Henry Steele Commager on the Enlightenment and the American Revolution

Henry Steele Commager (1902- 1998) was a prominent American historian who wrote in what was known broadly as the Progressive tradition of the early half of the 20th century.. His first major book, The American Mind (1950), was an intellectual history that built on the tradition of the literary historian Vernon Parrington (1871-1929). Commager wrote a lot on intellectual history, particularly on the influence of Enlightenment thought on American political concepts.

He was also known for his timely engagement with political developments and become a critic of McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and the repression of political dissent, especially since Nixon’s Presidency. That is, he was sharply critical of the illiberalism that led eventually to Trumpism. He retained an enthusiastic focus on the Enlightenment core of the American revolutionary tradition. But he also expanded the scope of his work over the years to give increasing focus to the role of minorities in the US.

The 1977 edition of one of his widely used histories, co-authored with Samuel Eliot Marison and William Leuchtenburg, reflects the greater emphasis on diverse history that continued to development. A 1976 book of which he was the main editor, The West: An Illustrated History, also reflects this broader view. Although the title of the chapter on the Native Americans was “The Indian Tragedy,” which reflects the liberal view of US Indian policy as an inevitable result of the clash of an advanced American civilization with a less developed one whose technology and strategies had to inevitably give way to the more “backward” one.

But Commager’s view of the democratic-Enlightenment tradition as being central to the American Revolution and to the democratic constitutional order still provides important critical insights to understanding the American Revolution in both a historical and sentimental sense. Lydialyle Gibson describes his late view this way:

... Commager asserted his thesis:

Americans of the late 18th and early 19th centuries took the Enlightenment principles that Europe had envisioned and “tentatively” experimented with - principles such as religious and intellectual freedom, constitutional order, commitment to reason, progress, humanitarianism - and “wrote them into law, crystallized them into institutions, and put them to work. That, as much as the winning of independence and the creation of the nation,” he wrote, “was the American Revolution.” …

In the 1930s, Commager defended Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, and he was an early advocate for American involvement in the Second World War. He supported John F. Kennedy for president in 1960 and Robert Kennedy in 1968. He warned against sending US troops to Indochina and called the Vietnam War a moral catastrophe. In April 1967, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his searing condemnation of the Vietnam War to an overflow crowd at New York’s Riverside Church, Commager stood beside him on the dais. [emphasis in original] (1)

A 1975 collection of his essay on topical political controversies including the Vietnam War was called The Defeat of America: Presidential Power and the National Character. It contains this description of American nationalism of the Revolutionary era and the ensuring early years of nation-building (of itself, not of various other countries around the world):

Culturally as well as socially the American asserted that he was a "new man." No sooner had the Declaration separated America from Britain than Americans threw themselves, almost convulsively, into the task of creating, or vindicating, an American culture. As Thomas Paine wrote, "A new era for politics is struck, a new method of thinking hath arisen." Now there were to be an American culture, an American language, American philosophy, American law, American arts and letters. "America is an independent empire," wrote young Noah Webster [1758-1843], "and ought to assume a national character," and he urged his fellow-countrymen to "unshackle your minds and act like independent beings." [emphasis in original]

And he observes, “soon Jefferson had substituted the decimal system for pounds, shillings and pence.” Okay, a distinctive currency is something obvious. But it may not have been Jefferson’s best idea to flush the metric system of physical measurements!

Those observations come in a chapter titled, “Myths and Realities in American Foreign Policy”, originally from 1968, a year that became its own kind of mythical image. That essay expresses a very critical perspective on the contradictory nature of two broad assumptions of American patriotism and nationalism.:

First is the assumption, or the myth, of American uniqueness - a myth which justified and encouraged the habit of isolation. Second is the assumption of the political, social and moral superiority of America - a myth which rationalized Manifest Destiny, mission, imperialism and, in our own time, the imposition on the rest of the world of something that can be called, without stretching analogies too far, a Pax Americana. [my emphasis in bold]

We hear these assumptions still, not only in jingoistic posturing but in the standard politicians’ line that “America is the greatest country in the world.” One of an endless number of examples was Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in a speech for Hillary Clinton: “’Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country is not great, that somehow we need to make it great again,’ she said. ‘Because this right now is the greatest country on Earth’.”

In a contemporary review of Commager’s The American Mind, Marian Irish said of him, “As an American he believes this is ‘the best of all countries’ but he is doubtful that this is ‘the best of all times’.” (2)

This is a recording of Commager from 1955 talking about the importance of the American tradition of freedom of speech and the press with some comments on how he looks at the position of the US in the world of that time. With 2 ½ minutes of advertisement at the end. (3)

Notes:

(1) Gibson, Lydialyle (2017): All American. University of Chicago Magazine Spring 2017, 52-57. <https://mag.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/issues/UChicagoMag_1705-2017_Spring.pdf> Also: <https://medium.com/the-university-of-chicago-magazine/all-american-f7f6631a8e54>

(2) Irish, Marian (1951): American Political Science Review 45:1, 284. <https://doi.org/10.2307/1950915>

(3) Longines Chronoscope with Henry Steele Commager. PublicResourceOrg YouTube channel 04/05/2011. <https://youtu.be/yH1-6eHGmBA?si=WFgoRGAPDfLAGIdx> (Accessed: 2026-14-05).

Crackpot rightwing theorists, then and now

I’ve been thinking the last few days about trying to write some pieces about the American Revolution’s 250th anniversary year in a way that wouldn’t sound dorky. I’m still thinking that one out. But earlier this week I came across an interview with Curtis Yarvin, who is kind of a celebrity for being a dystopian political guru of sorts to TechBro fascist set. It was in the Vienna daily Der Standard and conducted by Eric Frey, a very good political reporter, including on American politics.

The paper’s subhead describes Yarvin as “leading thinker of the techno-rightists.” The main headline describes him as a “rightwing extremist,” which seems accurate enough. (1)

Yarvin in the interview shares his certifiably crackpot version of some aspects of American and other history, which is why I connected it to retrospectives on the American Revolution. Because history is not a documentary replay of past times. I heard someone recently comment that what happened in the past are facts, while history is our narratives about the past. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need honest and accurate history. But our understanding of past history is by definition selective.

Financial wealth and being born rich can tempt people within those categories to assume that their opinions and insights have special value. And they often expect everyone else to share that view. As John Maynard Keynes famously observed, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

But he wasn’t implying that such often-crackpot insights are harmless. He says before and after that:

[T]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. … I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. (2)

In other words, people who should know better often take crackpots from characters like Curtis Yarvin as serious descriptions of reality.

The New Yorker did a 10-page article on Yarvin last year if you want an extended look at what this particular TechBro crackpot is about. (3) I’m tempted to describes what he says as sophomoric nonsense. But that would be insulting to college sophomores everywhere.

The Standard interview isn’t much better. Yarvin’s comments there are superficial gobbledygook from an arrogant twit who is obvious more interesting in being provocative than in doing anything so normal as to try to organize his ideas (or half-ideas) in a meaningful way. I’ll quote this part:

The Kennedys were a type of monarchs, and so was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). He had an abundance of power that Donald Trump does not have and never will. Trump cannot push through many things in the Senate, the Republican leadership despises him. He may have ten times more power than he did in his first term, but FDR had ten times more power than he did. Every few decades, there is a dictator in the USA who can steer the country in a certain direction. That's how America has become the country it is. In other times, the USA is ruled by oligarchies. …

[Trump] has a number of strengths and weaknesses. He has a lot in common with FDR, as he is a very intuitive thinker and not a logical, almost instinctive one. But unlike FDR, he does not come from the American ruling class. He doesn't speak their language, he almost seems like an outsider. This is a serious problem, because you can't govern without elites. Trump is a populist rebel. A rebellion of the lowly against the upper crust. [my translation to English]

The garbled comments about FDR and the kooky usage of populism, reminded me of something that Yarvin may be partly aping. There was an active group of Hitler sympathizers in the US in the 1930s and early 1940s. The one who stood out and was generally recognized as the chief ideologist of “National Socialism” in the US was a guy named Lawrence Dennis. His take on Roosevelt is that his government was fascist. But it was a “bad fascist” one. What was needed was a brand of “good fascism,” along the Hitler-Mussolini lines.

Lawrence Dennis was a really strange character. Unknown to those who admired him as the chief American Nationalist Socialist theorist, Dennis was an African-American. The superior North American White Race couldn’t even produce their own top Nazi ideologue! They had to find a black guy to do it.

Gerald Horne wrote a biography of him: The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States (2006). It includes a description of an even better-known Hitler admirer, Charles Lindbergh, when he met Dennis. Lindbergh, who made it a habit to not shake hands with black people:

The controversial aviator, who had fascist leanings all his own, was taken aback when he laid eyes on the silken Dennis. It was “rather a shock, when one sees him for the first time, especially in a room in Washington,” a city of rigid racial segregation, “for one is so unprepared for his type. He would seem more in place at some frontier trading post along the eastern border of Europe.” Lindbergh, who had firmly held ideas about white supremacy and racial purity, “tried” as they “talked” to “fathom the nationality of his ancestors.” But Dennis, a product of Exeter and Harvard, could perform “whiteness” with the best of them, with his elegant manner,

Surrendering to Dennis’s bedazzling performance of “whiteness,” Lindbergh “concluded that some” of his “ancestors” “might have come from the Near East” …

“Lucky Lindy” came to agree with Dennis more and more. In fact, says one biographer of the charismatic man who for a time defined celebrity, Lindbergh’s “arguments and phraseology had some striking parallels with Hitler’s and even more those of Lawrence Dennis” with whom he was to be in “frequent contact.” There was “no doubt that the flier had read and been strongly influenced by Dennis’ books” [according to Lindbergh biographer Kenneth Davis]. [my emphasis]

Just a reminder of what crackpot weirdos even leading US Hitler admirers of the time were. Even if they were sometimes accidently “multicultural,” like with Lindy and Lawrence Dennis.

Whether today’s TechBro fascists have yet succeeded in out-weirding characters like Lindbergh and Dennis is hard to tell. They’re certainly giving it a try!

Notes:

(1) Frey, Eric (2026): Rechtsextremer US-Blogger Curtis Yarvin: "Das Schlimmste an Trump ist seine Unsicherheit". Der Standard 12.Mai.2026. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000319756/rechtsextremer-us-blogger-curtis-yarvin-das-schlimmste-an-trump-ist-seine-unsicherheit?ref=rss> (Accessed: 2026-12-05).

(2) Keynes, John Maynard (1936 [2013]): In: Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 7, 383. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(3) Kofman, Ava (2025): Autocracy Now! New Yorker 06/09/2025, 28-38.

Peace President Trump’s not-so-glorious war in Iran

We’re well into the third month of the US-Israel war on Iran.

In one sense, the story has been monotonous. Sundays Trump posts something optimistic about the war. Monday after the stock market has opened and speculators have taken their profits from the effects of Trump’s Sunday announcement, he goes back to blustering and threatening. Then it’s a series of contradictory and often incomprehensible blustering and threats and promises.

None of it makes much sense. Sometimes he contradicts one sentence’s message with the immediately following one. He’s stuck in a losing situation in the war where Iran has “escalation dominance” for at least the next few months. And his diplomacy is incompetent and incoherent – although calling it “diplomacy” at all is giving it too much credit.

Larry Wilkerson just shared his thoughts on the current situation with Breaking Points. (1)

Our co-belligerent in the Iran War, which also considers Israel’s attacks on Lebanon part of the war, doesn’t seem to be leaning toward de-escalation:

The Israeli military currently controls 68 locations in southern Lebanon, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam confirmed to DPA on Monday. Before the recent war, there were only five locations occupied by Israel, Salam said.

"Israel now controls 68 villages," he stated. This amounts to nearly half of the territory south of the Litani River, which is situated approximately 30 kilometres (about 18.5 miles) north of the Israeli border.

When asked for comment, the Israeli military justified its actions by citing the security of northern Israel. The objective of these operations, it stated, is to eliminate "the acute threat" to the residents of northern Israel and to prevent a renewed entrenchment of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. (2)

Nir Hasson comments on what he sees as the widespread obsession of the Israeli armed forces and Israeli society more generally with revenge, or at least with murderous violence that they considered revenge:

If there were any doubts that revenge has become the official [sic] doctrine, along came the selection of Avraham Zarbiv – who became a culture hero due to acts of vengeance he carried out – for lighting a torch on Independence Day. As explained by journalist Yehuda Schlesinger on Channel 12: "We should have seen much more revenge there, with rivers of Gazan blood." Broadcasters on Channel 14 were obsessed with vengeance. This also cropped up in sermons by rabbis, in interviews by politicians, in statements by the prime minister, who used the Biblical term Amalek, by the defense minister who talked about "human animals" and in the new hit wedding song, "May your village burn."

Revenge isn't something new in Israeli discourse. It underlaid the motivation for reprisal attacks in the 1950s, the demolition of the houses of the families of suicide bombers, the targeted and not-so-targeted assassinations. But until October 2023 and the current government, official Israel saw revenge as something to be condemned, not admitted publicly and definitely not boasted about. The beaten and humiliated Israel following the October 7 massacre felt a need to restore its self-confidence rapidly and recklessly, and the way to do this was to take revenge against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. The result was killing, destruction, deliberate starvation and uprooting at an unprecedented scale in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [my emphasis] (3)

Hasson uses this explanation for what he sees as such an extreme phenomenon:

To understand this, argued Prof. Sara Helman from Ben Gurion University, one needs to use the concept of "permanent security" coined by the genocide researcher Dirk Moses. This was the basis of most genocidal acts throughout history. "Permanent security" is the idea that there is a need to nullify and efface any hint of threat, real or imaginary. According to this approach, an entire population, including women and children, is perceived as a permanent threat to the security of a dominant group – "there are no innocent people in Gaza," some said. [my emphasis]

Wilkerson in the video above mentions an article by arch-neocon Robert Kagan, who surprisingly writes, “Defeat for the United States [in the Iran War], therefore, is not only possible but likely.” (4)

And Kagan sketches out probable consequences for the international order. For instance:

The new status quo in the strait [of Hormuz] will also occasion a substantial shift in relative power and influence both regionally and globally. In the region, the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran. As the Iran scholars Reuel Gerecht and Ray Takeyh wrote recently, “The Gulf Arab economies were built under the umbrella of American hegemony. Take that away—and the freedom of navigation that goes with it—and the Gulf states will ineluctably go begging to Tehran.

Wilkerson comments, seriously and a bit cynically, that Kagan’s aim with the article is to shame Bush into making a much more intensive military campaign against Iran. But he nevertheless notes that Kagan’s analysis in the article is right in his description of the implications of Trump’s and Netanyahu’s criminal war against Iran.

Notes:

(1) Larry Wilkerson Responds: Is US Checkmated in Iran? Breaking Points YouTube channel 05/11/20226. <https://youtu.be/zQhijX4lYFY?si=Dg5HPJY4Fu62WBj1> (Accessed: 2026-11-05).

(2) IDF controls 68 locations, nearly half of southern Lebanon, PM Salam says. DPA/Haaretz 05/11/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-05-11/ty-article-live/netanyahu-says-iran-war-not-over-signals-indefinite-fighting-with-hezbollah/0000019e-14a8-d969-adff-14ed27ff0000?liveBlogItemId=1368144122#1368144122> (Accessed: 2026-11-05).

(3) Hasson, Nir (2026): It Wasn't Just Revenge That Israel Was After in Gaza. Haaretz 05/11/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-05-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/it-wasnt-just-revenge-we-were-after-in-gaza/0000019e-132e-d73c-a99e-df7f3e160000?gift=efcdd72320e54cc48377eedb31d176aa> (Accessed: 2026-11-05).

(4) Kagan, Robert (2026): Checkmate in Iran. The Atlantic 05/10/2026. Gift link: <https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/iran-war-trump-losing/687094/?gift=y5KN3gqTuS3mRKehlt83lpwfsOV2AQHsBA4T6-_0wuA&fb> (Accessed: 2026-11-05).

Sergei Karaganov, a hawkish Russian advocate on the war with Ukraine

Sergei Karaganov was described in 2023 by the BBC as a “Russian foreign policy strategist and sometime Kremlin adviser.” Project Syndicate on its author’s page identifies him as “Dean of the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and Honorary Chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.” His last article there is from March 2018. (1)

Karaganov, in other words, is someone who is taken seriously by the Russian government but is not necessarily speaking for its present official policy. But his public pronouncements can also be taken as something that could be feasibly adopted by Putin’s government. Lawrence Freedman wrote about Karaganov in 2023, commenting, “It is worth making some effort to try to understand Russian perspectives if only because otherwise we are left with rumours, speculation, and inferences.” He also notes that Karaganov “is very much part of the Russian elite” and that he “developed some of the core themes of Putin’s foreign policy.” (2)

Karaganov was recently interviewed by Glenn Diesen, a political scientist specializing in Russian affairs at the University of South Eastern Norway. He tends in the interviews I’ve heard him do a “neorealist” view of foreign policy and sounds at least somewhat sympathetic toward Putin’s foreign policy perspective – whether from personal preference of in an effort to understand and explain the Russian strategic perspective, I can’t say.

But the current Wikipedia entry for Diesen references numerous reasons to assume that he is, shall we say, not especially critical of official foreign policy positions of Putin’s government.

In other words, this interview should be taken as representing a basically uncritical view of Putin’s policies. (3)

Karaganov treats the current world situation as something that might be considered a fourth world war. He counts the Napoleonic Wars including the invasion as Russia as the first of the four. A more likely candidate for that label could be the Seven Years War which was fought in Europe and North America and was known as the French and India War in the British colonies in America.

He includes the current Russia-Ukraine War and the US-Israeli war against Iran as being what he’s suggesting is a fourth world war, a metaphor with implications that it could greatly escalate in scope and intensity. Imperialist wars would seem to me to be a more meaningful label at this point. Karaganov takes the posture of being a critic of Putin’s government for “tolerating the Western aggression for too long.” He advocates that Russia should “escalate and … punish our, this time, European enemies for conducting an all-out war against Russia.”

Just to state the obvious, the Russia-Ukraine War, whatever else it may be, is not “an all-out war against Russia” by the European NATO members.

He argues that the Western assistance to Ukraine, the Iran War, and an unnamed situation in Southwest Asia as being element of a US world war against Russia. After ten minutes or so he starts talking about how Russia needs to think about military strikes against Europe and even the use of a nuclear weapon. The use of nukes was something he also discussed in an article in 2023, well into the second year of the Ukraine War. (4)

I’ll add that Karaganov’s presentation here fits well with a standard American stereotype of Russian spokespeople: a surly attitude, heavily accented English, and over blown characterizations.

Over-the-top propaganda? Part of a propaganda psyop? A grumpy old professor shooting his mouth off? Hard to say, exactly. He himself claims to be speaking for an opinion now support an “overwhelming majority” in the Russian government, the military, and society.

There is a new, UK-based academic journal that apparently appeared in the digital world very recently called Global Geopolitics. I can’t vouch for its soundness, quality, or perspective and I don’t recognize any of the names of its editorial board members. But for what it’s worth, it presents a recent online article without information on the specific author(s) on Karaganov’s ideas. (5)

A 2021 article by Karaganov before the start of the current Russia-Ukraine War is called, “On a Third Cold War.” It also uses a somewhat quirky periodization, considering the First Cold War to have begun in 1917 and the second soon after the end of the Second World War. He’s not quite so specific about when the Third Cold War began but apparently thinks it was the mid-2000s at the latest. (6)

Karaganov lists various Kremlin talking points on how the West misbehaved toward Russia in the post-1989 period, all of which are subject to various interpretations. He describes the general Russian grievances against Western democracy in conservative-reactionary terms that have become fairly standard under Putin’s authoritarian and very capitalist government:

This, of course, does not mean that any kind of authoritarianism, let alone totalitarianism, is more effective than democracy. There are more than enough examples of failed authoritarian political systems. Russia has yet to prove that its modern political regime is indeed modernizing authoritarianism.

It’s not clear there whether Karaganov is arguing that it’s not right to call Russia authoritarian, or that Putinist Russia hasn’t yet achieved the ideal type of authoritarianism to which it aspires. He goes on to make a Trumpist-style, Russian Christian nationalist argument about the decadence of the West:

The erosion of basic human values is accelerating due to a number of objective cultural reasons and partially conscious policies pursued by the transnational (liberal) ruling circles of the United States and many European countries, which are losing their positions. Hence all manifestations of LGBTisms, multisexuality and ultrafeminism; denial of history, roots, and faith; and support for black racism, including its anti-Christianity and anti-Semitism. The list also includes democracy as a religion and not simply as a way of governing, and it can go on and on.

Notes:

(1) Sergey Karaganov: Is Putin placing bets he cannot win? BBC Interview 02/03/2023.<https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/w3ct32h4> (Accessed: 2026-10-05).

(2) Sergei Karaganov Tries to Find a Way to Win Russia’s War. Comment is Free 10/11/2026. (Full article is behind paywall. <https://samf.substack.com/p/sergei-karaganov-tries-to-find-a> (Accessed: 2026-10-05).

(3) Sergey Karaganov: How Russia Will Win the New World War. Glenn Diesen YouTube channel 05/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/2Gd5jdl36cg?si=jcoxzoTxUHvArpxM> (Accessed: 2026-10-05).

(4) A Difficult but Necessary Decision. Russia in Global Affairs 06/13/2023. <https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a-difficult-but-necessary-decision/> (Accessed: 2026-05-10).

(5) How Russia Wins the New World War. Global Geopolitics 05/06/2026. <https://globalgeopolitics.co.uk/2026/05/06/how-russia-wins-the-new-world-war/> (Accessed: 2026-10-05).

(6) Karaganov, Sergei (2021): On a Third Cold War. Russia in Global Affairs 19:3, 102-115. <https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/102-115.pdf>

The Russia-Ukraine War on Victory Day, 2026: It’s hard to negotiate peace without, you know, actual diplomacy.

May 9 is the day Russia celebrates as Victory Day to commemorate the end of the Second World War in Europe. That was the day the Germans formally surrendered on the easter front. V-E (Victory in Europe) Day is celebrated by the onetime Western allies on May 8, when the German surrender in the west occurred. Peace President Trump is claiming credit for arranging a three-day cease fire around the commemoration:

Earlier both sides [Russia and Ukraine] said the other had continued to attack their positions and Moscow's mayor said the city had been targeted by drones overnight.

In his post Trump said he had personally requested the three-day truce and "I very much appreciate its agreement by President Vladimir Putin and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy".

Putin had announced a ceasefire for 8-9 May ahead of Victory Day celebrations on Saturday. Kyiv had earlier called for an indefinite truce, starting 6 May.

Russia has warned Ukraine not to try to attack the Victory Day parade in Red Square.

Its defence ministry has threatened to launch a "retaliatory, massive missile strike" on the centre of Kyiv if Moscow is attacked. It has warned foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital ahead of 9 May. (1)

Anatol Lieven discusses the state of affairs with the wars in Ukraine and Iran. (2)

The US has really been suffering from a lack of adequate diplomacy and strategic policy. It’s hard not to imagine that the Biden Administration couldn’t have made more active efforts to achieve a stable ceasefire of some kind in Ukraine. That war has been going on longer than the German-Soviet war of 1941-1945. Ukraine successfully resisted the initial Russian push toward their capital Kiev in early 2022. But their 2023 counteroffensive stalled out. And we’ve been seeing a war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine ever since. In theory, Russia is better positioned to win a war of attrition than Ukraine. But four years of continuous war is a long time. Lieven notes that the US is still providing intelligence to Ukraine.

My assumption is that any near-term cessation of the war, whether it’s an extended ceasefire or a Korea-style armistice, would leave Russia still in control of more-or-less what they have now, i.e., Crimea, the Luhansk Oblast (state/province), and parts of the Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk Oblasts. The Institute for the Study of War provides this map of the situation as of May 6:

The portion of Donetsk still controlled by Ukraine is particularly important, because there are fortified areas there that would be important in resisting any new Russian thrust toward Kiev. Lieven in the interview above notes that Russia is still putting a strong emphasis on the importance of taking all of Donbas, i.e., Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.

Korea and China-Taiwan are two important examples of long-term, unresolved conflicts that have been stable for decades. But they are also not resolved. Another case is Argentina and the Falklands/Malvinas occupied by Britain since the early part of the 19th century. The UN considers the latter an unresolved colonial issue. We could also include British-controlled Gibraltar whose status Spain still disputes. And Türkiye still controls part of the island nation of Cyprus, which has been unresolved really since 1974.

But here is where the current US incapacity under the Trump 2.0 regime to conduct normal diplomacy. Because Russia would surely insist on a US buy-in of some kind on any such armistice arrangement, which would have to cover demarcation lines for troops on both sides, the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped and sent to Russia, international sanctions, stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine, clearance of land mines, and reconstruction plans, and Ukraine’s formal affiliation to the EU and to NATO. The status of Crimea is especially complicated. There’s no question that in international law that Crimea belongs to Ukraine. But Russia also has their key base for their Black Sea fleet there. Those are very complicated issues, which would require a serious strategic vision and competent diplomacy on the American side.

John Mearsheimer recently noted, with particular reference to the Iran War:

[I]t’s hard for me to imagine the United States and Iran reaching a deal on these different issues anytime soon. …

And then when it comes to negotiations, there are two big problems there. One is the trust issue. Do you think the Iranians trust the United States at this point in time? The last time the two sides were negotiating, we all of a sudden launched a war against Iran. In the middle of the negotiations. Can the Iranians trust the United States?

And then, moreover, do you really think the Trump Administration is really capable for executing a negotiation that leads to a meaningful settlement? This is the gang that can’t shoot straight. They couldn’t settle the war in Ukraine. They can’t end the genocide in Gaza. This is not a highly competent administration that’s filled with top-rate diplomats. Instead they have people like Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in charge. (3)

The Laurel-and-Hardy team of Jared Kushner and Steve Witcoff are not going to be able to pull off anything like that. The idea of the United States being unable to conduct serious, substantive diplomacy on issues like Ukraine and Iran until 2029 at the earliest is not an encouraging one. As Lieven says in the video, “Who’s to negotiate peace in Ukraine?” He also comments that Laurel and Hardy don’t understand how to negotiate with Iran either.

And there is no end currently in sight for the US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon. Which is currently pushing the world toward a global recession.

Gerhard Mangott, a Russia expert from the University of Innsbruck, recently discussed the internal situation in Russia on a podcast for Austria’s Die Presse. The news service provides this summary of part of his presentation:

The dissatisfaction with Putin – among the people as well as among the elite – is not homogeneous, but rather it comes from completely different sides that had different expectations of him. What does not seem to suit everyone is the economic weakness on the one hand, and the unclear situation in the Ukraine war on the other. And finally, according to Mangott, the dominant position of power of the secret services and the military. What has happened here in recent years is absolute-control mania and repression: "The secret services have free rein." (3)

It’s not at all surprising that after four years plus of a war of attrition that there would be irritation and unhappiness over the sacrifices Russians and especially soldiers are being called upon to bear. The chronic optimism by American hawks in the potency of economic sanctions to force countries to bow to American desires is really quite a phenomenon. When countries like Cuba, Iran, Iraq and Russia see their national interests and the survival of their regimes at risk if they given in to sanctions, they have shown a great ability to sacrifice and adapt.

But optimistic hawks have been predicting Russia’s economic collapse since the current war began in early 2022. It hasn’t happened yet. And Russia, which is still a petrostate, is getting a direct boost from the higher oil prices resulting from the US-Israel war on Iran. The Trump regime even relaxed the sanctions aimed at preventing Russia from selling oil after Iran asserted greater control over the Strait of Hormuz shipping route.

Another obsession of US Russia hawks is the idea that the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was “the Soviet Union’s Vietnam,” in the hopeful thinking of neocons. That plausible enough if we completely ignore Russia’s economic problems, much of which had to do with their dependency of oil sales and thus their vulnerability to oil price swings, their inability to modernize their industry fast enough, and the economic burden of maintain the economies of the Warsaw Pact states. Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet leader who accepted de facto defeat and withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan. But it wouldn’t fit easily into the neocon narrative to say the USSR fell because citizens were so outraged at Gorbachev’s failure to continue that war.

I’m still convinced that part of the strategic thinking of both the US and the European allies on Ukraine was this was a war that would severely weaken Russia and was therefore something that would benefit them geopolitically. And, as a practical matter, it has meant heavy costs for Russia. But it has been over four years in which the Russian army has gained a lot of combat experience. Much more so than the US or EU nations have accumulated recently.

With wars and tangled diplomatic situations, the superficially banal observation that several things can be true at once is particularly important to keep in mind. NATO’s diplomacy toward Russia over the question of expanding it to include Ukraine was reckless. And it was illegal and unnecessary for Russia to seize Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, to subsidize and arm pro-Russia rebels in the Donbass (along with direct Russian participation) from that point on, and invading Ukraine and occupying their territory since 2022. It’s certainly questionable what much advantage Ukraine has gained by its direct attacks on Russian territory but it is completely legitimate to attack the invading country.

It’s true that Ukraine stands for the defense of liberal democracy. It’s also the case that the widely used V-Dem think tank ratings currently describe both Ukraine and Russia as of 2025 as “electoral autocracies.” Belarus, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are all in the lower category of "closed autocracies." (5)

Wars and other forms of politics can be complicated and confusing …

Notes:

(1) Greenall, Robert (2026): Trump says Russia and Ukraine to observe three-day ceasefire. BBC News 05/08/2026. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c202zn5gg0lo> (Accessed: 2026-08-05).

(2) Anatol Lieven - Russia, Iran, Europe, and the Remaking of World Order. Armenian News Network-Groong Podcast 05/08/2026. <https://youtu.be/bnwKcnMSZTk?si=3zPCd-qMsnYTgMKy> (Accessed: 2026-08-05).

(3) 'IRAN WILL NOT SURRENDER' – TRUMP STUCK IN A LOSING WAR WITH NO OFF-RAMP. Rachel Blevins YouTube channel 05/09/2026. (14:00ff in the video) <https://youtu.be/5Do9bE1gMxk?si=upRcR3aTokHd5sGm> (Accessed: 2026-09-05).

(4) „Putin ist in seiner Elite angeschlagen“, sagt Experte Mangott: „Die Geheimdienste haben Narrenfreiheit“. Die Presse n/d (05/08/2026?). <https://www.diepresse.com/22329933/putin-ist-in-seiner-elite-angeschlagen-sagt-experte-mangott-die-haben> (Accessed: 2026-09-05). My translation to English.

(5) V-Dem Democracy Report 2026, p. 15. <https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf>

Iran War, professional warmongering version

It turns out that it takes more than bluster and dropping a few bombs to have an effective foreign policy!

From The Guardian:

As Patrick Wintour reports:

A refusal by Saudi Arabia to allow the US to use its bases and airspace to provide a military escort for oil tankers passing through the strait of Hormuz lay behind Donald Trump’s decision to shelve the plan days after it had been launched.

Riyadh told the White House it would not allow its Prince Sultan airbase to be used to mount the operation billed as Project Freedom, which the US presented as the successor to the bombing campaign called Operation Epic Fury.

Saudi Arabia refused to drop its objections despite a personal call between the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and Trump, NBC reported. (1)

One might almost think that the US needed allies for effective power projection. How could anyone have known?

Trita Parsi reminds us of one of the most significant influence on Trump’s warmongering policies in the Iran War: the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). This is a neoconservative think tank with a particular interest in supporting aggressive policies by Israel. It has its own journal, called FDD’s Long War Journal.

Parsi argues that the initial ceasefire in the Iran War was potentially very advantageous to the Trump’s position:

In short, this emerging status quo could have constituted a quiet but decisive victory for Trump. Yes, Iran would retain control over the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz — but it does so today as well and would do so in almost any scenario. But the status quo would have seen oil prices drop as the Iranians would allow tankers to transit in order to collect fees. And as long as oil prices came down, Trump’s position at home and vis-à-vis Iran would have strengthened. [my emphasis] (2)

But blundering militarism also has a strong appeal for Trump and his Christian nationalist base, which is well reflected in the Crusader mentality of his appalling Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth. But the FDD lobbied the Administration to go for regime change:

Trump was fully on board [with the regime-change approach]. His long-sought subjugation of Iran suddenly appeared tantalizingly within reach. “The blockade is genius,” the president told reporters. “Now, they have to cry uncle; that’s all they have to do. Just say, ‘We give up.’” (Notably, an FDD staffer has reportedly since joined Steve Witkoff’s [negotiating] team.)

Predictably, the opposite occurred. FDD’s confident calculations and tidy logic were, as so often, rooted more in wishful thinking than in hard reality. By its own projections, Iran should have exhausted its storage capacity nearly a week ago. Yet satellite imagery shows Tehran still actively loading oil onto tankers at Kharg Island. While the blockade has undeniably increased economic pressure, there is no sign of the acute storage crisis — or the cascading collapse - FDD confidently promised Trump. [my emphasis]

Warmongers exaggerate and lie. Who could have known?

John Judis profiled the FDD in 2015 when it was lobbying hard against Obama arms-control agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA):

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the so-called 800-pound gorilla, is the big player in lobbying against the nuclear weapons agreement that the United States and five other countries signed with Iran. When it comes to influencing members of Congress, AIPAC has the access to financial contributors with which to reward the compliant and pressure the recalcitrant.

But that’s not enough. Opponents of the deal, if they are to carry the day, need crisp talking points and plausible arguments; they need credible experts who will back up their position in congressional hearings, on opinion pages, and on TV and radio. And no organization has been better at providing this kind of intellectual firepower than the little-known Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a relatively small Washington think tank that is devoting itself to defeating the Iran deal. …

[FDD’s] research and advocacy have centered on the Middle East and in particular on conflicts and issues that impinge on Israel. And its positions have closely tracked those of the Likud party and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—not just on the Iran deal, but on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the desirability of a two-state solution. (3)

He noted then that one of FDD’s chief funders was Paul Singer, a vulture-fund speculator who won a huge settlement on defaulted Argentine bonds after the Supreme Court overturned 600 years or so of precedent on sovereign debt.

FDD’s CEO Mark Dubowitz was listing demands for Iran a couple of weeks before the US-Israel war on Iran began:

It's very clear Iran has to fully dismantle their nuclear programs, zero enrichment, zero reprocessing. And there need to be severe restrictions on its very dangerous ballistic missile program and ends its support for terrorism, release political prisoners and end its repression of the Iranian people. In other words, act like a normal nation that doesn't threaten the United States, Israel and our other allies in the region. ... (4)

In other words, Iran should abolish its current government and meet every other demand that the US and Israel make of it.

Well, he got what he wanted!

If Dubowitz decides he no longer wants to be CEO, he and Pete Hegseth could team up and start a training academy for professional warmongers. They could probably get big federal subsidies from Trump to do as well as financial support from arms manufacturers.

This is a familiar gig for the FDD. Philip Weiss reported in 2021:

The New York Times and other media frequently quote experts from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and identify FDD as a hawkish thinktank. But they fail to say what the FDD told the IRS: it was founded to promote Israel’s image in the United States, the investigative journalist Eli Clifton says. He characterized the omission as bordering on “journalistic malpractice.” (5)

Here is a short video from the FDD YouTube channel that presents a FOX News clip gushing about what a glorious victory for the US it was to kidnap Nicolas Maduro and his wife earlier this year: (6)

The Venezuelan operation was a major factor encouraging Trump and his crew to think that the US-Israel Iran War would be a cakewalk, to recycle an infamous phrase from the lead-up to the Iraq War.

Trita Parsi also reminds us that emotional and ideological factors still loom large in US-Iran policy:

There is a pathology in U.S. policy on Iran that transcends administrations and party affiliations: The incessant search for an escalatory silver bullet that brings Iran to its knees, forces it to capitulate, and enables the U.S. to assert its superpower dominance and avoid a compromise with the Islamic Republic.

Across 47 years, the hunt for this fabled silver bullet has echoed on — yet nothing answers back. Countless diplomatic opportunities have been sacrificed, and face-saving exit ramps have been burnt in the process. Yet, the quest continues. [my emphasis]

Joe Cirincione recently discussed the current diplomatic situation. Which from the viewpoint of US interests is a real disaster. He also provides relevant facts about the history of US-Iran relations. (7)

Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to wage war in southern Lebanon, the other front in the US-Israeli war on Iran, using “demolition, displacement and the systematic destruction of the frontline [Lebanese] villages in its path.” (8)

Notes:

(1) Wintour, Patrick (2026): Trump shelved ‘Project Freedom’ after Saudis refused use of bases and airspace. Guardian 05/07/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/07/trump-project-freedom-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz> (Accessed: 2026-07-05).

(2) Parsi, Trita (2026): Trump’s Iran blockade snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Responsible Statecraft 05/02/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-iran-blockade/> (Accessed: 2026-02-05).

(3) Judis, John (2015): The Little Think Tank That Could. Slate 08/18/2015. <https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/08/foundation_for_the_defense_of_democracies_inside_the_small_pro_israel_think.single.html> (Accessed: 2026-02-05).

(4) Inskeep, Steve (2026): Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO on why he thinks the US should strike Iran. NPR 02/11/2026. <https://www.npr.org/2026/02/11/nx-s1-5708732/foundation-for-defense-of-democracies-ceo-on-why-he-thinks-the-us-should-strike-iran> (Accessed: 2026-02-05).

(5) Weiss, Philip (2021): ‘NYT’ often cites thinktank on Iran without saying it was founded to promote Israel’s image. Mondoweiss <https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/nyt-often-cites-thinktank-on-iran-without-saying-it-was-founded-to-promote-israels-image/> (Accessed; 2026-03-05).

(6) RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery on the U.S. capturing Venezuela's Maduro–Fox News. FDD YouTube channel <https://youtu.be/e627jU-yrGk?si=KhihJ6rFqSBV318F 01/03/2026. (Accessed; 2026-03-05).

(7) Joseph Cirincione "Worst strategic defeat in U.S. history." The Brief with Jim Clancy 05/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/Nst942R6QrA?si=TqORgdYDB3HdL75X> (Accessed; 2026-03-05).

(8) Sand, Amal (2026): How Lebanon's leaders are enabling Israel's war on their own country. Middle East Eye 05/05/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/lebanons-leaders-are-enabling-israels-war-their-own-country> (Accessed: 2026-07-05).

A German rightwinger writes about Jürgen Habermas. And, yes, the result is weird.

Paul Gottfried is a professor and polemicist associated with the German “New Right.” Similarly to the US and other places, they are rightwingers who spin out theories dressed up with “highbrow” pretensions.

German New Right ideologue Paul Gottfried, 2017 (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Tony Senatore recently wrote a piece for the Times of Israel giving Gottfried credit for recognizing that William Buckley was a squish when it came to defending True Conservatism. Buckley gained some measure of respectability even among liberals when he explicitly broke with the paranoid conspiracism of the John Birch Society, in particular. He scolds Buckley for watering down True Conservatism to be respectable to “the establishment, [by] prioritizing respectability over foundational principles.” (1)

In a drearily familiar rightwing conversion narrative, Senatore recalls how Gottfried’s perspective allowed him to see the True Light of Pure Conservatism:

I discovered that the early conservative movement was once composed of a diverse and brilliant array of figures, including Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn, and the John Birch Society. [Rightwing cranks all.] Over time, Buckley’s leadership became dominant. Importantly, Buckley was essentially a libertarian, heavily influenced by Albert J. Nock. Some anticipated the 1960s communist threat would only temporarily override Buckley’s libertarian inclinations, but this proved untrue. Ultimately, Buckley removed anyone unwilling to support the welfare-warfare state, the Cold War, and the neoconservative economics underpinning it.

The Wikipedia entry for Gottfried notes:

Gottfried helped coin the term alternative right with a speech to the H.L. Mencken Club in 2008 envisioning a nationalist and populist right-wing movement; it was published by Richard Spencer in [the flaming rightwing] Taki's Magazine with the title "The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right". Gottfried has been described as a former intellectual mentor to [the American neo-Nazi Richard] Spencer. As of 2010, according to the SPLC, Gottfried was a senior contributing editor at Alternative Right, a website edited by Spencer. He and Spencer co-edited a book in 2015. [italics in original] (2)

Now the paleocon American Conservative has published a piece by Gottfried on Jürgen Habermas, the recently deceased German political and legal philosopher who had a major influence on how the German “memory culture” (Vergangenheitspolitik) treats the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. (3)

I’m commenting here on Gottfried’s obituary of Habermas not because it’s worth reading but because The American Conservative picked a guy like this to write an obituary on one of the world’s most famous philosophers, who as a part of the “Second Generation” of the Frankfurt School trend of “critical theory,” was also an important advocate for a politics of militant democracy and a critical of Trumpism and its European soulmates.

The American Conservative is part of the nationalist-unilateralist foreign policy perspective that Trump practices. And so it does sometimes publish articles by foreign policy “restrainers” who are not rightwing crackpots. It’s just a shady digital neighborhood to hang out to find such material. As of this writing, it is running an article (which I’m not going to bother to link) warning about the imminent danger of something called “moderate lib terrorism” in the United States. When the entire premise of your article is an oxymoron, you might as well give up trying to convince anyone not high on oxycontin.

Gottfried’s article is “highbrow” rightwing nonsense. He expresses his regret that Habermas, who did a dissertation in 1954 on the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854). As a young student in Tubingen, he was close friends with Hegel and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and all three was passionate admirers of the French Revolution. Hegel and Hölderlin maintained their progressive political orientation later in life, but Schiller became a Catholic reactionary. When Hegel passed away, Schelling was called by the conservative Prussian educational ministry to take Hegel’s place so that he could undo the effects of what then-Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV reportedly called the “dragon’s seed” of progressive religious and political thought that Hegel represented to conservatives.

Gottfried in his ridiculous article mourns the fact that Habermas didn’t adopt some version of what Gottfried seems to regard as the healthy conservative/reactionary-Romantic perspective of the later Schelling. He also tries in his article to imply that Habermas may have been an aspiring Nazi at that time. (4)

Notes:

(1) Senatore, Tony (2026): Paul Gottfried, William F. Buckley and American Conservatism. Times of Israel 02/10/2026. <https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/paul-gottfried-william-f-buckley-and-american-conservatism/> (Accessed: 2026-06-05).

(2) Paul Gottfried. Wikipedia 05/05/2026. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Gottfried&oldid=1352656287> (Accessed: 2026-06-05).

(3) Gottfried, Paul (2026): Habermas’s Age. American Conservative 05/01/2026. <https://www.theamericanconservative.com/habermass-age/> (Accessed: 2026-06-05).

(4) Philipp Felsch provides a sober account of Habermas’ early philosophical work including the Schelling dissertation in Der Philosoph. Habermas und Wir (2025).

Robert Pape on political violence in the US

The political scientist Robert Pape who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) has been studying public attitudes in the US toward political violence and has a book on the topic coming out this year.

In this interview, he cites increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the US as a cause of rising political violence. And he says, “what that transition is doing is riling up politics on both eh right and the left.”

One of the challenges in measuring public support in the US for “political violence” is to apply some kind of consistent notion of what political violence actually is. That is especially important since the Trump regime describes a broad range of dissenters as protesters of being “terrorists.” A new article by Papa and Christopher Price argues:

Surveys have found varied levels of public support for political violence that range all the way from 2.9 percent to 20 percent, depending on methodological choices and snapshot in time of the survey ... However, critics argue that these surveys poorly represent the current level of support for violence, suggesting that these estimates are “biased upward because of respondent disengagement and survey questions that allow for multiple interpretations of political violence,” and that support for political violence in the United States is in the low single digits …). These are not minor differences, with estimates differing by an order of magnitude. (2)

But a response of 20% of Americans supporting political violence in the abstract is lower than the number of people in the US who saw in recent surveys that they support Donald Trump’s 2.0 regime. It’s also lower than the surprisingly low number of people who support his current Iran War. It would presumably be a better measure to ask Americans if they support the violent actions of ICE and the Customs and Border Control (CPB) in 2025-26, which have included murder, kidnapping, illegal home invasions, and beatings.

Their article focuses heavily on technical issues with the available public opinion studies, including both sampling methods and evaluations. They state at the end of their paper that available results of surveys they evaluated show that up to 10% of the US public support political violence.

However, they note pointedly that “our estimate is most likely an undercount.”

As we saw on January 6, 2021, there are organized far-right militias that Republicans can mobilize, and they did so dramatically that day at the Capitol. Whatever “self-defense” groups or lone wolves there are on the left in the US, they aren’t anywhere near the size of the far-right violent militias. Meanwhile, Trump himself and his minions not only declare anything they deem to be “antifa” (anti-fascists) to be terrorists. This is beyond bad parody. It’s complete cynicism. And when Trump sends out agents of literal state terror like the black-masked ICW Gestapo to practice violence and murder against law-abiding citizens and residents, the “libertarian” Trumpists who want to get the “jackboots of the gubmint” off their necks cheer for the acts of state terror.

Back in the first Obama Administration, as the rightwing militia movement was growing out of racist outrage at having an African-American President, a senior domestic terrorism analyst in the Department of Homeland Security, wrote a report warning of the rising number or rightwing militia groups and their particular threat to law enforcement officials, who Republicans usually like to idolize. Apparently terrified at the criticism he was receiving from Republicans, Obama shut down the unit for which Johnson was working. (3)

If the Obama team thought the problem would just go away if they ignored it, they were terribly wrong.

In 2017, I was attending the Netroots Nation convention in Atlantic and Darly Johnson was part of a panel chaired by the investigative journalist Dave Neiwert addressing domestic far-right extremism. Just as the panel was beginning, the news was reported about the murder of Heather Heyer, a counter-demonstrator against neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. James Alex Fields, Jr., was later convicted of the murder, which he carried out by ramming a crowd with his car, which injured 35 others. He was sentenced to life in prison plus hundreds of years on top of it.

In the following seven-plus years, the violent far-right militias were numerous and well-organized enough that Trump could incite an organized mob of them to attack the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2024 Presidential election. The Trump movement had built up its own political paramilitary capability. While Obama wanted to “look forward, not backward” and Biden kept reassuring us, “the fever will break.”

I hope the discussions around Pape’s upcoming book will help alert more people to the real nature of political violence in the US.

Notes:

(1) Robert Pape: “We are heading toward more violence”. Aljazeera English YouTube channel 05/07/2026. <https://youtu.be/4jy3aiZm6pE?si=FMu-rHUbgrP8n4bL> (Accessed 2026-04-05).

(2) Pape, Robert & Price, Christopher (2026): How to Estimate Public Support for Political Violence and Why It Matters ... Public Opinion Quarterly 90:2, 451–477.

(3) Statement of Daryl Johnson CEO, DT Analytics Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution 09/19/2012. <https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/9-19-12JohnsonTestimony.pdf> (Accessed : 2026-04-05.)

Criticism of Israel and antisemitism

Writing about Israel’s Independence Day (April 21-22), Gideon Levy commented on what he sees as the widespread unwillingness of his fellow Israelis to seriously reflect on their country’s militaristic and even genocidal policies: "’Why does the world hate us?’ is dismissed as an illegitimate question in the public conversation. The world is antisemitic, full stop. This is the prevailing mood on this Independence Day.” (1)

The former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy is also an excellent, critical-minded source who analyzes and explain Israeli politics and diplomacy. He is currently the president of the US Middle East Project (USMEP). In this recent interview with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report, he stresses that the Netanyahu government’s military and foreign policy approach is not to have peace with nearby countries, but to dominate them. (2)

Ryan Grim reports on Israel’s policy of deliberately assassinating journalists: (3)

Democratic theorists, politicians, and political activists have long recognized that antisemitism is a threat to democracy and general decency. Paul Massing’s 1949 book Rehearsal foe Destruction: A Study of Political ‘Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany is one of many examples. (4) That was one of the volumes produced by the Studies in Prejudice project sponsored by the American Jewish Committee that was directed by Max Horkheimer.

Massing describes notable figures in the propagation of antisemitism, of hatred for Hews in general, such as Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909), an official chaplain on the German Imperial Court, who Massing credits as being the first to successfully channel the “confused grievances and claims through a host of spokesmen: priests and professors, quacks and crusaders, embittered journalists and romantic reactionaries” into a movement of political antisemitism. (p. 22) He was a bitter enemy of social-democratic politics, labor unions, and industrial workers in general. At the same time, he used techniques mostly identified with the Social Democrats, such as mass meetings for workers, to win their vote for reactionary politics. Hitler’s movement later followed this broad approach, as well. One of his main partners in that effort was a sleazy character named Emil Grüneberg, who had a “shady character and criminal record.” (p. 23) The German Conservative Party adopted Stocker’s brand of antisemitic politics.

Adolf Stoecker , a major pioneer of political antisemitism in Germany

One aspect of the current debates over antisemitism is the practice of the Israeli government to treat criticisms of Israeli government policies, especially those directed against Israel’s illegal attacks against neighboring countries and against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, as itself a form of antisemitism.

There is a document from International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) of antisemitism that is often cited as the basis of that claim. A number of countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, and various other members of the EU have either endorsed or formally adopted the IHRA definition, first adopted in 2016..

I wrote about the IHRA definition a couple of years ago. Kenneth Stern, who led the drafting of the definition, spoke to Christine Amanpour about what he sees as its misuse, the kind of misuse described in the Haaretz report. (5)

Long-standing ideological polemics can be headache-inducing. And this is a notable example. But headache-inducing is not the same as indecipherable. For people who aren’t necessarily familiar with this particular polemic, it can be bewildering sometimes to parse when criticism of Israel is used for antisemitic purposes and when not. A good general guideline is whether the criticism is focused on the government of Israel and its actions, or instead on using the actions of Israel to criticize Jews in general.

For Americans, the massive material and diplomatic support the US provides Israel puts an added responsibility for voters and political decision-makers to parse these differences honestly. Antisemitism is about more than Israel. And so is opposing antisemitism.

Peter Ullrich wrote about the IHRA definition for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in 2019, years before the post-October 7 2023 controversies. That institute is politically close to the German Left Party. So it’s safe to say it’s a “left” position. Ullrich:

[T]he “Working Definition” is conducive to contradictory and error-prone application in practice and leads to assessments of incidents and facts that are not based on clear criteria but on the preconceptions of those applying it or on prevalent interpretations adopted without reflection. Applying the “Working Definition” creates the fiction of an objective assessment guided by criteria. The definition provides procedural legitimacy for decisions that are in fact taken on the basis of other criteria that remain implicit and are specified neither in the definition nor in the examples.

The weaknesses of the “Working Definition” are the gateway to its political instrumentalization, for instance for morally discrediting opposing positions in the Arab-Israeli conflict with the accusation of antisemitism. This has relevant implications for fundamental rights. The increasing implementation of the “Working Definition” as a quasi-legal basis for administrative action promises regulatory potential. In fact, it is instead an instrument that all but invites arbitrariness. [my emphasis] (6)

Notes:

(1) Levy, Gideon (2026): Israel at 78 still believes it can live by the sword alone. A reckoning is due. Middle East Eye 04/23/2026. <https://youtu.be/XviEhjGBg-A?si=gRIusUl-qP4ux14E> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(2) Decoding Israel’s Superpower Ambitions. The Majority Report YouTube channel 04/20/2026. <https://youtu.be/PWyjl6BKJuA?si=3aIrtY25mmxUFNnS> (Accessed: 2026-25-04).

(3) Israel TRIPLE TAPS Lebanon Journalist. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/24/2026. <https://youtu.be/KMwNy3ANKaY?si=GwKj5ohzjY3YPMNT> (Accessed: 2026-25-04).

(4) Full text available: American Jewish Committee: <https://ajcarchives.org/Portal/Default/en-US/SearchResults> Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.177835>

(5) He Helped Define “Antisemitism”; Now He Says the Term Is Being Weaponized. Amanpour and Company YouTube channel 05/02/2024. <https://youtu.be/6FFAcHMO488?si=9JL7eKI0kiBg3Yv0> (Accessed: 2026-18-04). ]

Stern, Kenneth (2019): I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it. Guardian 12/13/2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/antisemitism-executive-order-trump-chilling-effect> (Accessed: 2024-04-05).

(6) Ullrich, Peter (2026): Expert Opinion on the [IHRA’s[ “Working Definition of Antisemitism.” Oct. 2019. <https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/rls_papers/Papers_3-2019_Antisemitism.pdf> (Accessed: 2026-27-04).

The grim state of Israeli military policies in the Iran War

Amos Harel in Haaretz delivers a grim, disturbing description of the performance of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with particular reference to their current war in Lebanon. He doesn’t use the word “colonialist” to describe the illegal Jewish settler movement in the West Bank or the IDF in Lebanon. But he concludes his column this way:

[S]ome of the seeds of this aberrant behavior were definitely sown on the hilltops of Samaria in the northern West Bank and made their way into the IDF and Israel proper. When coalition lawmakers talk with glittering eyes about pioneering that restores land in the territories to Jewish hands, we have to understand that these are calculated moves geared toward ethnic cleansing, even if this is still being done in small numbers. The whole story is about as romantic as that of the Ku Klux Klan in 1960s Mississippi. [my emphasis] (1)

It’s worth recalling here that in 1967, Southern white segregationists, despite being antisemitic for the most part, began to view Israelis as “white” people fighting against barbaric Arabs – or “sand n*****s,” in SegregationSpeak. That impression is very much part of the sentiment among Christian Zionists in America today, a key part of the Trumpista political coalition.

Israel has a national election scheduled later this year on October 27. Netanyahu faces prosecution on corruption charges once he is no longer Prime Minister. The wars he’s conducted since the October 7 attack in 2023 and is conducting right now against Iran and Lebanon have allowed him to postpone the time he has to face elections. And he has maximum political incentive to portray himself as the only one who can protect Israel from its enemies.

Israeli citizens have lived in a liberal democracy. But Netanyahu has gone a long way with his project of turning it into an authoritarian system. But the hasbara claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East” has continued. Samuele Arioli reported in 2024 for the V-Dem think tank:

For the first time in 50 years, Israel is downgraded from the liberal democracy category. … [V-Dem maintains a widely-used rating of countries according to measure of liberal democracy.]

Government attacks on the judiciary are becoming more frequent. In 2019, amid corruption charges, Prime Minister Netanyahu accused key figures in the judiciary of conspiring with police forces in a joint “attempted coup”. In 2023, the Knesset passed a bill that severely curtailed the Supreme Court´s powers to overrule government decisions and invalidate laws passed by parliament. Mass protests quickly gained momentum to denounce this plan of judicial overhaul against the most important Israeli court.

Moreover, international observers point at the widespread discriminatory practices that Israeli authorities employ towards minorities, resulting in arbitrary law enforcement. Administrative detentions, degrading treatment of prisoners, and incidents of torture have worsened significantly in 2023, in the context of the war against Hamas. This is reflected in the recent decline in the indicators of transparent laws with predictable enforcement and freedom from torture. [my emphasis] (2)

Netanyahu’s wars and his authoritarian politics have had grim implications for Israel and its army. Harel:

[ Reserve IDF Col. Udi Evental wrote that] Netanyahu is departing from the principles laid down by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion [Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister during the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians]. Israel's wars should be as short as possible, he averred, based on an understanding of the country's weaknesses. However, Evental writes, overturning that approach is liable to leave Israel with less, not more, security.

We have, he explains, passed "from a policy that sought to lengthen the periods of quiet between the wars on the basis of managing risks in the face of threats, and striving for settlements, to a policy that preserves an unbroken sequence of wars without political moves, while devouring the state's resources and imposing a growing load on the regular army, the reserves and the economy."

Harel’s column also points out that the current war in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah forces is encountering a great deal of difficulty and is also practicing familiar criminal methods:

Because most of the Hezbollah force in southern Lebanon was disabled or retreated northward, the bulk of the IDF's activity in the area looks like a copy-paste version of its activity in the Gaza Strip in 2025: systematic destruction of houses in villages, on the grounds that this constitutes the demolition of terrorist infrastructures.

This is very much a part of the Iran War. Hezbollah is an allied force of Iran’s. It’s often referred to as an Iranian “proxy”, but in fact it is Lebanon’s only real military force. The official government forces are much weaker and are incapable on their own of defending their country from Israel attacks.

Gideon Levy offered these thoughts on May 1 on the current state of the Iran War, including Lebanon. And also on state of the Israeli press. Levy himself is a columnist for Haaretz: (3)

Notes:

(1) Harel, Amos (2026): Wishful Thinking Won't Topple Iran or Protect Israeli Soldiers From Drones. Haaretz 05/01/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-05-01/ty-article/.premium/wishful-thinking-wont-topple-iran-or-protect-israeli-soldiers-from-drones/0000019d-e009-db36-a1fd-e20f1cf50000?gift=e04652150fc242dfb0458b5b77c32073> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(2) Arioli, Samuele (2024): Democracy in Decline in Israel. V-Dem 11/28/2024. <https://v-dem.net/weekly_graph/democracy-in-decline-in-israel> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(3) 'Destroying southern Lebanon': Is Gaza now Israel's playbook for the whole region? Middle East Eye YouTube channel 05/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/jfUnnMYT6xQ?si=m1auN1RBMWG2qXnt> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

Iran War Monthly Summaries: Month 2 (April 2026)

The current Iran War began on Febuary 28, two months ago, with the illegal military attack by the US and Israel on Iran.

Trump, 04/16/2026:

US President Donald Trump said that the war in Iran is going "swimmingly" and that it "should be ending pretty soon."

“It should be ending pretty soon,” Trump said at an event in Las Vegas. "It was perfect. It’s perfect. It was the power we have... We had the most powerful military anywhere in the world." (1)

Iran has suffered considerable damage and death. But their strategic position in the world has been enhanced. Alastair Crooke made the following assessment as the Iran War moved into its second month, emphasizing that Iran has formidable ground and air forces (missiles) and warning that Iraqi forces of some kind could become active on Iran’s side. He even speculates that Iraq might decide to annex Kuwait! (2)

April was the month that the President of the United States openly, explicitly threatened Iran with genocide on his Truth Social app:

Making that threat is a war crime in itself.

Richard Haass 04/24/2026 isn’t impressed by the war Trump and “War” Secretary Pete Kegsbreath initiated alongside Israel:

This was a war that did not need to happen – a war of choice – and, on balance, it has left the United States worse off. Yes, Iran is weaker if measured strictly in terms of conventional military capability, but that’s about the only accomplishment the administration can boast. … As for the war itself, virtually every other metric shows the United States, the region, and the world to be worse off. [my emphasis] (3)

A big part of the story is the disastrous excuse for actual diplomacy that the Trump regime has been practicing. Featuring goofy pronouncements from the Orange Anomaly like this one, Trump 03/26/2026: “[Iran] did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize, and they gave it to us.” (4)

Did anyone ever figure out what the Very Big Present was? Apparently it was that Iran agreed to let ten oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Things quickly reverted to NACHO state (Not A Chance Hormuz Opens),

And, Trump on Iran 04/02/2026: “We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily.” (5)

The International Crisis Group, on the other hand, tells us something substantive about the war: “Iran’s conduct is best understood as an attempt to convert battlefield resilience into political leverage. Tehran regards the ceasefire not as an endpoint but as an opportunity to shape the terms of the conflict’s next phase.” (6)

The Houthis entered the war at the end of March.

Trump has been getting some good advice. But of course he’s ignoring it, especially when it’s about international law which he neither understands nor accepts:

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, has accused the US president of war crimes by bombing bridges and threatening further attacks on Iran’s infrastructure, and deplored the “reckless” nature of the conflict and its effect on ordinary people in Iran.

“War is not a game show; peace-making is not a real estate deal; the world is not a casino”, said Mr Fletcher, who worked for three former British prime ministers: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

“You don’t hit civilian infrastructure. That includes hospitals. You don’t hit schools, energy sources, bridges. That is a war crime. That is absolutely clear in international law.

“Somewhere along the way, we have thrown all that aside. We have chosen impunity, indifference and game-show gambling over solidarity and humanity”, Mr Fletcher told the BBC. my emphasis] (7)

It was an ugly month in Lebanon, too, which is part of the war.

Since 2 March, Israel has carried out a large-scale air campaign in Lebanon, killing more than 2,290 people, wounding over 7,500, and displacing 1.2 million people, around 20 percent of the population.

At the same time, the Israeli military has launched a ground invasion, announcing plans to occupy large swathes of southern Lebanon and stating that displaced residents would not be allowed to return to their homes.

Israeli forces have spent weeks demolishing entire villages, using bulldozers and rigging homes with explosives before flattening them in large-scale remote-controlled detonations.

Within hours of the ceasefire coming into effect, Israeli troops carried out demolitions, artillery shelling, and land-clearing operations in several border areas, in violation of the truce. [my emphasis] (8)

Gideon Levy takes a thoughtful look at Israel’s situation in the war as he reflected on the 78th anniversary of Israel’s independence:

At the beginning of this state was the Nakba [ethnic cleansing operations against the Palestinians]: our day of celebration was the day of another people's historic catastrophe, a people who were here before us. Everything since has been bound up with what came before. What began in 1948 has not ended, not even in 2026.

From the Nakba to today, the basic principles by which Zionism operates have not changed, nor has the policy of successive governments of the Jewish state. The Nakba has never ended; it has merely altered in form. How disheartening it is to think that the values that led to the Nakba 78 years ago are still driving the State of Israel in 2026 - the same principles, the same objectives, the same methods.

Now a regional power and the closest ally of the most powerful superpower in the world, nothing has changed in Israel's overall outlook since it was a day-old state. It still believes it can live by the sword - and only by the sword - and that it has no alternative but a life sustained by the sword. [my emphasis] (9)

Michael Tomasky gave this summary of the state of affairs on April 24:

Trump made this problem. Entirely and solely. By pulling out of the JCPOA [Iranian nuclear agreement] in 2018, he ensured that Iran would start breaking the terms of the deal. He’s the one who made Iran strong. Then, eight years later, he comes back to us and says, Bad Iran! They broke the terms of the deal! They’re too strong. We must invade them.

But it’s actually even worse than that. Because we didn’t invade Iran because they broke the terms of the deal. We invaded Iran because Trump, having conquered (in his mind) America, needed to conquer farther reaches. Venezuela got him thinking, Hey, this war stuff is kinda fun. So he figured he’d be the guy who toppled the hated regime. A few bombs. Easy-peasy. [emphasis in original] (10)

And on the wartime diplomacy, Emily Horne offers this characterization:

It’s a real tell to negotiators in Iran that the people who are showing up at the table [negotiating for the US] really have no idea what they’re doing - that this is total amateur hour. …

JD Vance doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Steve Witkoff, the president’s golf buddy, is no diplomat. The president’s son-in-law can’t negotiate anything except a deal with crypto leaders in the Middle East that’s going to enrich himself. These people don’t know what they’re doing and they barely even tried at the Islamabad talks. They were on the ground for less than 24 hours, where they washed their hands of the whole thing and said that it was a failure. [my emphasis] (11)

Just Security has a helpful collection of articles on international law aspects of the current Iran War: https://www.justsecurity.org/114556/collection-israel-iran-conflict/

And the Institute for the Study of War is posting daily updates: https://understandingwar.org/analysis/middle-east/

Notes: (1) Trump says war on Iran 'should be ending pretty soon'. Middle East Eye 04/17/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/trump-says-war-iran-should-be-ending-pretty-soon> (Accessed: 2026-17-04).

(2) IRAN IS EMERGING as a DOMINANT POWER – Alastair Crooke. Daniel Davis-Deep Dive YouTube channel 03/29/2026. <https://youtu.be/XviEhjGBg-A?si=gRIusUl-qP4ux14E> (Accessed: 2026-29-03).

(3) Haass, Richard 04/24/2026): The US, Iran, & The Art of The Deal. Home & Away 04/26/2026. <https://richardhaass.substack.com/p/the-us-iran-and-the-art-of-the-deal> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(4) Greenhouse, Steven (2026): Trump’s strategy to get his way: declare one fake ‘emergency’ after another. Guardian 03/27/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/27/trump-national-emergency-elections> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(5) Breaking News. The New Republic 04/02/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/post/208535/white-house-accidentally-easter-lunch-trump-speech> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(6) International Crisis Group 04/15/2026 Iran Crisis Monitor Report #1. <https://www.crisisgroup.org/bnt/middle-east-north-africa/iran-israelpalestine-united-states/iran-crisis-monitor-1> (Accessed: 2026-26-04).

(7) Cooke, Millie (2026): UN chief tells Trump ‘war is not a game show’ after US bombs civilian targets in Iran. The Independent 04/03/2026. <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iran-war-trump-un-us-civilians-b2951408.html> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(8) A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon. Middle East Eye 04/21/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/history-israel-invasions-lebanon> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(9) Levy, Gideon (2026): Israel at 78 still believes it can live by the sword alone. A reckoning is due. Middle East Eye 04/23/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-78-believes-it-can-live-by-sword-alone-reckoning-due> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(10) Tomasky, Michael (2026): Let’s Hope America’s Dumbest War Doesn’t Become Its Most Tragic. TNR Politics 04/24/2026, <https://newrepublic.com/post/209477/trump-iran-jcpoa-dumbest-war-tragic> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).

(11) Transcript: Leavitt Goes Full Cult on Fox as War Leaks Humiliate Trump. The New Republic 04/22/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/article/209356/transcript-leavitt-goes-full-cult-fox-war-leaks-humiliate-trump> (Accessed: 2026-24-04).