Sunday, June 15, 2003

In These Times | Neocon Convergences
That neocons are galvanized by race is no surprise. One of the founding documents of neoconservatism is Norman Podhoretz’s 1963 essay “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” In that famous Commentary essay, Podhoretz’s comments helped create a gap between blacks and Jews that has yet to be bridged. Among other things, he suggested that the solution to America’s racial problem would be for blacks to accept miscegenation as an unobtrusive form of genocide.

Victims of these evils see the link between neo-imperialism and neoracism much more easily than the victimizers. And they fear this axis of evil much more than the one concocted by Bush’s speech writers. That’s likely one reason black Americans resisted overwhelming media propaganda and opposed the Iraq invasion. The funding priorities of the Bradley Foundation show those fears are not misplaced.