LewRockwell.com (LR)

LewRockwell.com (LR)

Overview

* Nominally libertarian website that features many views consistent with those of the radical left
* “[W]hat we have alive in the U.S. is an updated and Americanized fascism.”  — Lew Rockwell 
* Considers the U.S. government “fascist”


Lewrockwell.com is the website of Lew Rockwell, self styled libertarian writer and “full-time gadfly against the conventional wisdom.” Rockwell describes the content of his site as “unapologetically idiosyncratic.” Among its many columnists and commentators, who hail from all points along the political spectrum, are Alexander Cockburn, Karen Kwiatkowski, Michael MooreJohn Pilger, Ted Rall, Dennis “Justin” Raimondo, Frank Rich, Robert Scheer, and Cindy Sheehan.

In the view of Rockwell and many of the contributors to LewRockwell.com, the U.S. government is the world’s most oppressive regime. “We are talking about the greatest centralized power on the globe, the world’s largest, most well-armed, and most dangerous government, the only government to have ever used nuclear weapons against civilians and the government that has invaded more countries than any other in modern times,” wrote Rockwell in June 2004. A year later, he wrote, “Americans need to face the reality that most of the world sees our nation as the new evil empire, and many people in the Gulf region are dedicated to making sure that the Iraq War is the last hurrah for American militarism.”

LewRockwell.com believes that the U.S. is in the grip of a fascist government. Rockwell refers to his political opponents as “fascisti,” and to supporters of American policies as “storm troopers of the regime” and proponents of “red-state fascism.” Stressing that this is “not just rhetoric,” Rockwell urges his readers to “recognize that fascism is a reality, not just a smear term.”

In July 2004, Rockwell wrote, “I have this in common with NPR, Michael Moore, the Black Caucus, and assorted other grasping, complaining, anti-capitalist victim lobbies: a burning desire to see George Bush’s fingers pried loose from the levers of power.” In a December 2004 column, Rockwell lamented that “what we have alive in the U.S. is an updated and Americanized fascism,” the solution for which “requires that we face the reality of the current threat forthrightly by extending more rhetorical tolerance leftward and less rightward.” “What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time?” he wrote. “It is not from the left.”

Believing that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was “wholly unwarranted” and that the American-led war to oust Saddam Hussein was “a malevolent hoax,” Rockwell has called Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11 a “must-see” movie. LewRockwell.com accordingly ran several flattering reviews of the film. With the presidential election in the offing, Rockwell encouraged readers in a September 2004 column to “look left.” There they could “find fascinating war revisionism, courageous defenses of the innocently detained, principled stands for constitutional rights, well argued exposes of the high and mighty.” Rockwell derided the “supposedly rightist president who wages war, cuts taxes, and shovels other people’s money at corporate fatcats.” 

In September 2005 LewRockwell.com gave space to an article by Cindy Sheehan, in which she opined that the “aggression on Iraq is illegal, immoral and appallingly unnecessary,” and called on supporters to become “extremists.” In November 2005, Sheehan was a featured speaker at a benefit conference for LewRockwell.com.

 | 
© Copyright 2024, DiscoverTheNetworks.org