Irving Kristol goes all web 2.0

This article attacking Facebook seemed to create a few waves this week, and there were a number of letters applauding it the next day. Many seemed particularly enthused by this rather perplexing claim: "like PayPal before it, Facebook is a social experiment, an expression of a particular kind of neoconservative libertarianism." Far be it from me to accuse others of getting carried away with political-philosophical hyperbole when analysing technology (men in glass houses etc), but I can't for the life of me work out what Facebook has to do with neoconservatism. I may be liable to the charge of pretentiousness in articles such as this, but what baffles me is when one critical target is substituted for another, or lumped together under some increasingly vague conceptual umbrella.

What do we mean by neoconservatism? I am no expert on this (although I read probably half a dozen books on the topic while working as a researcher on this book) and please criticise or supplement this list, but these are a few of what I would identify as its features:

- An intellectual lineage that runs via Western Marxism and Leo Strauss.

- Secularism (many of its leading figures are of course Jewish) but with a pragmatic twist that leads it into alliances with politically helpful religious movements. Strauss was basically a nihilist who believed Christianity was probably most people's best bet, but not for him.

- Association with the Democrat Party, starting with the New Deal, running through the liberal interventionism of JFK, but switching to a pragmatic support of the Republican Party during the 1970s out of fear of the pacifism that was sweeping American liberalism (Richard Perle is apparently still a member of the Democrat Party).

- A desire, post-Cold War, to use American military power to intervene strategically to remove potentially antagonistic administrations around the world, made explicit in 1997 in the Project for the New American Century. While appearing paranoid in the extreme during the sunny years of the Clinton administration, 911 then provided an excuse to move this agenda forward, starting with the invasion of Iraq.

- Enabling people to poke each other online, write on their friends walls, play Scrabulous and tag photos of themselves.

I am really not sure that this last point should be included at all, but The Guardian obviously knows otherwise. I have written before about how vague and all-encompassing the concept of neoliberalism has become. Something similar has happened to neoconservatism. The distinctions between neoconservatism and other forms of conservatism are probably already too subtle for a great deal of public discussion (although this review in the New York Review of Books gives a nice overview of some of the political tensions). But then to allow the term to become a catch-all for anything that seems a bit nasty represents a terrible softening of one's own critical instruments, rather as teenagers might shout the word 'fascist' at their parents.

Could it be that the appeal of the term, like that of neoliberalism, lies partly in its prefix? 'Progressives' and 'modernisers' (both of whom are equally uncertain of their own identity as they are of their enemies') are perhaps comforted by the notion that these neo-demons have deliberately come back from the dead to scupper the certainty of liberal democracies becoming ever more benign and enlightened. It absolves them of responsibility for the fact that this historical destiny appears to be getting no closer.

Having successfully defeated the forces of darkness in the past, progressives and modernisers suddenly confront the neo-forces of darkness for a second time - tax exiles, tobacco companies, private equity companies, missile manufacturers, Roman Abramovich, Walmart, Paris Hilton, err, Facebook. The neo-baddies are the people it's OK to hate. Come to think of it, my PE teacher when I was 10, Mr Evans, was a neo-conservative.

I can't help thinking that there is a reunciation of political responsibility here. The neo-baddies aren't actually all that new. They are features of capitalism that have become exacerbated by various aspects of globalisation over several decades and, no doubt, the failings of the Left over the 1980s. Nor are they entirely without sources of legitimacy. They survive because we support and accept them in various ways, and indeed share some of their values. And yet through chucking the neo- prefix in front of them, we can bracket them as zombies, returned from some ghastly Victorian age when children were sent down mines and animals were tortured for fun.

Get ready for the next NHS hospital bug: the Neo-Plague.

Comments

[Neil]

Great post! I think that the author of that Guardian piece is using "neoconservative" as a redundant qualifier of the subsequent word, "libertarianism". He's actually saying "libertarian libertarianism"! I agree that calling someone a "neocon" is a smear tactic- I imagine the likes of Christopher Hitchens have been tarred with that brush, rightly or wrongly, for example.

[Will Davies]

Well Hitchens may be closer to the term's more technical meaning, in that he is a Marxist who supports pre-emptive military interventions against what he views as Fascist dictators (or Sadam Hussein, at any rate). Nick Cohen, while not a Marxist, would be another good example.

But yes, the term seems to be doing very little work as far as Facebook is concerned.

[J]

I believe the thinking behind the article went a little like this:

1. I don't understand Facebook. I don't like it. It's new and different, but not in the nice way an up-and-coming modern dance troupe at Sadlers Wells is new and different.
2. Everybody else loves facebook, even people less intelligent than me, who don't even write for newspapers.
3. 1 and 2 make me feel insecure.
4. Wow! I just discovered the guys in charge of facebook are evil rightwing Americans! That explains why I never liked it - my natural aversion was justified! Everything makes sense now - it's a conspiracy to undermine society! All of it's users are just unthinking consumer drones! Phew!
5. I'll write an article to tell everyone about 4. Then everyone else will stop liking facebook, and I'll feel good about myself again.

[ashok]

This is excellent - thank you for sharing.