Politics The New Neoconservatives Bari Weiss gate-keeps the right against antiwar conservatives. Sound familiar? Nobody escaped 2020 without hearing of at least a couple of media personalities that became wildly popular amongst conservatives for abandoning the left. They themselves, though, framed things a little differently. “The left left me,” they proclaimed. There is something deeply revealing in this statement. These commentators didn’t move an inch to the right. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Bari Weiss, former op-ed editor at the New York Times and now editor-in-chief at CBS News and at her own publication The Free Press. Weiss earned respect from American conservatives in 2020 when she resigned from the Times, publicly accusing it of left-wing bias. Weiss’s recent vault into editorial control of CBS News was backed by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and world’s third-richest person Larry Ellison. Unsurprisingly, given her lack of qualifications, Weiss has stumbled in her impressive new role.  Weiss’s town hall with Erika Kirk, the widow of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, garnered low ratings and drew criticism that it degenerated into “gotcha” moments featuring left-wing activists and Israel supporters in the audience. And the network’s credibility took a hit with progressives after Weiss’s decision to delay a 60 Minutes segment critical of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Despite her adherence to left-wing social policy and hawkish foreign policy, Weiss has found herself a leading gatekeeper of the right. What has she done with this power? The Free Press has made “combatting antisemitism” a major focus. It recently republished a speech by Ben Shapiro, a conservative pro-Israel commentator, that amounts to an effort to excommunicate Tucker Carlson, a critic of Israel, for alleged antisemitism. Other pro-Israel conservatives also grace the pages of the Free Press, including Eli Lake, Matthew Continetti, Niall Ferguson, Abigail Shrier, Douglas Murray, and Nikki Haley. Bari Weiss and her so-called “Intellectual Dark Web” allies comprise our generation’s band of neoconservatives. Of course, not every hawk is a neoconservative, but the label aids understanding in the case of Weiss and her ilk. The origins of neoconservatism can be traced back to the Trotskyite and social democratic left. The first generation of neoconservatives included Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Norman Podhoretz. Bell was a former editor of The New Leader, a prominent socialist and labor-affiliated magazine. He edited, alongside his friend Irving Kristol, The Public Interest, the neoconservatives’ publication of choice for many years. Kristol got his start as a member of the Trotskyite wing of the Young People’s Socialist League and then later moved towards hawkish liberalism.  Moynihan himself was a Cold War liberal who only moved rightward after the reaction to the controversial Moynihan Report, which was critical of black American culture. Norman Podhoretz was editor of the American Jewish Committee’s magazine Commentary, which he initially nudged to the left until he became dissatisfied with cultural leftism. Black Radicals who echoed antisemitic theories and anti-Zionist attitudes following Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967 pushed many of these intellectuals into the arms of the American right.  Their hostility to the Soviet Union and somewhat critical attitudes towards some aspects of the welfare state made them the darlings of conservative “fusionists” who were hawkish on foreign policy and libertarian-leaning on economics. These former Trotskyites maintained a deep resentment towards the Stalinists who ran the USSR. Many neoconservatives were first “Scoop Jackson Democrats,” named after the Senator from Boeing, Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Jackson was an arch-Cold War liberal and technocratic hawk who advocated for lavish spending on defense to counter the Soviets. Second-generation neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle were veteran Jackson staffers.  When George McGovern, whom they saw as a peacenik and appeaser, secured the Democratic nomination in 1972, many jumped ship. Any stragglers caught a boat off the sinking ship of Jimmy Carter’s Democratic Party years later.  With this history under our belts, we can get a clearer picture of what makes a neoconservative a neoconservative, rather than just a hawk.  As the movement came into being, a neoconservative often was a former leftist or left-liberal who gravitated to the right in response to perceived excesses of antiwar and counter-cultural leftism. They were always foreign policy hawks, often out of solidarity with Israel. They were often Jewish but many were not, as evidenced by Catholic Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Presbyterian Jeane Kirkpatrick. They were never laissez-faire capitalists by any stretch of the imagination, nor was their conservatism particularly animated by cultural issues like abortion or gay marriage. They may have criticized the welfare state at the time but, as Irving Kristol admitted in his essay “The Neoconservative Persuasion,” they envisioned a better-managed welfare state––likely one that wouldn’t produce black radicals or socially degenerate behaviors. Repealing the welfare state was never on the radar of these social critics, who were more dedicated to a hawkish corporate state than a laissez-faire limited government.  No wonder, then, that in our era many neoconservatives, including David Frum and Bill Kristol, have become Never Trump Republicans. They have much in common with the left and resent the rise of Donald Trump, who lambasted their ideology. So, what does this have to do with Bari Weiss and her cadre? One may feel a tinge of amusement when one realizes that the “Free Press” was also the name of a prominent neoconservative imprint of Simon & Schuster. If you look for a used copy of Irving Kristol’s Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, you are likely to find “Free Press” printed on the spine. That aside, more significant similarities are not amusing.  Bari Weiss popularized the term “Intellectual Dark Web” to describe those opposed to what was once called “political correctness” and the more pervasive elements of the 2010–20s radical left. These figures include Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, and perhaps even Weiss herself. All of these figures were prominent academics, intellectuals, and journalists who found themselves shouted down by the “politically correct” left. Weiss and her Free Press colleague Abigail Shrier would face expulsion and ostracism from legacy media for critiquing the excesses of the woke left. Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson quickly became enemies of the left and darlings of the right. Rubin’s self-presentation is perhaps the best example of “the left left me” as a piece of rhetoric. He fashions himself a classical liberal of sorts whilst holding much the same opinions he did as a left-wing commentator.  All of these figures gained their fame amongst the right for their critiques of left-wing excesses, especially on free speech and transgenderism. Never mind that many of them were champions of gay rights, which the American right had long fought against; they were opponents of the most recent excess of the left, and that was enough to earn them their credentials.  It appears that these IDW types have congregated today in Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and Weiss’s The Free Press. Alongside columnists like Weiss and Abigail Shrier, their pages are home to explicit neoconservatives like Matthew Continetti, Eli Lake, and Douglas Murray––whose recent fame for opposing Islamic migration to Britain obscures his origins as author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It and founder of the UK’s Henry Jackson Society.  While they maintain a semblance of opposition to left-wing excesses today, The Free Press now seems far more focused on the rise of antisemitism across the West, tying it to anti-Western sentiment rather than opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. Abigail Shrier, who found fame on the right after writing a book on transgenderism, Irreversible Damage, has lately become a defender of Israel against its fiercest critics. Even when at the Times, Bari Weiss accepted the label of unhinged Zionist. It appears that the Free Press has dedicated more of its time defending Israeli military policy and trying to play gatekeeper of the American right than anything else. Even its attacks against Zohran Mamdani, a man whose policies are likely to be destructive for the city, were focused on his opinions of Israel.  Weiss and her cadre check all the boxes of neoconservatism. They are former left-wingers or left-liberals who now oppose left-wing cultural excesses. They have changed little in their economic or cultural positions and only spoke up when the left went beyond them and attacked them specifically. They now are dedicated to a hawkish foreign policy and trying to marginalize antiwar conservatives, especially those critical of U.S. support for Israel. Just as Norman Podhoretz and Bill Kristol would go after the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, Bari Weiss, Douglas Murray, and Ben Shapiro have launched a war against Tucker Carlson, whom they accuse of antisemitism.  They also have their own version of technocratic hawks to work alongside. While the first and second generations had Republican apparatchik Donald Rumsfield, our new generation has mega-rich tycoons, including the founders of tech companies like Palantir and Anduril. Weiss herself co-founded a non-accredited university that has accepted major donations from Zionist billionaires. The Ellisons, who placed Weiss in charge of CBS News, also style themselves Zionists whilst operating a company––Oracle––that regularly contracts for the CIA. The American right has made the mistake once of allowing the neoconservatives to become not just members but gatekeepers. It should not make the mistake twice. This crowd should not dictate to the American right who belongs in its ranks. The post The New Neoconservatives appeared first on The American Conservative.