In the Spring of 2016 Donald Trump met William S. Lind, who gave Trump the William Lind and Paul Weyrich co-authored 2009 book The Next Conservatism that features most of the policy ideas that have made Trump the 2016 GOP presidential nominee.
As some in mainstream media have noticed, Trump has run on the same paleoconservative platform as did Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996 — and William Lind is one of the architects of that paleocon platform, so Lind is in effect Trump’s policy guru whether Trump knows it or not.
The Next Conservatism also includes William Lind’s ideas that have demonstrably (see case studies below) helped inspire terrorism and mass-violence — Lind’s conspiracy theory concerning “political correctness” and “cultural Marxism”, and his ideas concerning Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) that explores how non-state actors (such as terrorist groups or insurgent militia groups) can challenge and even defeat state powers.
Click on the numbered links, below, for explanations on how the “cultural Marxism” and 4GW ideas of William S. Lind have helped inspire terrorism and mass-violence, from the al-Qaeda 2001 attacks on America, to the 2011 terrorism of neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik that killed and wounded almost 400, to 2016 acts of right-wing terrorism
Donald Trump ; (1) The July 22, 2016 Munich slaying of nine by a Hitler-admirer ; (2) The savage pre-Brexit assassination of British MP Jo Cox ; (3) Multiple stabbings of counter-protesters by neo-Nazis and skinheads at a rally in Sacramento, California ; (4) The 2015 execution of nine African-American members of a prayer group at a Charleston, SC black church ; (5) A July 22, 2011 neo-Nazi terrorist attack in Norway that killed 77 and wounded 319 ; (6) The 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed thousands of Americans and leveled the WTC’s twin towers.
What do these share in common ?
They are all linked to a now-globally popular conspiracy theory promoted by William Lind concerning an alleged Jewish Marxist plot behind “political correctness”, “cultural Marxism” and multiculturalism, by Lind’s theory of “Fourth Generation Warfare” (4GW), or both.
William S. Lind has suggested his 4GW ideas may have inspired al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist attacks, and his “cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory clearly inspired one of Europe’s worst terrorist attacks in decades, the July 22, 2011 Norway terrorist attacks by Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 and wounded 319.
This year, during a court appearance, Breivik gave Nazi salute. On July 22, 2016, the fifth anniversary of Breivik’s attacks, an apparent fan of Breivik’s — a German-Iranian teenager who considered it an honor to share Adolf Hitler’s birthday — carried out a massacre of nine at a McDonald’s restaurant in Munich.
Beyond having inspired right-wing terrorism, Lind’s “political correctness”/“cultural Marxism” conspiracy theory has become pervasive on the U.S. far-right and are even making surprising inroads among mainstream conservatives.
But Lind is no fringe figure — for decades he worked closely with the most important architect of the contemporary American religious right, the late Paul Weyrich (NYT obituary of Weyrich) and has been a close intellectual collaborator with Pat Buchanan (co-originator of the infamous “Southern Strategy”).
Per usual, only a handful of journalists in mainstream media (notably Eleanor Clift, writing for the Daily Beast) have recognized the most salient fact about Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid — Donald Trump is running on the same platform as did Pat Buchanan in his 1992 and 1996 election presidential bids.
“Donald Trump stole my playbook”, Buchanan suggested to Clift. The playbook ? For a start, Buchanan’s campaign hats even featured the “make American great” slogan now appropriated by Trump. Decades before Trump, Buchanan decried immigration and suggested building a wall on the Mexican border ; he fulminated against free trade.
“Trump’s emphasis on how China is ripping off America is straight from Buchanan’s playbook, and his books, The Great Betrayal and Death of the West”, writes Eleanor Clift.
But Pat Buchanan was not the only architect of the ideas behind his 1992/1996 campaign platforms ; those ideas emerged from a collaboration of a fairly small group of brilliant racist strategists who sought to fundamentally reconfigure conservatism and, eventually, restore the supremacy of white, Christian, male America.
Members of that elite circle included Buchanan, William Lind, Paul Weyrich, and Council of Conservative Citizens national board member Pat Francis (in 2015, CofCC website literature inspired Dylann Roof, discussed in one of my six case studies.)
By the late 1980s, members of that circle were becoming increasingly dismayed by the inability of the movement they had helped launch to transform America — not just its politics but its culture as well. So they set about to craft a new “third-way” form of politics that over time has come to be known as paleo-conservatism. As a political program, it was decades ahead of its time.
For his 1992 and 1996 bids for the presidency, Pat Buchanan was drummed out of the GOP. Decades later in 2016, using the same political platform, Donald Trump has smashed down the gates and successfully stormed the GOP’s inner sanctum.
Beyond the new political platform, as a parallel track, that elite circle of strategists began to steer their movement towards increasingly radical, even revolutionary tactics.
In his 1999 Open Letter to conservatives Weyrich mapped out a new strategy, which elements of the movement had likely already been implementing for a number of years :
Religious and cultural conservatives would, as did Mao’s Red Army, make a strategic retreat to well-defended areas from which they would wage incessant guerrilla warfare against existing societal institutions. They would work to tear down and monkey-wrench existing institutions and thus undermine public confidence.
The idea was to destroy, in the eyes of the public, the moral legitimacy of existing institutions, notably government — by crippling their ability to function. When things got bad enough, a covertly prepared anti-government coalition would mobilize to seize power.
Both of these dual track plans are now coming to fruition, and the underlying, driving ideas augur a savage new era when democratic pluralism and multicultural society in America will come under increasing assault.
Much now hangs in the balance.