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Justin Raimondo

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Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo[1] on November 18, 1951[citation needed]) is a paleoconservative/libertarian American author and the editorial director of the website Antiwar.com.

Background

During the 1960s, Raimondo took a brief interest in the philosophy of Ayn Rand before joining Young Americans for Freedom. In the 1970s, he became active in the Libertarian Party. With Eric Garris, he organized a "Radical Caucus", which brought Raimondo and Garris to the attention of the influential libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard. (The caucus was revived in 2004 as the Rothbard Caucus.) In 1983, after a schism in the party, Raimondo left the Libertarian Party and attempted to organize a libertarian faction in the Republican Party known as the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee. After 1989, Raimondo again began working with Rothbard in the anti-war John Randolph Club.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Raimondo is "not a believer."[2]

Raimondo's politics

In the 1996 U.S. congressional elections, Raimondo ran as a Republican candidate in California's 8th district against Nancy Pelosi. While championing conservative and libertarian causes in general, the main emphasis of his campaign was his opposition to the deployment of U.S. troops in the Balkans and, in particular, Pelosi's vote to that effect.[3] Raimondo received 13% of the vote while Pelosi got 85%.[4]

During the 1992, 1996, and 2000 presidential elections, Raimondo supported the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, both as a Republican and in the Reform Party. As he is openly gay,[5] his support of the social conservative Buchanan attracted considerable attention.[6]

In 1995, during the Clinton administration's military interventions into the Bosnian war, Raimondo and Garris launched Antiwar.com to provide a platform for their opposition. The site has continued to publish on a daily basis. Raimondo has been a vocal critic of the invasion of Iraq and the ongoing occupation.

In 2004, he supported Ralph Nader for President, and explained his reason for this in an article published in The American Conservative.[7]

In 2008, he has frequently written admiringly of Ron Paul's Presidential campaign, and has also expressed support for Dennis Kucinich—while being somewhat critical of both.

Major ideas and recurring themes

Several themes recur regularly in Raimondo's writing, mostly derived from his libertarian ideological roots. He strongly opposes the Israeli occupation. He believes that initiatory war is wrong, immoral, and counterproductive, that a small group of neoconservatives in both major American political parties have been responsible for "lying us into war" repeatedly, and that the ideals of the Old Right conservative movement have been consistently sold out since around the time of the Vietnam War, when neoconservatives united with religious conservatives to pursue an expansive foreign policy, often in support of the country of Israel.

Long before John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that Israel exerts a dominant force in the formulation of American foreign policy (see The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy), Raimondo was essentially saying the same thing.[8] Raimondo also believes the United States was led into World War II through lies by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and that the US provoked a war with Japan deliberately through economic sanctions.[9] Raimondo's views have been compared by Christopher Hitchens to those of Charles Lindbergh, whom Raimondo describes as an "American hero sprung from the heartland."[10] However, it seems clear that Raimondo does not endorse Lindbergh's Des Moines speech in which the famous aviator decried Jewish influence on the media (see Raimondo's book, Reclaiming the American Right, pages 106, 137, 227). Raimondo has also written repeatedly about the Israeli Art Student conspiracy and he has written that elements of Israeli intelligence operating in the U.S. had advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[11]

Bibliography

In addition to his thrice-weekly column for antiwar.com, he is a regular contributor to The American Conservative and Chronicles magazine. Raimondo also writes two columns a month for Taki's Top Drawer.

He is the the author of several books:

  • Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993)
  • Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (AFPAC, 1996)
  • An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard, Prometheus Books, July 2000, ISBN 1-57392-809-7.
  • The Terror Enigma: 9/11 And the Israeli Connection, iUniverse, November 2003, ISBN 0-595-29682-3.

References

  1. ^ Birthname mention
  2. ^ Mention as to beliefs
  3. ^ Raimondo for Congress: Campaign News and Statements
  4. ^ 1996 U.S. congressional election information
  5. ^ Anderson, Lessley (2003-12-10), "Intrepid Antiwarriors of the Libertarian Right Stake Their Rightful Claim to Power", SF Weekly, retrieved 2007-10-16 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help)
  6. ^ Pat Buchanan
  7. ^ Justin Raimondo: Old Right Nader
  8. ^ Israel Is the Problem, by Justin Raimondo
  9. ^ YASUKUNI BROUHAHA- by Justin Raimondo
  10. ^ Smearing Fitzgerald- by Justin Raimondo
  11. ^ The Truth, At Last
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