Neoconservatism is the new Communism ...

It is also apparently on par with Salafist jihadism.

So speaketh Shea:

That secular messianic impulse is why I keep banging on about the sinister rhetoric of Creative Destruction that is animating the latest Big Thinkers in their Wilsonian/Machiavellian attempts to create heaven on earth (in this case, via democratic capitalism). Ideologies that attempt a short cut around human nature via violence (whether jihadi or Creative Destroyer) are menaces. The common rhetoric these ideologies share with the Commies is, as the Marxist loves to say, no accident. There are few things more dangerous than a couple of Christian virtues cut off from the Tradition and used as the basis of a militant movement unashamed to use violence in pursuit of the Millennium.

This is yet another of those times when Mark is illustrating his ignorance. Wilsonianism and Machiavellianism is are fairly incompatible political ideologies, as is evident to anyone who has read or is even somewhat familiar either Wilson or Machiavelli. To put it bluntly, they take extremely different views of human nature in order to bolster their philosophies. Trying to conflate the two as neoconservatism once again illustrates that Mark has no understanding of that ideology either, as I think has been demonstrated again and again.

Bringing Islamism into the discussion is yet more idiocy. If you read Sayyid Qutb and other jihadi leading lights, you will find that a large part of his message consists of a condemnation of democracy because it allows spiritual ignorance and vice to flourish. The reason you need a caliphate is because political freedom will be misused for ill ends and hence power must be trusted to those religiously qualified to hold it. This was also the rationale of both the Taliban and Saudi Arabia. Given Mark's condemnation of the United States as being ruled by a clique of millionaires who want to kill off the poor, I would think he might be more sympathetic to this line of hyperbolic argumentation. There is an enormous difference between this type of ideology and communism, incidentally, which is why I have no idea why it is being included. If you want to argue that Salafism has Marxist overtones I'm more than game, but there is a major difference between the overtones and the ideology.

One other thing that Mark might want to consider is that whatever he believes neoconservatism to be, it is not "a militant movement unashamed to use violence in pursuit of the Millennium." If it were, I suspect that he and his paleocon friends would find themselves in a very different state of affairs given, by all accounts, the ideology has been ascendant through most of the Bush administration. There is a difference between someone writing a mean article about you in National Review and someone who is seeking to kill you. I'm not exactly seeing much of a difference between Mark's attempt to tar neoconservatism as communist and the perpetual paleocon complaint that their views are tarred as anti-Semitic when it comes to Israel.

In case someone raises the issue, I am aware that any number of paleocons have criticized what they regard as the Trotskyite roots of neoconservatism. None of the leading ones, to the best of my knowledge, have argued that neoconservatism is the full-blown equivalent of international communism complete with a willingness to use violence in order to achieve their ends. To paraphrase one of Mark's quotes, "If neocons are communists, then why aren't you in a gulag?"

And lest some commentators question why I keep highlighting Mark's ever-nuttier political views, here again this is what he wins awards for. If people are going to keep endorsing him on that basis, I think it's time that they take a good long look at what kind of views are being expoused there.