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January 27, 2006
How the Neconservatives Got Their Name
It is amazing how you find things when you go looking for something else altogether. While doing some research on the Democratic Socialists of America I happened upon a biography of one the organization's founding influences, Michael Harrington.
In reference to the "right-wing" socialism of a Trotskyite outfit who endorsed Nixon in the 1972 election, Harrington reportedly thought this:
"By 1972 Harrington was finished with the right-leaning Shachtmanites, but not with the dream of building an American democratic socialist movement. The Shachtmanites hated the Democratic nominee for president, George McGovern, and made no secret of their belief that a Nixon presidency was preferable. To Harrington and his friends at Dissent, the phenomenon of "socialists for Nixon" deserved a name. Harrington reached for the term neoconservative. The neoconservatives derided the '60s generation of newly educated progressives as a "New Class" of self-seeking bureaucrats and opportunists. Harrington saw the same group as the hope of a new "conscience constituency" in American politics. He sought to bring together the McGovern wing of the Democratic Party, the social movements left over from the '60s, the progressive unions and the progressive wing of the Socialist Party."[Emphasis mine]
And those bastards and their sons are with us yet today.
Posted by Ali Massoud at January 27, 2006 01:56 PM
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