Trotsky's Ghost in the White House? (Insider Report).

For several years, various publications and commentators (including THE NEW AMERICAN) have noted the rise of a faction called "neoconservatives," whose most prominent spokesmen and theoreticians are disciples of Soviet founding father Leon Trotsky. Trotsky created the Red Army and preached a doctrine of "permanent revolution" before being assassinated on Stalin's orders in 1940.

Trotsky also created a tiny, but very influential, movement called the Fourth International, the influence of which was felt in the academic circles in which the modern neoconservative movement incubated. The Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy, particularly the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, owes a great deal to Trotsky's influence.

In a June 7th National Post essay entitled "Trotsky's Ghost Wandering the White House," Canadian reporter Jeet Heer pointed out that "thinkers shaped by the tradition of the Fourth International" were very influential in shaping the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq. For instance, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose early mentors included American Trotskyites Max Shachtman and Albert Wohlstetter, frequently consulted Fourth International academic Kanan Makiya when "seeking advice about Iraqi society...."

Author Stephen Schwartz, a frequent contributor to neocon journals such as National Review and The Weekly Standard, "observes that in certain Washington circles, the ghost of Trotsky still hovers around," reported Heer. Schwartz, who speaks affectionately of Trotsky as "the old man" and "L.D." (initials for Lev Davidovich Bronstein, Trotsky's birth name), told Heer of "exchang[ing] banter with Wolfowitz about Trotsky, the Moscow Trials and Max Shachtman" during a Washington party last February.

Significantly, "Schwartz finds support for the idea of pre-emptive war in the old Bolshevik's writings," continues Heer.

Interestingly, Heer's expose provoked a small but impassioned war within National Review's editorial collective, with contributors Schwartz and Arnold Beichman (another "ex"-Marxist) trading accusations regarding each other's ideological purity. In an essay on the magazine's website, Beichman condemned Heer and described Trotskyites as "sinister." Schwartz replied by citing National Review's lengthy Trotskyite heritage, which included founding members such as James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall, as well as neocon godfathers Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, whose influence has dominated the magazine in recent years. He also referred to Beichman's lengthy service in the Moscow-funded communist network within the United States.

Denouncing Beichman as a Stalinist, Schwartz wrote affectionately of "the Red Flag and everything it once stood for," and insisted that he will defend Trotsky "to my last breath ... and without apology."

Marxist factional fights of this sort abound in the fever-swamp Left. Seeing one erupt within the editorial collective of what is supposedly America's foremost conservative fortnightly is an interesting spectacle indeed.