"Führer"
state with regard to legal
philosophy. In fact, Schmitt, who became a professor at the University
of Berlin
in 1933 (a
position he
held until the end of World
War II) joined the NSDAP
on May 1, 1933;
he quickly was appointed
"preußischer Staatsrat" by Hermann
Göring and became the president of the "Vereinigung
nationalsozialistischer Juristen" ("Union of
National-Socialist Jurists") in November.
The Nazi party
used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black
colors were said to represent Blut
und Boden (blood and soil). ... Führer
(often written Fuehrer or Fuhrer in English when umlauts are
not used) is a proper noun meaning leader or guide in the German
language. ...
Berlin? (pronounced: ,
German ) is the capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,426,000
inhabitants (as
of January 2005);
down from 4. ... 1933
was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).
...
Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km
(over 11 miles) into the air,
August 9, 1945 after the Allied atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... The
Nazi swastika
The National Socialist German Workers Party (German:
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei),
better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party was a political party that
was led to power in Germany
by
Adolf Hitler in 1933. ... May
1 is the 121st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (122nd in leap
years)
. ... 1933
was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).
... Hermann
Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (also Goering or Goring
in English) (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946)
was an early member of the Nazi party, founder of the Gestapo, and one
of the main perpetrators of
Nazi Germany. ... November
is the eleventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one
of
four Gregorian months with the length
of 30 days. ...
Half a year
later, in June
1934,
Schmitt became editor in chief for the professional newspaper "Deutsche
Juristen-Zeitung" ("German jurisprudents'
newspaper"); in July
1934, he
justified the political murders
of the Night
of the Long Knives as the
"highest form of administrative justice" ("höchste
Form
administrativer Justiz").
June is the sixth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of
four
with the length
of 30 days. ... 1934
was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to
calendar).
... July
is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of
seven Gregorian months
with the length of 31 days. ... 1934
was a common year starting
on Monday (link will take you to calendar).
... The
Night of the Long Knives (1934) (German, Nacht der langen Messer), also
known as
Reichsmordwoche (Imperial Week of Murder) or the Blood Purge, was a mass
murder (purge) of potential
political rivals
in the Sturmabteilung (S.A.) paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. ...
Schmitt
presented himself as a radical anti-semite
and also was the chairman of a law teachers'
convention
in Berlin
in October
1936, where
he demanded that German law be cleansed from the "Jewish
spirit" ("jüdischem Geist"); nevertheless, two
months later, in December,
the SS
publication "Das
schwarze Korps" accused Schmitt of being an opportunist and
called his anti-semitism a mere mock-up,
citing earlier statements in which he criticised the Nazi's
racial theories. After this, Schmitt soon lost all of
his prominent offices, and retreated from his position as a leading Nazi
jurist, although he remained
as a professor in
and very distinct meanings. ...
Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its
largest
city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants (as of January 2005); down
from 4. ... October
is the tenth month of the
year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with
the length of 31 days. ... 1936
was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar).
... December
is the twelfth and
last
month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian
months with the length of
31 days. ... SS
or ss or Ss may be: The Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary force
Steamship (SS) (ship prefix)
The United States Secret Service A submarine not
powered by nuclear energy (SS) (United States Navy
designator), see SSN A Soviet/Russian surface-to-surface missile, as
listed by NATO reporting name
Shortstop... The
Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and
black colors
were
said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... The
Nazi party used a right-facing swastika
as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut
und Boden (blood and soil). ...
It was clearly imprudent for this Jew, however totalitarian his
thinking, to remain in
and he (reportedly with Schmitt’s assistance) got a Rockefeller
Foundation grant to continue
his studies in
his studies of Thomas Hobbes, under the continued grant.
In their correspondence after his
departure from
Strauss, of the Hobbes theory of government.
authored several books on Strauss and the neoconservative movement in
the
Among her comments about Strauss and chosen quotes of him:
“Because
mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed.
Such governance
can only be established, however, when men are united -- and they can
only be united
against other people."
“Following
Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists then one has
to
be manufactured.”
Among his beliefs and teachings is that the
governed do not need to be told the truth.
"Perpetual
deception of the citizens by those in power is critical (in Strauss's
view)
because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them
what's good for
them. Like Plato, Strauss taught that within societies, "some are
fit to lead, and others
to be led." But,
unlike Plato, who believed that leaders, which he called
philosopher-kings,
had to be people with such high moral standards that they could resist
the temptations of
power, Strauss thought that "those who are fit to rule are those
who realise there is no
morality and that there is only one natural right, the right of the
superior to rule over the
inferior."
Moral
law was nonetheless indispensable in Strauss' view because:
"it
is necessary to keep internal order." It should be propagated
through religion, which,
like Karl Marx, Strauss considered to be "the opiate of the
people," or in Strauss' own
words, "a pious fraud." But religion is for the masses alone;
the rulers need not be bound
by it; indeed it would be absurd if they were, because they know there
is no reality behind it.
"Secular
society in their view is the worst possible thing," because it
leads to individualism,
liberalism and relativism, precisely those traits which may encourage
dissent that in turn could
dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats.
"You want a crowd that you
can manipulate like putty."
Drury suggests it is ironic, but not
inconsistent with Strauss' ideas about the necessity for deception
by
elites, that the Bush administration defends its anti-terrorist campaign
by resorting to idealistic rhetoric.
"They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're
conquering the world in
the name of liberalism and democracy," she said.
Now
that we know what Strauss was about, let us look at Strauss’s
proponents and advocates.
mostly in, but a small few, peripheral to, the Bush Administration (Members
of the Administration
in this color). This list
is not exhaustive, and some position have changed.
Some excerpts below from “Leo Strauss and
Intelligence Strategy”, Tom Barry Feb 12, 2004
Abraham
Shulsky
Director of the Office of Special Plans
Shulsky received his doctorate from the
under Strauss, who attracted a cult following of neocons with his
theories
about politics and human nature. Shadia Drury, author of several books
on
Straussian political philosophy, said that Leo Strauss
believed that “truth is not salutary, but dangerous, and even
destructive to
society--any society.”
Gary
Schmitt
Project for the New
American Century: Executive Director
U.S.
Committee on NATO:
Board of Directors
Committee for the
Liberation of
School of Advanced
International Studies: Faculty
Shulsky and Schmitt credit the
teachings of Leo Strauss, a
German Jewish émigré philosopher, with helping them
conceptualize their understanding of good intelligence.
Paul
Wolfowitz
Deputy Defense Secretary, President of the World Bank
If Strauss' influence on politics in
the capital of the most
powerful nation on Earth was awesome in 1996, it is even
more so today. The leading "Straussian" in the Bush
Administration is Paul Wolfowitz, who was trained by
Strauss' alter-ego and fellow
professor Allan Bloom. Wolfowitz
leads the "war party"
within the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon, and his
own protégé:
I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and chief
directing a super-hawkish
"shadow national security
council" out of the
to the White House.
Elliott Abrams
Chief
Stephen Cambone
Undersecretary of
Defense for Intelligence
Richard Perle
Formerly of the
Pentagon, now Defense Policy Board
John Ashcroft
Former Attorney
General
Clarence
Thomas
Not member of the Bush Administration, but current
Supreme Court Justice
Francis Fukuyama current White House bio-ethics advisor
Lynne Cheney wife of the Vice-President
Ahmed
Chalabi
Deputy Prime Minister of
Michael Ledeen * American Enterprise Institute: Resident Scholar
Coalition for Democracy in
American
Spectator: Foreign Editor
Robert Kagan
Project for the New
American Century: Co-Founder (with
William Kristol) and Co-Director (1)
Center
for Security Policy: Frequent participant on CSP
sign-on letters (3); U.S.
Committee on NATO: Board of
Directors (4) Council
on Foreign Relations: Member (1)
The Weekly Standard:
Contributing Editor (2)
The New
Republic: Contributing Editor (2)
Washington
Committee for the Liberation of
The Public Interest: Assistant Editor, 1981 (1)
Ken Masugi
The Claremont
Institute
Prolific author of right-wing
ethics,
and propagandist about Abraham Lincoln
William
Kristol,
Founder of PNAC
Weekly Standard editor, neo-con
propagandist
former Dan Quayle chief of staff
Robert
Bork,
Sitting Judge. When in the Justice Dept.
he fired the
Special Prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, in the
Saturday Night Massacre.
William Bennett former Secretary of Education
William F. Buckley the National Review publisher
Alan Keyes former Reagan Administration official
William Galston former Clinton Administration domestic policy advisor, and
Elaine
Kamark
Co-authors of the Joe Lieberman-led Democratic Leadership Council's
policy blueprint.
George Will
Newt Gingrich
From
the New Yorker’s
The operation is Abram Shulsky, a scholarly
expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo Strauss.
Shulsky has been quietly working on intelligence and foreign-policy
issues for three decades; he was on the
staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early
nineteen-eighties and served in the Pentagon under
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle during the Reagan
Administration, after which he joined the
Rand Corporation. The Office of Special Plans is overseen by
Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti,
a retired Navy captain. Luti was an early advocate of military action
against
moved toward war and policymaking power shifted toward the civilians in
the Pentagon, he took on
increasingly important responsibilities. The Straussian neocons have
indeed infiltrated the Republican Party,
and with mostly calamitous results for
Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime, which
lists an impressive number of Straussians
who have become part of the Republican Party apparatus over the past
twenty years. These include John
Agresto (acting chairman, National Endowment of the Humanities), William
Allen (Chair, U.S. Civil Rights
Commission), Joseph Bessette (acting director, Bureau of Justice
Statistics), Mark Blitz (associate director,
U.S. Information Agency), David Epstein (Dept. of Defense), Charles
Fairbanks (assistant deputy secretary
of state), Robert Goldwin (special assistant to President Ford), William
Kristol (chief of staff for Vice
President Quayle), Carnes Lord (National Security Council), Michael
Mablin (House Republican Conference
director), John Marini (U.S. E.E.O.C), Ken Masugi (E.E.O.C.), Gary
McDowell (advisor to Attorney General
Meese), James Nichols (National Endowment for the Humanities), Ralph
Rossum (Bureau of Justice Statistics),
Steven Schlesinger (Bureau of Justice Statistics), Gary Schmitt (head,
advisory board on foreign intelligence),
Peter Schram (Dept. of Education), Abram Shulsky (director of strategic
arms control), Nathan Tarcov (State
Dept. planning staff), Michael Uhlman (assistant attorney general),
Jeffery Wallin (director of special programs,
National Endowment for the Humanities), Bradford Wilson (assistant to
Warren Burger).
These are the less powerful Straussian
political hacks, says Norton. Among the more powerful and
influential
in
(former drug czar), Francis Fukuyama, William Kristol, Robert Kagan,
Gary Schmidt, and Allan Bloom student
Alan Keyes. That list was compiled in 1998; it is undoubtedly much
longer today.
*
Michael Ledeen
This Straussian deserves special attention, as
his influence with Wolfowitz and other members of the Bush
Administration is very strong. He
is a self-described “universal fascist”.
“But there is at
least one neoconservative commentator whose personal political odyssey
began with …a fascination
with… 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.
Italian fascism was both
right-wing and revolutionary. Ledeen had himself argued this very point
in his book, Universal
Fascism, published in 1972. That work starts with the assertion that
it is a mistake to explain the support of fascism by
millions of Europeans “solely because they
had been hypnotized by the rhetoric of gifted orators and
manipulated by
skilful propagandists.” “It seems more plausible,” Ledeen argued,
“to attempt to explain their enthusiasm by treating
them as believers in the rightness of the fascist cause, which had a
coherent ideological appeal to a great many people.
” For Ledeen, as for the lifelong fascist theoretician and
practitioner, Giuseppe Bottai, that appeal lay in the fact that
fascism was “the Revolution of the 20th century.”
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.” Ledeen wrote in 1996, “The people yearn for
the
real thing—revolution.”
“…The young Ledeen wrote that
those who exalted the position of youth in the fascist revolution—like
those who
argued in favor of his beloved “universal fascism”—were committed
to exporting Italian fascism to the whole world,
an idea in which Mussolini was initially uninterested.
No doubt Ledeen thinks that the
new
people around Berto Ricci—the editor of the fascist newspaper L’Universale,
and a man he calls “brilliant” and “an
example of enthusiasm and independence”— “called for
the formation of a new empire, an empire based not on
military conquest but rather on Italy’s unique genius for
civilization. …
“Clearly the act of destruction
which would produce the flowering of the new fascist hegemony would
sweep away
the present generation of Italians, along with the rest.”
“His heroism during the war made
it possible,” Ledeen writes, “to bridge the chasm between
intellectuals and the
masses. … The revolt D’Annunzio led was directed against the
old order of
in the name of youthful creativity and
virility.”
As
Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire
“to tear down the old order” (his words from
2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in
2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld. In 1932,
Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into “old” and “new”
when he wrote, in Towards
the Fascist International, “Either old Europe or young Europe.
Fascism is the gravedigger
of old
Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising.” It all sounds
rather prophetic.
John
Laughland, is a London-based writer and lecturer and a trustee of the
British Helsinki Human
Rights Group.
June 30,
2003 issue The American Conservative Copyright
© 2003
Related
Information (from a commentary
about the Hersh article above)
Already, following EIR's lead, major American
and European newspapers have identified such putschists as
Paul Wolfowitz, Abram Shulsky, William Kristol, John Ashcroft, Steve
Cambone, and Gary Schmitt as the
offspring of the late University of Chicago Prof. Leo Strauss; Strauss,
in turn, was the life-long collaborator
and promoter of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, official Nazi philosopher and
Nietzsche revivalist Martin Heidegger,
and French Synarchist Alexandre Kojève—all unabashed advocates of
tyranny as the only appropriate form
of government. Although the May 4 Sunday New York Times feature
off-handedly mentions Kojève as
Strauss's colleague, without further identification, all of the major
media coverage has been sanitized of any
discussion of the overtly fascist/Synarchist roots of the Straussian
creed.
Fascist
Roots (a few words about
Cheney’s crew)
It was this Kojève who maintained the closest
collaboration with Leo Strauss, and who promoted his theories
of purgative violence and universal tyranny with such leading Strauss
disciples as Allan Bloom (the mentor of
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz) and Francis Fukuyama. This
Synarchist stew remains Vice
President Dick Cheney's gang's "French Connection."